The Nerja Cave, from Record to Record

The Cueva de Nerja will reach 20 million visitors this March, since its discovery 66 years ago. It will achieve this milestone after a 2024 that has been marked by record-breaking numbers. In fact, it has just been revealed that this is one of the natural monuments in Europe that has recovered its tourist flow the fastest after the Covid-19 pandemic.

How has such a remarkable recovery been possible? The key lies in the plan to modernize the facilities, as pointed out by both its managers and many tourists who have revisited after many years. The new virtual reality room that allows us, since 2023, to "enter" the High Galleries, simply by sitting in a comfortable chair and following the instructions, is one of the many incentives to return to Maro and enjoy the grandeur of this monumental site.

La Cueva de Nerja will create an immersive center on Prehistory: 'La casa de Pepita'

The cave just closed the year 2024 with a record-breaking total of 530,782 visitors. This means that for the first time, a monthly average of over 44,000 tourists was achieved. To understand the significance of this figure, we need to look at the official numbers from 2018 or 2019, before the pandemic. In the first of those years, the cave received 430,892 tourists (exactly 100,000 fewer than in the past year). And 441,590 were counted in the year before the outbreak of Covid-19.

It is noteworthy that this last number was not reached again until 2023, after the opening of the virtual reality room, which brought the number of visitors up to 488,857. With the arrival of the pandemic, 2020 marked the lowest point of this century with just 149,271. It was a low figure, but it was made possible by efforts to comply with imposed health measures and maintain a significant flow of visitors outside of lockdown dates.

This ability to transform led to nearly doubling that number the following year, in 2021, with fewer mobility restrictions, reaching almost 290,000 tourists, which would increase to 436,107 in 2022. At that point, clear signs of recovery began to emerge, compared to other monuments that remained far from their pre-pandemic numbers.

La Cueva de Nerja celebrates the 66th anniversary of its discovery

The manager of the Cueva de Nerja, José María Domínguez, emphasizes that the year the Covid-19 pandemic hit saw a more than 66% drop in visits compared to 2019. The good news was that by 2022, only 1.5% was needed to achieve full recovery. It is even more remarkable that at this time, the numbers have improved by more than 20% compared to five years ago.

"The strategy carried out to overcome the health crisis was based on four fundamental pillars: a coordinated modernization process, a focus on online sales and safety, the inclusion of additional services with the visit to the cave, and a change in communication strategy," argues this spokesperson for the Fundación Cueva de Nerja.

Domínguez also highlights the association of the Cueva de Nerja brand with the elite sports in the province, through Málaga CF and Unicaja Basketball, as well as the Nerja Athletics Club, and with the character Tadeo Jones, a direct protagonist in the new virtual reality room.