How British tourists are choosing Spain for their summer holidays after terror attacks in France and Turkey
Holidaymakers are shunning other once-popular resorts
BRITS are flocking to ‘safer’ Spain for their summer holidays amid fears of being caught up in a terror attack in other once-popular resorts.
Nearly 33 million people visited the country between January and June – an increase of nearly 12 per cent.
The surge comes as holidaymakers shun resorts in France, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey after terror attacks targeting tourists.
Spain’s national statistics office has reported a huge surge in visitors to the country driven by Brits - that despite the country still being deemed at 'high risk' of a terror attack.
The country is expecting another record-setting year for tourism with just under eight million Brits visiting during the first six months of 2016.
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The most popular destinations from January to June was Catalonia, thanks to Barcelona and Costa Brava beaches on the Mediterranean.
Catalonia was followed by the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands and Andalucia on the southern coast.
The most popular destination in June was the Balearics, home to Majorca and Ibiza.
The reports that 2.1million Britons visited Spain last month accounting for 28 per cent of the total number of foreign visitors, an increase of 17.5 per cent on June 2015.
But while it is good news for Spain’s tourism industry in France multiple terror attacks appear to have driven away holidaymakers.
In the week after the Nice terror attack killed 84 people arrivals fell 8.8 per cent on the same week in 2015.
Bookings to the southern city dropped by 57 per cent, according to ForwardKeys, which analyses airline data.
Holidays to Egypt have nearly halved following the downing of a Russian passenger plane in October 2015 official figures show, while the number of tourists arriving in Turkey has fallen for nine consecutive months to 1.75 million in April this year.
And pictures emerged of the luxury hotel where British holidaymakers were gunned down by a Kalashnikov-wielding terrorist in Tunisia showing it now stands eerily quiet after a slump in tourism forced it to close its doors.
Environmentalists have already warned hotels, beaches, roads, water and sewer systems may not be able to cope with the millions of holidaymakers flocking to Spanish resorts this summer.
Gerard Hau, a spokesman for Grup Balear d’Ornitologia Defensa de la Naturalesa (GOB), a group for environmentalists in the Balearic Islands, told the Observer: “This will be a crazy year.
“The infrastructure will not cope. Mallorca is booked out. We will have serious problems this summer.”
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) was forced to issued travel warnings and advice to specific regions for Brits after the Turkish military coup and the string of Islamic terrorist attacks in France.
According to travel company Abta there has been “strong sales” for holidays in Devon, Cornwall and the Channel Islands as many people opt for a domestic break.
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