

FITUR OPENING FIRST DAY 2025
This first day of FITUR has been a day full of novelties and surprises. Undoubtedly the growth of the sector is indisputable, creating new destinations, new offers and where every day the demand grows in the sector for its wide range of possibilities, sports trips, trips to attend festivals and concerts, technological conferences increasingly on the rise, unexplored destinations and different proposals for all tastes and budgets. Imagine that at 11.30 in the morning the number of attendees exceeded 52,000.
As usual, the inauguration by Their Majesties the King and Queen of Spain took place at the beginning of the morning, affectionately and close to the exhibitors, attendees and institutions, thus giving the starting signal for the 45th edition of the International Tourism Fair.
As a highlight of this first day FITUR Lingua noted the rise of tourism in Spain with more than 158,000 students in 2024, with more than 600,000 international students in our territory and an economic impact of more than 6,000 million euros.

FITUR Lingua, organised by FITUR in collaboration with FEDELE (Spanish Federation of Schools of Spanish as a Foreign Language), featured a full programme of presentations and round table discussions in which professionals, institutions and companies from the sector addressed the strategic pillars for the evolution of this constantly growing sector.
Eva Laguna, President of FEDELE, explained that FITUR Lingua ‘concentrates an increasing number of companies and professionals from the world of Spanish and will continue to grow in the coming years, both in terms of attendees and activities’. She also highlighted ‘the great growth experienced by FEDELE in 2024, which is a symptom of the good state of language tourism’. On the other hand, she reflected on ‘the important role of teachers, without whom it would not be possible to teach the language and promote Spanish in the world’. And he recalled that ‘in 2030 there will be 600 million people in the world who will speak Spanish, and this dissemination of our language is closely related to tourism’.

For his part, David Trigo, Manager of FEDELE, said that ‘2024 has been a record year, both in terms of the number of students and the economic footprint they have generated’. He added that ‘FITUR Lingua has been a fundamental point for the development of the language tourism sector’. Meanwhile, Daniel Escalona, Marketing Director of FEDELE, presented the sector report which reveals that the number of students in the federated schools in 2024 was 158,800 students, with a growth of 11.42% over 2023. ‘The main markets remain Germany, Italy, France, the United States and the United Kingdom, which account for a third of the schools. The total number of weeks spent by students in our schools is 631,469, with an average of 3.97 weeks per student. The number of digital learners was 7,061 students. And the economic footprint stood at 454 million euros, which includes the expenses that students make in our country’.
Spain: a top destination for international students FITUR Lingua was also the venue chosen for the official presentation of the economic study on international students in Spain, developed by Spain Education Programs, ICEX Spain Export and Investment and EDUESPAÑA.
According to this report, more than 600,000 citizens from other countries chose Spain as an educational destination to study their training programmes in 2023, which meant an overall economic impact on the Spanish economy of more than 6,000 million euros.
During the conference, a round table discussion was also held on the sector's data and needs. Moderated by David Trigo, Eva Laguna, Cristina Ceballos, from the Faculty of Tourism and Finance at the University of Seville, and Bárbara García, collaborating researcher at Spain Education Programs, all agreed on the importance of solid research and data collection to understand the dynamics and trends of language tourism.

Ceballos insisted on the need to ‘deepen the analysis to identify different typologies and behaviours of students, in addition to focusing on big data and social networks in schools, where many comments are left that can be analysed and used to identify emotions and concepts’.
Laguna advocated ‘having a platform where all the information on students can be dumped to obtain more data on language tourism’. And García warned that ‘the collection of data on students of Spanish should be agile and should be completed by also asking those who have not yet come to our country’.
Presentation of the 4th Spanish Week FITUR Lingua which will be held from 1 to 5 October 2025 in Logroño and San Millán de la Cogolla, in an event attended by representatives of the Government of La Rioja, the Logroño City Council and the San Millán de la Cogolla Foundation. This is the main event in the field of language tourism in Spain, which brings together hundreds of professionals. During the presentation, the Mayor of Logroño, Conrado Escobar, assured that ‘the 4th Week of Spanish in Logroño and San Millán de la Cogolla will be full of experiences for those who decide to visit us’ and explained that ‘La Rioja offers a natural, scenic and wine-growing environment suitable for the knowledge of Spanish to enjoy the experience of sharing a unique language’. Afterwards, several success stories in language tourism in other languages, such as French, German or English, were presented.
Examples of destinations that have consolidated educational programmes to attract students of languages other than Spanish were presented, and their successful practices for the growth of the sector were analysed. In addition, another round table discussion was held on language tourism in other countries and how to improve tourism services for these students, moderated by Elena Fernández, with the participation of Sossy Vega, SIC International Student Identity Card, Carlos Soler Montes, from ELEUK, and Marcelo García, from the Association of Language Centres in Argentina. During the day, a round table discussion was held on current challenges and undetected opportunities, with the participation of experts Francisco Gutiérrez, Daniel Escalona, Guillermo Escribano and David Gómez. Other presentations addressed the strategic importance of Spanish on an international level, the role of public policies and international collaboration.