destacados

The 442,000 travellers and the 766,000 overnight stays registered are the best data for that month in the INE’s historical series.

Palas de Rei was the third tourist destination in Spain with the highest occupancy rate last month.

Galician hotels are facing the summer with the aim of making good the forecasts and leaving behind the fall in visitors and occupancy that the covid pandemic meant. The latest data released by the National Statistics Institute (INE) also invite optimism, since they reflect how during the month of May the hotels of this land beat their historical records for both visitors and overnight stays.

A total of 442,557 users passed through Galician establishments during May, which is not only almost three times the 154,200 of the same month last year, but is also above the 425,307 registered in 2019 and marks a new record for the historical series of the INE hotel occupancy survey, which started in 1999. A similar situation has arisen in terms of overnight stays, since from 284,554 in May last year it has risen to 766,477 in May this year, a figure that also slightly exceeds the 765,901 of May 2019, the previous record in this series.

The boom of the Way of St. James and the celebration of the double Holy Year Xacobeo 21-22 have also contributed to the good performance of Galician hotels. In fact, according to data from the Pilgrim Welcome Office of Santiago de Compostela, the 48,254 compostelas stamped during May exceed those of the same month of 2019 (46,673) and represent a new record.

And this has led to the municipality of Palas de Rei, through which passes the main pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela (the French Way), but also the Primitive Way, appears in the INE statistics for May referring to the tourist points with the highest occupancy rate. Its 72.54% occupancy rate during that month places the town of Lugo on a podium headed by such famous destinations as Torremolinos (73.39%) and Barcelona (73.26%) and ahead of cities such as Valencia (69.53%), Seville (69.29%) and Palma de Mallorca (68.99%).