Article summary
- Torrevieja’s northern Playa del Cura and city center hold the highest concentration of tourist apartments.
- Punta Prima and Cala Dorada stand out for higher rental profitability and better-quality regulated properties.
- Tourists mainly spend in supermarkets, restaurants, financial services, gas stations, and nightlife venues.
- Study uses innovative data sources like AirDNA, Mastercard, and climate records for in-depth tourism insights.
- Recommendations include regulating property quality, boosting low-season rentals, and optimizing housing during events like Carnival and Easter.
- Torrevieja hosts over 6,300 officially registered tourist apartments, surpassing Valencia and matching major resorts like Benidorm.
- The city is advancing as a Sustainable,Digital,and Resilient Smart Tourist Destination (DTI).
Exploring Torrevieja’s Tourist Apartment Market: New Data-Driven Insights
Torrevieja, a coastal gem on Spain’s Costa Blanca, continues to strengthen its position as a leading tourist destination by focusing on smart tourism strategies backed by cutting-edge research. A recently published study by the Laboratorio Universitario de Turismo Inteligente de Torrevieja (TI·LAB), a pioneering collaboration between the Torrevieja City Council and the University of Alicante, sheds new light on the area’s tourist apartment market, visitor spending habits, and strategic planning for sustainable growth.
Geographical Concentration of Tourist Apartments in Torrevieja
The study reveals a clear concentration of tourist apartment offerings in two key areas:
- North end of Playa del Cura: especially near the buildings surrounding Las columnas.
- City center of Torrevieja: notable but somewhat less dense than playa del Cura.
Meanwhile, the Punta Prima and Cala Dorada zones, located near the Orihuela border, stand out as the most profitable areas offering higher quality apartments. These zones also feature a substantially higher percentage of properties that are officially regulated compared to other residential zones within the municipality, highlighting better compliance with quality frameworks.
Tourist Spending Patterns: Where Do Visitors Spend?
An essential part of the study analyzed tourist expenditure in Torrevieja’s urban habitat. According to the data,the majority of tourist spending occurs in the following five sectors:
| Ranking | Spending Category |
|---|---|
| 1 | Supermarkets |
| 2 | Restaurants |
| 3 | Financial Services |
| 4 | Gas Stations |
| 5 | Bars & Nightclubs |
Interestingly,these preferences confirm longstanding local perceptions about tourist spending,while opposing common patterns observed in larger international tourist hubs. Such as, Torrevieja’s tourists show a stronger preference for private transportation rather than public transit.
Innovative Use of Data Sources for Smarter tourism Management
This study pioneers the use of unconventional big data sources to analyze tourism and housing markets. Combined sources include:
- AirDNA: Data from vacation rental platforms
- Mastercard: Tourist transaction records
- Climate Records: Whether information to correlate with seasonal behavior
Integrating these diverse datasets provides a granular and dynamic understanding of occupancy rates, housing profitability, tourist spending, and seasonal trends in Torrevieja.
Key Recommendations to Boost Tourism and sustainability
The research team, comprised of experts from the University of alicante, recommends the following strategies to maximize both tourist satisfaction and economic benefits:
- Optimize housing availability during major events: such as Carnival and Semana Santa (Holy Week), to benefit from demand peaks.
- Enforce regulations on rental housing quality: promoting better standards to increase occupancy and profitability sustainably.
- Enhance efforts to boost rental demand during low seasons: especially in spring and autumn to reduce tourism seasonality.
- Upgrade lower-performing apartments: to improve overall quality and attract higher occupancy rates.
Impressive Growth in Regulated tourist Apartments
According to statistics from December 2022 by the Generalitat valenciana, Torrevieja had more than 6,300 registered tourist apartments, totaling 26,829 beds. This represents a remarkable 16% increase in regulated supply in just one year, surpassing Valencia’s figures and rivaling well-known tourist cities like Benidorm and Xàbia.
Though, the official numbers represent only part of the real market.
The city also boasts the largest secondary housing stock in Spain, with over 60,000 homes privately rented out periodically via online platforms that allow owners to profit as vacation rentals – many of which operate outside direct administrative control, expanding Torrevieja’s rental capacity beyond official data.
Towards a Smart, Sustainable, and Resilient Tourist Destination
The study underlines the importance of moving beyond traditional tourism data systems. By embracing intelligent tourism-territorial models that promote adaptive, interoperable, and evidence-based governance, Torrevieja aims to build a more sustainable, digital, and resilient destination.
Rosario Martínez Chazarra, Torrevieja’s Tourism Councilor, alongside Jesús Segarra, director of the University of Alicante’s Torrevieja campus, highlighted the transformative potential of this research to improve tourism planning and foster public-private collaboration in line with Smart Tourism principles.
About the Research and Data Access
the study was funded by the Torrevieja City Council and conducted under the research project “progress of Virtual Open Data Portals for Tourism” (VirtualData), supported by the Generalitat Valenciana’s Department of Education, Universities, and Employment.
This collaboration showcases how university research entities like TI·LAB can bring strategic value to local governments, enabling more informed and effective tourism management based on rich, diverse data sources.
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