Nerja sells one night in three outside a hotel. Torremolinos sells one in eight. Both figures come from the same source and the same twelve months, and they describe two accommodation models sharing one stretch of coast.
Which Malaga destination relies most on holiday apartments? Nerja, with 34.2 per cent of its registered overnight stays in a tourist apartment rather than a hotel, on INE figures. The least reliant is Torremolinos at 11.8 per cent. Malaga city sits between them, on 27.7 per cent and 1,444,461 apartment nights in twelve months.
Spain’s Instituto Nacional de Estadística runs two separate surveys, one for hotel establishments and one for tourist apartments, each broken down by tourist point, and 6 points in Malaga province carry both series in full. Crossing them gives 34.2 per cent for Nerja against 11.8 per cent for Torremolinos, with the capital between them at 27.7 per cent and 1,444,461 nights of apartment in twelve months. Added together, the biggest destination in the province stops being Málaga.
What these numbers do and do not cover
Spain’s Instituto Nacional de Estadística runs two separate surveys, one for hotel establishments and one for tourist apartments, each broken down by tourist point. Six points in Malaga province carry both series in full.
The crossing matters because neither survey says on its own how much of a destination’s registered accommodation is not a hotel. Ranked by apartment nights alone, the order is not the one the percentages give.
One limit is worth stating before the table. These figures do not cover every holiday let: the apartment survey captures registered establishments within its sample, not the full stock of homes carrying a VUT code, whose registration and current suspension are covered in Malaga tourist apartment rules.
| Destination | Apartment nights | Apartment share |
|---|---|---|
| Malaga city | 1,444,461 nights | 27.7 per cent |
| Marbella | 778,027 nights | 23.1 per cent |
| Torremolinos | 743,407 nights | 11.8 per cent |
| Mijas | 713,414 nights | no hotel series |
| Benalmádena | 583,504 nights | 13.3 per cent |
| Nerja | 490,031 nights | 34.2 per cent |
| Fuengirola | 393,874 nights | 13.2 per cent |
The two extremes sit 40 kilometres apart
Nerja is the most apartment-dependent of the six: 490,031 nights against 940,942 in hotels, a 34.2 per cent share of its registered total.
Torremolinos inverts it. Its apartments sell 743,407 nights, more in absolute terms than Nerja’s, yet the share falls to 11.8 per cent because its hotel stock is so large.
The gap is 22.4 points, close to three times. It explains why an argument about holiday flats sounds different in each town on the same coast: in Nerja it touches a third of registered beds, in Torremolinos an eighth.
Only one of the two surveys covers Mijas
Mijas shows up in the apartment survey with 713,414 overnight stays and carries no hotel series of its own among the tourist points the INE publishes.
That is not evidence that the municipality lacks hotels. The institute publishes a point series only when its sampling and statistical-secrecy criteria are met, so a missing series is a statistical decision rather than a portrait of a town.
Mijas therefore stays out of the percentage comparisons, although its 713,414 apartment nights would place it fourth on absolute volume. What is documented there, including the 80-kilo donkey-taxi load limit, is covered in Mijas Pueblo.
Malaga city sells more than one night in four outside hotels
Malaga city records 1,444,461 apartment nights, the highest absolute figure in the province, against 3,777,147 in hotels. Apartments carry 27.7 per cent of the total.
That places the city closer to Nerja than to the large hotel resorts on its own coast, despite holding the biggest bed stock in the province.
It is the backdrop to the municipal decision to suspend new tourist-home registrations from August 2025, and to what a visitor notices when booking, a district-by-district split set out in where to stay in Malaga.
How far this count reaches
The series runs July 2025 to June 2026, twelve complete months, crossing the INE’s hotel occupancy and tourist apartment occupancy surveys, both by tourist point.
It covers registered accommodation only. Private lettings, second homes and the part of the holiday-home stock outside the apartment sample are excluded, and on this coast that is a substantial share. These are figures for the registered market, not for total tourist pressure.
The INE also warns that, because of directory updates, figures from different years are not directly comparable. The month-by-month picture is in when Malaga is busiest, the destination ranking on hotel figures alone is in which Costa del Sol resort gets the most visitors, and moving between them is in getting around Malaga.
Frequently asked questions about holiday apartments in Malaga
Which Malaga destination relies most on holiday apartments?
Nerja, where 34.2 per cent of registered overnight stays happen in a tourist apartment rather than a hotel, on INE figures. The least reliant is Torremolinos, at 11.8 per cent, close to three times lower.
Do these figures cover every holiday let?
No. The INE surveys registered tourist apartments and hotel establishments, not the whole stock of homes let to visitors. The real number of beds on this coast is higher than these figures show.
How many apartment nights does Malaga city sell?
1,444,461 overnight stays across twelve months against 3,777,147 in hotels, which is 27.7 per cent of the city’s registered total, or slightly more than one night in four.
One night in three in Nerja, one in eight in Torremolinos. Same coast, different business.