Asturias started the year with tourism figures similar to those reached before the pandemic, both in terms of the number of visitors and overnight stays. The National Statistics Institute (INE) has today published the January figures, which reflect the arrival of 63,628 tourists to the Principality and a total of 124,565 overnight stays.
The occupancy in hotels, tourist flats, rural accommodation and campsites reached similar values to the same month of 2019, despite the incidence of the sixth wave of the covid during these weeks. Although the number of visitors was significantly lower – 1.8% less – stays were longer and increased by 1.6% overall.
Rural tourism also achieved its best January since statistical records have been kept, with 17,859 stays. Domestic tourists accounted for the bulk of this number (16,727 overnight stays), while 1,131 were by foreign residents.
The improvement in the health situation compared to January 2021 results in a fourfold increase on the figures for 2021. Thus, the number of tourists grew by 294.6% and the number of stays by 213%. Hand in hand with this recovery in activity is the volume of jobs generated in the sector, which in January stood at 3,077 workers, three times more than in the same month last year.
