Tourist Spending in Lanzarote Rises as Visitor Numbers Fall

Between them, accommodation and transport swallow €129.90 of that daily total, just over 71 per cent. The hotel bill alone is €85.10 a day, up 14 per cent on last year, and the flight or ferry takes another quarter of the budget. That leaves roughly 11 per cent for restaurants and about 18 per cent for everything else, the shops, Lanzarote excursions and attractions put together.

What makes the rise an impressive figure is that it came while fewer people visited. Lanzarote received 779,430 tourists over the quarter, down about 3 per cent on the same months of 2025, in line with a similar fall across the Canaries. So the island took more money from fewer visitors, which is in line with the direction its tourism strategy has been working towards, value over volume.

On that measure Lanzarote leads the Canaries for spend. It recorded the highest average daily tourist spend of any island in the first quarter of 2026, at €198.64, the highest figure in the data going back to 2010, and stayed top in the second quarter at €181.90 against a Canaries average of €175.60. Tourism revenue rose about 9 per cent over the quarter and jobs in the sector were up 11 per cent, even with visitor numbers down.

Whether that is unambiguously good is questionable. Earning more from each visitor eases the pressure to keep drawing ever bigger crowds, which is important on an island already wrestling with the strain tourism puts on housing and services. But with seven euros in every ten going on beds and travel, the share reaching the family-run bar, the corner shop and the small excursion operator is thinner than the headline figure suggests, and those are the businesses that spread tourism income most widely across the island.

Lanzarote tourist spending at a glance