The first two months of the year have set passenger records at the Alicante-Elche-Miguel Hernández airport. Which means that more tourists are arriving on the Costa Blanca than before the pandemic, but in a somewhat different proportion. One of the data that draws attention is the sharp increase in travelers from Poland, which have gone from 31,920 in the first two months of 2019 to 57,694 in the same period this year. From being the tenth "market" at the Alicante airport four years ago, it has become the fifth.
The undisputed first place remains for the United Kingdom, despite the fact that so far this year the passage has fallen by more than 71,000 travelers compared to 2019, standing at 512,547. In part, this decrease is offset by the strong increase in Spanish travelers, 42,000 more, to exceed 263,000. But it must be taken into account that the more than 26,000 Russian tourists that there were in January and February 2019 have "disappeared", the Germans have decreased by 22,000, and Norwegians and Swedes are barely maintained.
It is mainly Eastern European countries, such as the aforementioned Poland, but also Finland, Romania or Hungary that register the greatest increases.
This is reflected in the statistics of the tourist offices or in those of attractions such as the Santa Bárbara Castle (the Poles are the fourth most visited, behind the British, Germans and French), but also in the purchase statistics of houses. If in 2019 the Poles registered 624 home purchase and sale operations in the province of Alicante (the 11th country in the ranking), which was already twice as many as just three years before, last year they rose to fifth place among clients in the local real estate market , closing 2,217 operations, according to data from the Notarial Association of Valencia.
This has led the Poles to be the second nationality, after Sweden, among the buyers of homes in Torrevieja, with 945, (data up to the fourth quarter of 2022), the fourth in Orihuela, with 358, behind the British (1,053 ), Belgians (666) and Swedes (420); and the first in Benidorm, with 106 homes, almost the same as in Alicante capital (108), where the Algerians rule (415).
And it's not just them: the nine countries that have increased their real estate investment in the province of Alicante the most are from Eastern Europe: in this order, Latvia, Moldova, Lithuania, the Slovak Republic, Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Belarus and Romania. Although in absolute numbers the most important thing is that the Poles are already the fifth customers -only behind the British, Belgians, Dutch and Germans- and ahead of customers with such a long tradition such as the Swedes, French, Russians (who are still the eighth who buy the most) and Ukrainians.
Currently, Alicante has direct flights with six Polish airports: Krakow, Gdansk - Rebiechowo, Lodz - Lublinek, Poznan - Lawica, Warsaw and Wroclaw, more than it has with countries as significant as France, Italy, Holland, Belgium or Norway. . Only the United Kingdom and Germany have more connections with the Costa Blanca. In total, in 2022 the number of Polish passengers amounted to 286,791. Romanians were 91,809, and Hungarians, Lithuanians, Czechs and Bulgarians, between 35,000 and 38,000 each.
