Santander (EFE).- Cantabria exceeded 2 million visitors and 5.58 million overnight stays in 2022, which is why it is already in pre-pandemic figures.
A total of 2,042,697 people, 436,656 of them foreigners, visited Cantabria in 2022, according to data provided to EFE by the regional government.
Cantabria thus far exceeds the figures for 2020 and 2021, both marked by the pandemic, and also exceeds 2019 travelers by 0.6 percent.
The hotels of the autonomous community registered 3.38 percent fewer visitors than the year before the pandemic, with falls also in tourist apartments (-16.34%) and, above all, in hostels, -57 ,fifteen %.
However, travelers who chose to stay in campsites increased by 17.04 percent; 16.67% in rural accommodation; and 8.02 in non-hotel establishments, all this again compared to 2019.
The Minister of Tourism, Javier López Marcano, has stressed to EFE that these are “extraordinary and benchmark data for 2023”, coinciding with the Lebaniego Jubilee Year, which will start on April 16 with the opening of the Puerta del Perdón in the Monastery of Santo Toribio de Liebana.
“We are in pre-pandemic numbers and on the right path: to improve permanently, which is what we are considering,” said López Marcano.
The tourism promotion of the regional government will focus on its traditional “infinite Cantabria” and promote the strengths that, according to López Marcano, this land has “at all levels”: landscape, environmental, gastronomic, heritage, meteorological or orographic.
Can you exceed the number of tourists and overnight stays?
“There is a bit of everything and this year we present it with a cellophane of many quality carats such as this event of exceptional tourist-cultural interest, the 74th Lebaniego Jubilee Year,” he said.
López Marcano hopes that 2023 will be a “jubilant year and give many joys” and hopes to improve those figures for 2022 and “more universalize” the Lebaniego Jubilee Year and, thus, attract a greater visiting public.
He has invited to do it for whatever reason. «We all entered: the skeptics, the agnostics, the curious, the people of culture, those of us who walk by ethical codes, by environmental or natural wealth. And those who do it by faith», he has said.
The head of Tourism has referred, in his commitment to internationalization, to the Seve Ballesteros-Santander airport, which has had a “very good” 2022 with 1,102,349 passengers, practically half of them foreigners.
An objective for 2023, López Marcano has indicated, is to repeat more than 2 million visitors and 6 million overnight stays. “That is the challenge,” he said.
And he has opted to help himself from “the triple A of Cantabria”, which is “pleasant, friendly and welcoming”.
“It is a land that includes these three characteristics”, has valued López Marcano, who sees Cantabria capable of satisfying “the most demanding needs of family, adventure, hiking, cultural, heritage, health, research tourism…”.