Tourists are urged to avoid doing 1 thing when visiting Spain (Image: Getty)
Spain is urging visitors to look beyond its most famous tourist hotspots as the country prepares for another record-breaking year of international tourism.
Spain is on course to welcome around 100 million international visitors in 2026, but as concerns over overtourism continue to grow, the country is changing how it manages the millions of people arriving each year.
The country urged travellers to venture out to lesser-known areas to reduce the negative impact on its overpopulated areas.
The Spanish Tourist Office is encouraging people to visit lesser-travelled places like Castilla (Image: Getty)
Speaking at the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai, Carlos Ruiz Gonzalez, director of the Spanish Tourist Office for the Gulf region at Turespana, outlined the country’s Tourism 2030 strategy, which puts residents, sustainability and less-visited destinations at the centre of Spain’s future tourism policy.
The strategy comes as Spain deals with the consequences of its extraordinary popularity. The country welcomed 96.8 million international tourists in 2025, while tourism contributes around 12.6% of GDP and supports approximately three million jobs.
But the government is increasingly looking beyond simply increasing visitor numbers.
“For the last few years, our government has been thinking about what we should do to manage this success,” Ruiz Gonzalez said. “We have some destinations that are dying of success.”
Spain’s most popular destinations, including Barcelona and established coastal resorts, continue to attract huge numbers of visitors. At the same time, many inland and rural parts of the country are seeking to benefit more from international tourism.
Spain Tourism 2030 was developed with input from more than 200 tourism experts, businesses, government bodies and other organisations. Its three-phase roadmap addresses economic, social and environmental sustainability through a series of two-year action plans.
Among the issues identified are climate change, employment, housing pressures, overcrowding and depopulation in some regions.
Residents are explicitly included as one of five groups at the heart of the strategy, alongside destinations, businesses, tourism workers and visitors.
“We want the residents also to be part of the system,” Ruiz Gonzalez said.
He added that tourists visit places where people live, meaning residents need to be able to continue living there, afford housing and go about their daily lives without being overwhelmed by tourism.
For holidaymakers, the biggest change could be a shift away from the traditional approach of ticking off Spain’s best-known attractions as quickly as possible.
Rather than discouraging visitors from destinations such as Barcelona, Spain wants tourists to spread their trips across more of the country, travel more slowly and stay for longer.
“Some destinations don’t need much promotion – they are very well known,” Ruiz Gonzalez said. “Basically, we want people to go more inland in Spain. We also want people to travel slow, to stay as long as possible.”
That means travellers could consider adding lesser-visited regions to their itinerary rather than spending their entire holiday in the country’s most crowded tourist centres.
Travellers interested in hiking and nature were pointed towards destinations including the Pyrenees, Picos de Europa and Sierra de Guadarrama, the latter being a national park within easy reach of Madrid.
The historic cities and smaller towns of Castilla were also highlighted as places where visitors can experience another side of Spain.
Getting away from the traditional tourist trail is becoming easier, too. Spain’s extensive high-speed rail network connects major cities with destinations across the country, potentially allowing travellers to combine several regions without relying solely on domestic flights or long road journeys.
