September is the new high season on the Costa Blanca

The August figures are in, and one number in them caught almost everyone out: Moraira closed the month at 98.9 per cent occupancy. That is higher than Benidorm, higher than Alicante, and the highest in the province. Then August ended and something happened that did not use to happen: it did not empty out. Costa Blanca hotels came in at 88.1 per cent in September, nearly two points above last year. Anyone living here notices it in the supermarket car park. Below are the figures town by town, who is coming, and why the mayors here are now asking for a tourist tax.

The August figures, town by town

APHA, the provincial hotel association, publishes occupancy by town. For August 2026 the list reads like this:

Moraira 98.9 per cent. Playa de San Juan 96.6. El Campello 95.4. Alicante city 95.0. Jávea 93.8. Dénia 93.4. Finestrat 93.0. Santa Pola 92.0. Guardamar del Segura 88.0. And then it drops: Orihuela 67.0, Algorfa 64.0, San Vicente del Raspeig 60.3.

For the province as a whole that works out at 90.6 per cent, four tenths above August 2025 and the best month of the year. Across the whole summer, June to August, the average sits at 88.4 per cent against 86.8 a year earlier.

The striking thing about that list is not the top but the tail. The towns at the top are all on the water and have few rooms; the ones at the bottom are inland. The Costa Blanca is not one destination but two, and the gap between Moraira and Orihuela is thirty percentage points.

The term the industry uses for the top of that list is lleno técnico: technically full. A hundred per cent does not exist. Every hotel has rooms out for maintenance, for a leak, or because a group left a night early. Anything above 95 per cent means in practice there was nothing left to sell.

Benidorm closed the second half of August at 93.7 per cent, against 92 a year earlier. The Costa Blanca excluding Benidorm came in at 91 per cent, a record for that group. Alicante Sur managed 91.1.

And then it did not empty out

The pattern everyone here knows is that the first week of September turns off the tap. German and Dutch families head back for school, the terraces halve, and by October you drive straight through the village.

That pattern no longer holds. Costa Blanca hotels came in at 88.1 per cent in September, nearly two percentage points above the same period in 2025. At the time of that measurement, 82.1 per cent of bookings were already confirmed.

Benidorm went further still: 90.7 per cent of rooms were booked for the first half of September. For the province as a whole, 87.9 per cent was expected.

To put that in proportion: 88.1 per cent in September is only two and a half points below the provincial August figure. The gap between high season and shoulder season has shrunk to something you can still see on a graph but barely in the street.

Alicante city shows the same line across the whole year. June 91.61 per cent against 86.84 in 2025. July 93.62 against 89. August 95.0 against 92.60. Every month better than the year before, and August at a level the industry itself calls technically full.

Within Alicante there is a split between the city and its beaches too. Playa de San Juan, just north of the centre, was at 96.4 per cent in June and 96 in July. That is higher than the city itself in the same months, and it shows the demand concentrating on the water rather than the centre.

Why Moraira and Jávea come out so high

An occupancy near a hundred per cent says something about demand, but just as much about supply. Moraira has few hotel rooms. So does Jávea. Where supply is small it fills faster, and that makes a percentage less impressive than it looks.

The figure still matters, for two reasons. The first is that supply here has barely grown for years while demand has. The second is that the hotel figure counts only hotels. The holiday lets, the apartments and the second homes that supply most of the beds in this corner are not in it. Anyone living on the Montgó knows the crowds do not come out of the hotels.

There is a third reason the number matters, and it is administrative. Councils and the Generalitat steer on hotel figures, because that is what they measure. If Moraira and Jávea are against the ceiling in that statistic while most of the real pressure sits in apartments nobody counts, then policy is being made on a fraction of the problem. That is exactly what the mayors here are pushing on, and we come back to it below.

The star ratings, meanwhile, say something about where the growth is. Three-star hotels jumped from 86 per cent in 2025 to 91.8 in 2026. Four-star hotels stayed around 90. The bottom of the market grew faster than the top.

Who is coming, and how many of them are Dutch

Where guests come from differs sharply between Benidorm and the rest of the coast, and that explains part of the difference in season length.

On the Costa Blanca outside Benidorm, the Spanish market is by far the largest. The United Kingdom supplies around 10 per cent, France 3 per cent, Portugal 2.9 and the Netherlands 2.6 per cent.

Benidorm is different: Spain 36.5 per cent, the United Kingdom 32.5 per cent and Portugal 13.9 per cent. Almost a third British, and that is precisely the market that is not tied to Spanish school holidays and keeps coming through September and October.

That difference in origin explains more than it first appears. Spanish guests travel in a block: the last week of July to the first of September, driven by school holidays and by half of Madrid shutting down in August. British guests travel all year, with a much flatter peak. A destination with a third British guests therefore has a longer season by default than one running two thirds on the Spanish market.

For Dutch and Belgian residents, 2.6 per cent is a small share of a big number. It does not mean there are few of them, it means they rarely sleep in a hotel. They come to their own apartment, to family or to a rented house, and in that statistic they do not appear.

The weather is pushing the season both ways

The explanation you hear most often in the industry is the simplest one: it is still summer here in September and October.

Observers describe it not as a turn away from July and August but as a widening. The temperatures that used to belong to the core months now stretch across May, June, September and October. The result is a longer season with the same peak inside it.

For people living here that is not purely good news. A longer season means busy for longer, waiting at the doctor for longer and the N-332 full for longer. But it also means staff stay employed longer and more businesses stay open through the winter, and in a coastal village that is no small thing.

The caveat the same analysts add: heat alone does not change the model. Labour and contract structures in Spanish hospitality are rigid, and as long as they do not move with it, the season stretches without the business being organised around it.

Fuller does not mean richer

While the occupancy figures were breaking records, the hotel association HOSBEC published a warning that seems to sit at odds with them: more tourists is not more money.

The costs they list are concrete. Energy in Spain became 46.5 per cent more expensive between 2021 and 2026, with electricity up in double digits. Wages rose faster than usual through collective agreements. And on the buying side, inflation on eggs, meat and coffee ran high.

On top of that comes investment pressure. Spanish hotels put 1,077 million euros into their properties in the first half of 2026 alone. A refurbishment costs between 750 and 1,500 euros per square metre, and more than double that at the luxury end.

That cost side is also why a high occupancy figure and a complaining hospitality sector can sit side by side without anyone lying. A hotel that managed 92 per cent last year and 93.7 this year sells one and a half per cent more nights. If the energy bill has climbed by tens of per cent in the same period and staff have become dearer through the collective agreement, that extra one and a half per cent of revenue is eaten long before it reaches the accounts.

So the arithmetic is not that a fuller summer is automatically a better summer. In many cases costs rise as fast as or faster than turnover. That explains why hospitality in the Marina Alta sounded the alarm this year while the terraces were full.

The mayors want a tourist tax

In mid-September the mayors of the Marina Alta put their summer balance on the table and made a demand that is new here: a tourist tax, plus better funding from the Generalitat.

Their argument is not about the tourists but about the bill. Calp has 28,000 residents and goes to more than 150,000 people in summer. The Portal de la Marina shopping centre in Ondara draws 15,000 visitors a day. Councils have to scale up staff, waste collection, water and policing for that peak, and pay for it out of a budget built on the resident count.

Speaking were Rafa Carrió of Dénia, Ana Sala of Calp and José Ramiro of Ondara, among others. Calp receives 200,000 euros a year from the Generalitat, which according to Sala is little against that summer peak. Benidorm could raise up to 26 million euros a year with a tax.

Sala also did the sum from the other side: someone spending a thousand euros on a week away will not notice sixteen euros of tax. The thing the mayors warn about most is not economic but social. If liveability for residents comes under further pressure, resistance to tourism follows by itself, and by then it is too late to arrange anything.

They raised the housing problem too: in healthcare a large share of a salary goes on rent, which makes staff harder to find.

A tourist tax in Spain is not a municipal choice. The power sits with the autonomous region, and the Comunitat Valenciana has so far chosen not to use it. That is precisely why the mayors are going through a joint statement: they cannot introduce one themselves, only ask.

What this means if you live here

Practically, something shifts in your own year, and it is worth doing that deliberately.

The old rule was: wait until mid-September and you have the beach to yourself. That rule is no longer true. At 88 per cent occupancy in September you are still hunting for a spot at the Granadella and the Portitxol, and at weekends there is simply a queue at the barrier.

The new quiet months lie further out. November, January and February are when the coast belongs to residents again. If you want a restaurant without booking or a walk over the Cap de Sant Antoni without oncoming traffic, plan it there now.

The same goes for everything you used to leave until September. The dentist, the garage, the painter: local businesses have diaries that stay full two months longer than they did ten years ago, simply because their customers are still here. If you want something done before Christmas, in this corner you call in October rather than November.

The school run is the second thing you notice. While the coast is full, the N-332 between Jávea and Dénia sits solid in the morning at hours when it used to be clear. Anyone dropping children off and driving on to Ondara or Gata should budget summer travel times in September and October, not winter ones.

For anyone letting a property it works the other way: the rental season is two months longer than it was ten years ago. That is a different yield and a different maintenance schedule.

And a practical one: if you are expecting visitors in September or October and they want a hotel, book it. The days of walking in somewhere in these months are over.

What October will do

There are no occupancy figures for October 2026 at the time of writing. What there is, is last year’s picture, and that is more nuanced than the summer numbers.

In October 2025 Benidorm had 86.4 per cent of beds booked for the first half of the month. The Costa Blanca came in at 77 per cent, six points down on the year before. The extended season did carry through, then, but with less force than in August and September.

That is the pattern to watch. Benidorm holds its occupancy through the autumn, partly through the Imserso programme that brings Spanish pensioners to the coast out of season. The smaller towns of the Marina Alta fall back faster, because their guests more often own a home and are not tied to a hotel programme.

In other words: the shift you see in September is real, but it is not equally strong everywhere. In Benidorm the shoulder season has become a season. In Moraira it is still a shoulder.

There is also something in autumn that the figures do not show but the street does: the weather is unpredictable. October is the wettest month on this coast, with the chance of a gota fría that drops more rain in a day than the whole summer together. A forecast of 80 per cent for October is therefore a more fragile number than 90 per cent for August: one washed-out weekend is all it takes.

Frequently asked questions

Which town was fullest in August? Moraira, at 98.9 per cent. Then Playa de San Juan at 96.6 and El Campello at 95.4.

How full was the province in August? 90.6 per cent, four tenths above August 2025 and the best month of 2026.

And in September? The Costa Blanca came in at 88.1 per cent, nearly two points above 2025. For the province, 87.9 per cent was expected.

How did Benidorm do? 93.7 per cent in the second half of August and 90.7 per cent booked for the first half of September.

Where do the guests come from? On the Costa Blanca outside Benidorm, Spain is by far the largest market, with the UK around 10 per cent, France 3, Portugal 2.9 and the Netherlands 2.6. In Benidorm a third of guests are British.

Does full mean profitable? Not automatically. HOSBEC points to energy up 46.5 per cent between 2021 and 2026, to collectively agreed wage rises and to inflation in purchasing.

Is a tourist tax coming? The mayors of the Marina Alta are asking for one, but nothing has been decided. The power sits with the Generalitat.

When is it still quiet here? November, January and February. September and October are not any more.

Where do these figures come from? From APHA, the provincial hotel association of Alicante, and from HOSBEC via BigDataHOSBEC.

About the authorLeonie

Leonie lives on the Costa Blanca. She writes about daily life on the coast: the markets, the walks and everything you only discover once you actually live here.