Spanish pensioners in particular are discovering how cheap a holiday on the costa can be and are coming to the rescue of struggling resorts

Spain is looking to itself to save the struggling tourist industry. The 10m fewer trips made by the British last year are being offset by an only slightly lower number of "staycationing" Spaniards who are taking their holidays at home.

Spanish pensioners in particular are discovering how cheap a holiday on the costa can be and are coming to the rescue of struggling resorts such as Benidorm. The Costa Blanca region is Spain's biggest holiday destination after Madrid and Barcelona, with over 2 million visitors a year, roughly 40% of them British. But last year visitor numbers fell by 250,000 visitors, a drop of 14%, much of which has been blamed on a weak pound. Overall the Costa Blanca saw a fall in tourist income of around €700m (£595m) last year.

In May, hotels reported a rise in occupation levels, admittedly barely half a percentage point, but 50% of the occupants were Spanish, while the bulk of the other half were British, a further sign that Spaniards, even more cash-strapped than the Brits, are coming to the rescue.

A similar pattern is emerging in Barcelona, where tourism numbers also slumped last year. Visitors were up 12% in the first three months of this year and credit card spending, which was down 4.3% for the same period last year, rose by nearly 17%. For several years the city has been trying to attract "quality" tourists, amid fears that cheap flights were turning it into a giant beach resort. The figures suggest that Spaniards, who represent over a third of visitors, might be spending money in the city they would otherwise have spent on flights abroad.

Federico Millet, a representative of restaurateurs in Gandia, Valencia, said: "We have to see the crisis as an opportunity. The difficulties people face in travelling abroad means that second homes are more likely to be occupied by Spanish tourists, people who live in the interior."

There is no question that the Spanish tourist industry has been hit hard by the recession – last year tourism was 10% down on 2008 – but authorities are keen to put a positive gloss on the industry, which is a relative bright spot compared with Spain's credit-crunched property and banking sectors.

Spanish government figures show that tourism last May was up 1.1% on the same month in 2009 – despite the Icelandic volcano – and spending that month was 4% higher.

Even Benidorm is not sitting on its hands, having launched a €200,000 initiative with Air Berlin to attract more Germans to the resort to make up for the missing Brits.

Yet the long-term trend in package-holiday tourism is working against Spain.

Goldtrail specialised in bargain package holidays to increasingly popular Turkish resorts such as Marmaris and Bodrum. Alongside package resorts in Egypt such destinations have seen a rush of British tourists in recent years, initially driven by the weakening pound against the euro.

In contrast, many operators have heavily cut back on package holiday capacity in the already low-margin traditional Mediterranean resorts, particularly the Spanish costas.