Good news for Madrid ( and MM´s site I guess ! ) .. This report ( in Spanish ) from a few days ago :

http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/572732/0/record/turismo/madrid/

a very in depth read that steve thanks

ps what does it say?

Billy ... I used the Google translator for this so it may seem a bit strange at times .. But you´ll get the general idea

Record of Tourists in Madrid: 1.4 million visitors and 728,763 overnight stays
In the month of October. It is 10% more than in 2008. Surpassed only by Palma de Mallorca, with 12% more tourists. EUROPA PRESS. 23/11/2009 The city of Madrid beat its record in tourist arrivals last October, with 1.4 million visitors and 728,763 overnight staysThis has allowed cushion the fall in the sector to 3% internual, more than one and a half better than a month ago, the mayor of the capital, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon.

The increase is well above other Spanish cities like Barcelona
Thus, according to data from the Survey of Tourist Movements in Frontera (Frontur) made public Monday by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce of Madrid city received 728,763 visitors in October, 10.1 percent more than in the same month in 2008., "indicating that the shift has further strengthened.

"The increase is very over other Spanish cities like Barcelona (+1.2%) And Seville (+5%). Only Palma de Mallorca overcame Madrid, having received 12% more tourists than the same month last year ", added the first mayor.

Specifically, this increase is due mainly tourists those from abroad, which grew by 15.5% (+3.5 per cent in September), while nationals did by 5.2 percent, which in the opinion of the mayor means that "other countries are moving out of recession and that strength to retrieve and increase the choice of Madrid as a tourist destination.

"That has to encourage us to consolidate our position of the hands of entrepreneurs," he continued Gallardón, for whom the numbers confirm that "Madrid is emerging from the crisis stronger destination absolute leader in Spain by comparing these data with those of other destinations.

He stressed that the capital is also the most visited city in the whole autonomous region, since it suggests an increase of 8.7 percent compared to other cities in the region of Madrid.

More overnight stays

In terms of overnight stays in October amounted to more than 1.4 million stays in hotels, a figure that reflects a year increase of 10.1% and marks an "absolute record in every month of every year" for which data are available, according Gallardón.

In other cities such as Palma de Mallorca this fact, "the most important as entrepreneurs," fell by 17.7%, while Sevilla fell 4.1%, and the national total descent stood at 1, 7 percent. Only the city of Barcelona recorded a rise of almost 10%.

thanks Steve

not bad statistics considering its been a bad year, recession wise,

Madrid is usually first in Spain for visitors year in and out. Spain is second for visitors in the world and Madrid gets about 9M visitors a year.

But as billy the man says, in the current times, this is great news for all concerned parties in the tourist business.

Madrid TravelThink is holding a 1-day conference in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía on 11 December (I'm attending - but now no seats remain) to discuss tourism in Madrid and the different technologies available to better promote Madrid to the world. I look forward to it.

LAST YEAR I wrote a somewhat critical blog post about Madrid TravelThink because they were charging an incredible 75 Euros per person. I argued that the city should open this conference to everyone/anyone to better educate how we can promote the city since it is the city's best interest. But 75 Euros?!?!!? At least they included a nice lunch and coffee breaks. But come on! Charging 75 Euros "in times of crisis" was ridiculous and so I didn't go. Glad they got over that. Surely no one would attend if they'd charged that this year. Or maybe my criticism had some influence? Doubtful.

I'll follow up here after the conference to let you know how it went and, of course, will write a Madrid blog about it too.

Saludos, MadridMan

Sounds VERY interesting !

Hi Pedmar, please let me know your source for the information that Spain is the 2nd in the world for the number of visitors. I want to conduct some research on Madrid and Spain for visitors. I visit Madrid/Spain 4-5 times a year. I appreciate your assistance. Thank you Pedmar

World Tourist Organisation (UN) here
http://www.unwto.org/statistics/index.htm

hope it helps,you can even contact them for more detail info for your project. In the last few years that I have kept track it has been 1 France 2 Spain 3 USA. in number of visitors.

On Friday I attended the 3rd annual Madrid Travelthink conference. "Read all about it" on my blog at http://MadridMan.com/blog-madrid

The "goody bag" they gave all those in attendance included a fat book about Madrid's Gran Vía from the years of 1910-1936. Very interesting, lots of information/history as well as old photos.

Saludos, MadridMan

yep not a good tool for travel huh! and mentioning TA is no help, diluted comments there for years too..... At least the book is nice ::)