The Caminito del Rey, The King´s path |
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EL CAMINITO DEL REY - STATISTICS
Statistics about the 1.3m unique visitors to the Caminito de Rey official website. in its first year of operation were anounced in a press release by the Malaga provincial council. 22% of web visitors were from abroad. We were pleased to see reported that "The visits that come from diariosur.es, and other travel websites, such as skyscanner.es and andalucia.com stand out".
On the actual footpath, there were 23.000 visitors in the first month of operation. In the first year of operation there were 300.000 (free) tickets issued online. The Malaga provincial council has not reported how many tickets were actually used as it is known a high percentage of the free tickets that could not be re-dated were 'no shows'.
Since the purchase of tickets was introduced on 22nd April 2016 up to 25th July 2016 there were 86.100 visitors, equal to 100% sales of the maximum 1.100 per day allocation.
We calculate the annual visitor ticket sales to be slightly less than 300.000 per year making it about the twelth most Popular attraction in Andalucia.
In September 2017 Francisco Campano of the path management company anounced that the number of foreigners using the path was increasing and over the summer had reached 65%. There had been visitors form 84 different countries.
On the three year Aniversary of the reopening of the Caminito del Rey the Provincial government anounced that there had been one million visitors to the path. A figure widely reported with enthuasm in the local press. However since year one issued 300.000 free tickets with a large proportion of no shows, and year two and three were under a management contract with a limit of 300,000 per year we calculate a figure closer to 800.000. It was also reported that the economic benefit to the area is 100m € which assumes an unrealistic 120€ average spend per visitor and includes Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) contrary to PR industry established Barcelona Principals.
Economics
The Diputacion de Malaga have reported that whilst the investment was 5.5m € the annual economic (linked page no longer on Caminito de Rey Website) benefit to the area is 20 million euro annualy, local press reported this headline verbatim. The reports basis was 74.135 tourists, staying on average 1.7 days spending on average 64.88€ equals 8.2 m € spend annually. In adition 172,980 day trippers spending on average 26.20€ equals 4.5m € spend annually. The report adds another 7m€ for indirect expentiture to reach the 20m € return. Andalucia.com views these numbers as inflated and never received a detailed breakdown dispite several requests. This figure was mysteriously revised upwards to 40m €anually on the anniversary of the opening of the path.
The numbers were revalidated by an internal SOPDE study a few years later. reported in Malaga Hoy. Comparisons were made between the 2017 estimates and those of 2020. 2017s direct impact of 16.9m€ became 23.3m € 2020. After indirect and induced impact were added the 23.3€ economic benefit became 44.0€.
At the opening of the new visitors centre on 20 October 2022 Francisco Salado, President of Malaga´s provincial council stated that since opening on 28th March 2015 2.2m people had visited the Camino del Rey. At 5 years and 7 months that is 294k a year. Every year, the Caminito del Rey generates an economic impact of around 25m€, which means a total of 175m€. Its popularity has also led to a huge increase in the number of tourist accommodations which have risen from 210 in 2016 to 474 now (2022), with 5,600 beds. Source
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