MADRID: The Spanish tourist industry is set for Visa card spending by tourists in Spain double that of travelling Spaniards in first quarter of 2015.
According to Visa, foreign visitors to Spain spent 225.8 million euros in this country during Holy Week, an increase of just 0.15% on last year’s figure, and while the average value per transaction rose by 6.73% to 80.82€ the number of transactions dropped by 6.1% to 2.79 million. The biggest spending using Visa cards occurred on Easter Saturday, when foreign customers made purchases totaling 31.1 million euros.
In terms of the nationality of foreign spenders in Spain the leading ten nations were (in order) the UK, France, Germany, USA, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark and Ireland, but the Chinese are proving to be a rapidly growing market: Chinese Visa holders spent 2.5 million euros this Easter in Spain, two and a half times more than in the equivalent period in 2014.
