Shoulder Season in Spain: September and October Now Take 14% of Holiday Bookings
September accounts for 9.2% of all holiday bookings in Spain and October for 4.7%, according to Destinia and ObservaTUR data published on 29 August 2026. Together the two shoulder months take almost 14% of the year, against roughly 9% seven years ago.
How much of Spain's holiday booking volume falls in September and October?
Destinia and ObservaTUR published a breakdown of Spanish holiday bookings by month on 29 August 2026. September now takes 9.2% of the annual total, up from 8.6% in 2025 and 7.4% in 2019. October takes 4.7%, against 3.4% in 2025 and 2% in 2019. The two months combined hold almost 14% of the year's bookings, where seven years earlier they held around 9%.
| Share of annual holiday bookings | 2019 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| September | 7.4% | 8.6% | 9.2% |
| October | 2% | 3.4% | 4.7% |
| September and October combined | ≈9% | 12% | ≈14% |
The direction matters more than any single figure. October has more than doubled its share of the Spanish holiday year since 2019 and is still moving. For an owner this is close to one booking in seven arriving in a window many properties still treat as the end of the year.
Why is the Spanish season stretching into autumn?
Two forces are pulling bookings out of July and August, and they work on different groups of travellers. One is price. The other is who is travelling once the school year has started.
- Price. Winter rates in Spain run 22% to 33% below summer rates depending on the accommodation category. The same trip costs materially less in the shoulder and cold months, and the gap is wide enough to move discretionary travel dates.
- Traveller profile. Among Spaniards who take a holiday, 17% take it in September. Among those aged 65 to 74 the share rises to 20%; among those under 35 it falls to 13%. The quiet season is filled by people who are not tied to the school calendar.
- Consequence for demand. A shoulder-season guest is therefore, on average, older, more price-aware and more flexible on dates than a July guest — and less likely to be travelling with children.
Is Spain less seasonal than the rest of the Mediterranean?
Yes, and by a wide margin. According to Data Appeal and Mabrian, Spain is the least seasonal market in the Mediterranean: 52.8% of its demand falls in the May-to-September window. Italy concentrates 58.7% of demand in the same five months, Greece 72.9% and Croatia 79.1%.
The comparison sets expectations. In Croatia, where roughly four fifths of demand lands in five months, closing a property outside the season is a defensible decision. In Spain, where slightly more than half of demand falls inside that window, the other 47.2% of the year is a real market, not a residual.
What do forward bookings and flights show for autumn 2026?
Air capacity is scheduled ahead of demand, which makes it the earliest available signal. Turespaña reports more than 13 million airline seats scheduled into Spain for September 2026, an increase of 7.4% year on year. The United Kingdom as a departure market adds 8.7%. For the October-to-December window, scheduled capacity adds a further 5.4%.
Forward bookings point the same way. AirDNA data for Europe shows demand for September 2026 running 6.9% above the previous year, with an average daily rate of €152.34, up 12.9%. For October 2026, demand is 6% higher and the average daily rate is €148.58, up 14.3%.
The rate movement is the part owners tend to miss. In both months the average daily rate is rising faster than demand — 12.9% against 6.9% in September, 14.3% against 6% in October. Autumn is not filling up with discounted stays.
What does the shoulder season look like on the Costa Blanca?
Benidorm is the clearest case in Spain of a coastal market that has already lost its off season. Hotel occupancy in the municipality was 64.6% in January 2026, 92.1% in the second half of July and 93.1% in the first half of August, according to the regional hotel association HOSBEC — an annual spread of under 30 percentage points, one of the narrowest on the Spanish coast.
The winter guest mix is different from the summer one. In the winter months the British and Spanish domestic markets each account for roughly 40% of Benidorm's demand. Foreign visitors to the Valencian Community stay an average of 9.9 nights against 7.2 nights nationally, according to INE's Egatur survey, so the winter guest arrives for longer and behaves less like a beach holidaymaker.
Summer volume on the coast is substantial too: Costa Blanca apartments recorded more than 1.2 million overnight stays in July 2026, and Valencian Community hotels posted the largest price increase in Spain that month, 9.8% against a national average of 5.9%, according to INE. In early September 2026 the tourism councillor for the city of Alicante put it plainly: it is no longer possible to speak of a high, mid and low season.
One caveat belongs here. Part of the Costa Blanca's winter base is Imserso, the state social-tourism scheme for older travellers that supports coastal occupancy in the cold months. The 2026-2027 season opened with 879,213 places, of which 440,284 are on the mainland coast. The regional hotel association has warned that a growing number of hotels may not renew their participation while rates stay frozen and costs rise. The scheme concerns hotels rather than rental homes directly, but it shapes the winter flow along the coast: the winter base is real and measurable, not guaranteed.
What should an owner recalculate before this winter?
Across Spain, short-term rentals averaged 60% occupancy, an average daily rate of €125 and RevPAR of €77 in the 2025-26 cycle, according to PriceLabs. Within the same data, properties using dynamic pricing returned RevPAR of €117 while properties on static rates returned €39.
- Do not close the property for winter out of habit. Calculate the winter net: revenue at winter rates minus heating, cleaning and management, against the cost of leaving it empty. Closing removes the whole month, not the summer-to-winter difference.
- Build a separate rate grid for September and October. These months are neither summer nor winter. European average daily rates for them are rising 12.9% and 14.3% year on year, which a summer grid discounted by a fixed percentage will not capture.
- Rewrite the listing for a different guest. The winter visitor stays longer — 9.9 nights on average in the Valencian Community — and cares about heating, internet speed and distance to shops, transport and medical services rather than the beach.
- Review the minimum stay. Long bookings in the shoulder and winter months are worth more than a sequence of short ones: fewer changeovers, lower cleaning cost, less empty time between guests.
- Move to dynamic pricing before the shoulder months, not during them. The €117 against €39 RevPAR difference in the PriceLabs cycle is realised through rates set in advance, not corrected after a month has emptied.
The underlying change is that a Costa Blanca portfolio is turning from a seasonal business into a year-round one. A property closed for winter is not losing a low season — it is losing close to a quarter of its annual revenue in months where rates are rising faster than in summer. The caution runs the other way too: the winter base rests partly on flows that are not guaranteed, so it should be tested with a season's own numbers rather than assumed.