Tuesday, 30 December 2025, 15:17
Data from the Costa del Sol tourist board’s tourism situation report, based on the latest monthly report from Spain’s INE national institute of statistics, shows that this industry has reached a peak in Malaga province. The key to this slight decline, unprecedented after the post-Covid pandemic recovery, lies in the fact that international tourism is showing signs of cooling. These signs have prevented, as has been the case until now, the continuous falls in national demand from compensating, which is still not picking up on the Costa del Sol.
The data shows that in the first ten months of 2025 the total number of guests staying in hotels, tourist apartments and campsites fell by 1.1%, with a 3.8% drop in domestic tourism and a slight rise of 0.4% in international tourism. However, the volume of overnight stays in this type of accommodation has also fallen: there has been a 1.3% drop after a 5.7% fall in Spanish tourists and only a 0.1% rise in foreign visitors.
The figures speak for themselves. Tourist accommodation, without including the activity of homes rented by tourists in these statistics, has stopped growing in the first ten months. Specifically, they accommodated 7,116,353 tourists, i.e. 78,454 fewer than in the same period last year. This decline has also been felt in business, with overnight stays falling by 366,927, leaving the number of nights booked at 27,087,197.
All of this in a context of a generalised rise in prices, which in the case of hotels has experienced a 7.1% increase to 138.34 euros per room up to October, in a period in which the supply of accommodation on the Costa del Sol has not ceased to grow. This same report indicates that Malaga province has increased the number of accommodation businesses to 95,465, which represents an increase of 7.3%. For the first time, these places have added more than 700,000 beds, including tourist homes, which is also the fastest growing type of accommodation on the Costa del Sol. The overall number of beds to accommodate guests increased by 6% in these first ten months.
366,927
is the number of overnight stays lost by Costa del Sol accommodation in the first ten months of the year, which represents a decrease of 1.3%.
Although the overall figures show that tourism on the Costa del Sol reached its peak in October, not all types of accommodation followed this trend. Therefore, rural houses in Malaga province remain on the fringes of this slight decline and continue to show a positive sign in all indicators, even with notable growth in arrivals and overnight stays of 33% and 31%, respectively. It is worth noting that in rural tourism, national tourism has soared with increases of 92% in stays and tourists, perhaps due to the fact that the cost of this type of offer is lower. A situation which, at a slower rate but also with an upward trend, is also reflected in campsites.
However, it is the performance of the hotel sector that sets the tone in terms of the volume of overnight stays In this case, the number of guests fell by 1.6% up to October and the number of nights booked stagnated. A balance that is determined by the drop in national tourism of around 8 and 6%, respectively, which does not manage to make up for the two-point increase in the arrival and stays of international travellers.
The Costa del Sol tourism report points to the tourist apartment offer as the worst performer with all indicators in the red, except for a slight increase of 0.2% in Spanish tourist arrivals.
And although initial data from the Christmas period looks good, almost full in the rural houses and with better records in the hotels, from the Association of Hoteliers Association of the Costa del Sol (Aehcos), they anticipate a hotel occupancy rate of 54.9% in December, which represents a slight decrease of 1.7 percentage points compared to the data recorded in December 2024. The president of the employers’ association, José Luque, warns that “this slight decrease compared to the previous year reminds us of the importance of continuing to work on market diversification and deseasonalisation, as well as on improving air connectivity to maintain the competitiveness of the destination during the off-peak months”.
So 2026 does not start on a positive note. Aehcos forecasts an occupancy rate of 53.4%, a figure that is 7.12 percentage points down on January 2025, when it exceeded 60.5%. For February the figures suggest that the hotels will fill 56.6% of the rooms, compared to the 71.56% they sold in the same period last year.
These are the markets that are on a downward trend
Accommodation providers on the Costa del Sol have begun to notice that the number of tourists communicating in German, French or Dutch is decreasing, markets that are showing a downward trend despite being among the five most important for the destination. The Costa del Sol tourism report points out that only the United Kingdom, which is the main international issuing market for Malaga province, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and African countries have positive balances. Compared to them, eight of the fourteen key countries for Malaga accommodation are negative, highlighting the double-digit declines of tourists from France, with a decrease of 11%, the United States, with a fall of 13.7%, and up to 32% in the case of Italy in the first ten months of the year. However, in terms of passenger arrivals at the airport, only Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, countries that are fundamental for tourism in Malaga, are in the red.