Tourism employment grows in El Puerto and unemployment in the sector falls

The note specifies the reference year of the figures already published: the 703 contracts and the 1,261 unemployed people correspond to September 2026, and the data on companies and employment (546 companies and 6,027 workers) to August 2026. It also adds a statement by Javier Bello on making these official data available to the public and the business fabric, and another by Olga de Navas in which she points out that having updated and accessible information allows for a more precise analysis of tourism trends and working with objective data to strengthen the sector.

The tourism sector of El Puerto de Santa María closed September with better employment figures than a year earlier. 703 contracts were signed in tourism activities, 13.8% more than in September 2025, and the number of unemployed people linked to this sector fell to 1,261, 14.5% fewer than in the same month of the previous year. The data, from the State Public Employment Service (SEPE), come from the City Council's Tourism Observatory, a tool promoted by the municipal company El Puerto Global.

The Observatory also collects August data on companies and workers, from the General Treasury of Social Security. That month there were 546 companies registered with Social Security linked to tourism and 6,027 people working in the sector. Restaurants account for most of that employment, with 4,369 workers, followed by accommodation services (761) and sports and entertainment activities (729). Of the total, 5,368 are salaried employees and 659 are self-employed.

In August, 97,228 tourists residing in Spain arrived in El Puerto de Santa María, a figure similar to that of recent years, according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE). This statistic measures travel based on mobile phones and counts as tourism any trip with at least one overnight stay outside the place of residence. Andalucía was the autonomous community of origin with the most visitors, with 53,731, followed by the Community of Madrid (20,392) and Extremadura (7,271). By province, Sevilla (38,828), Madrid (20,392), Badajoz (5,508), Córdoba (5,458) and Málaga (4,185) stood out. The Tourism Observatory brings together information on visitors, companies, employment, hiring, unemployment and tourism infrastructure with data from the INE, Social Security and SEPE, and is designed so that citizens, professionals and companies can consult this information in an accessible way. The deputy mayor of Information, Communication and Administrative Simplification and president of El Puerto Global, Javier Bello, has stated that the Observatory allows «going beyond an isolated figure and knowing how tourism evolves from different perspectives, such as employment, companies, hiring or the arrival of visitors». The deputy mayor of Tourism and vice-president of El Puerto Global, Olga de Navas, has highlighted that the September data «show a positive evolution in two especially important indicators».