Hotel prices at all-time high

The average cost of a night in a Lanzarote hotel reached €120 in 2023, 6.5% more than in the previous year and almost double the average price of €62 ten years ago.

Hotel prices have risen constantly over the years, but the increases have not been steady. An average price of roughly €60 lasted for several years until 2013, when there was a sudden rise of 50% to around €90 a night in just four years. Prices then remained at roughly that level until the pandemic of 2020.

The end of Covid restrictions heralded another sharp rise, with an increase of €30 between 2021 and last year.

The recent price rises are almost certainly driven by the cost-of-living crisis that has affected Europe recently, with hotels having to deal with inflation and high fuel prices. However, they do not appear to have affected the popularity of the hotels. Last year saw an average occupancy rate of 77.4%, the second-highest figure ever recorded.

If you do want to find cheaper hotel rates, then the times to look are in May and June, when average prices are their lowest, and January. September also offers relatively good deals and is one of the favourite months of Lanzarote lovers.

The highest prices, of course, coincide with the summer and Christmas holidays in June, August, and December.

Tourist totals

There are two ways to measure the number of tourists on Lanzarote. One is by counting arrivals at the airport, the other is by counting those who stay in official accommodation.

In 1967, fewer than 10,000 visitors came to Lanzarote. That figure increased a hundredfold by 1991, the year when Lanzarote’s airport registered a million tourists for the first time. Last year, the total reached an all-time record of 3,179,036.

However, the number of tourists registered in hotels and other official accommodation in the same year is around 2.5 million, a total that has barely varied in normal years before and after the pandemic.

This leaves around 600,000 visitors unaccounted for. Many of these will be residents and their family members, who cannot be separated from other arrivals but do not use hotels. However, it is also clear that there is a significant amount of unlicenced, unregistered accommodation on offer.