Hotels, domestic flights, fruit, and eggs: what has increased the most so far this year

Prices rose again in June, after three months of declines, up to 2.3% year-on-year , driven primarily by higher fuel prices, housing costs, and food. But which products and services saw the biggest increases in the first half of the year? According to data published Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE), tourist accommodations led the increases, followed by domestic flights, fresh and refrigerated fruit, and eggs. All of these categories saw accumulated price increases of over 15% between January and June.

Tourism is one of the crown jewels of the Spanish economy. Since the end of the pandemic, things are going well, and prices are following suit. International travel arrivals reached a record high through May, the latest available data, reaching 35 million foreigners for the first time. If this trend continues, Spain could exceed 100 million foreign tourists for the first time for the year as a whole.

This explosion has another side to the coin: this summer's vacations are shaping up to be the most expensive in history. This is suggested by information provided by the statistical institute and corroborated by data from specialized tourism search engines. The cost of flights to domestic beach destinations has skyrocketed, as have hotel prices.

According to the INE (National Institute of Statistics and Census), hotel and guesthouse accommodations are the category that has increased the most in price in the first half of 2025, with a 30.1% increase; domestic flights are in second place, with a cumulative increase of 22.5%. Traveling outside of Spain is already cheaper: international package tours are among the services that have become the most expensive since January in the basket the statistical institute uses to calculate price changes, with a cumulative decrease of more than 4%.

Some basic items that fill the shopping cart have also shown an upward trend in the first six months of this year, confirming the upward trend that groceries in general have been experiencing since the beginning of the year. Fresh and refrigerated fruit has increased by 21.7%; eggs, which already experienced spectacular price increases in the spring —due to high demand and the avian flu in the US and parts of Europe—have accumulated a 15.3% increase. Other items that have seen considerable increases between January and June include coffee (13.9%), chocolate (9.8%), and beef (8%). Jewelry and costume jewelry (13.4%) and private health insurance (10.4%) are also among the top ten items that have increased the most in price up to the sixth month of the year.

In addition to weather factors, harvest-related factors, potential bottlenecks, and rising costs in supply and transportation, regulatory changes have also influenced food price fluctuations. The VAT reduction the government implemented in 2023 for some basic products , aimed at mitigating the impact of the energy crisis caused by the conflict in Ukraine, ended in January after being in effect for two years.

This VAT reduction, approved alongside other relief measures, has benefited products such as bread, eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables, pasta, and olive oil. The latter, a staple in Spaniards' shopping baskets, had experienced skyrocketing prices, with annual increases of over 40%.

Considering these high starting levels, olive oil is the product that has fallen the most in price so far in 2025: 32.1%, according to the INE (National Institute of Statistics and Census). The Ministry of Economy, in an assessment released this Tuesday of the June inflation figure, which it considers positive—noting that it confirms the trend toward price stabilization—highlights the drop in the price of this product. "It has accumulated a 48% drop since the peak reached in April 2024 and is at levels seen more than two years ago," it notes.

Other items that have seen the largest declines in the first six months of the year include fresh and refrigerated fish (-7.1%), other clothing (-10.6%), sugar (-5.9%), liquid fuels (-4.7%), and personal computers (-4.6%).

If we consider the increase recorded in June compared to the same period a year ago, the most marked increases were recorded in jewelry and costume jewelry (22.8%), chocolate (21.6%), coffee (19.8%), other edible oils other than olive oil (18.7%), eggs (18%), beef (14.5%), cocoa and chocolate powder (13.1%), fruit (12.6%), sheep and goat meat (12.2%) and domestic flights (11.9%). On the other hand, the products that have become most expensive are olive oil (-45.7%), sugar (-19.3%), liquid fuels (-12%), gasoline (-12%), mobile phone equipment (-8.4%), personal computers (-7.7%), diesel (-6.2%), equipment for audiovisual reception, recording and reproduction (-5.5%) and games and hobbies (-4.8%).

The government expects inflation to close the year at around 2.4%, close to the European Central Bank's (ECB) medium-term benchmark of 2%. The Bank of Spain has the same forecast, in line with the Funcas analysis center, which warns, however, of the upside risks posed by tensions in the Middle East : if the conflict escalates, the price of crude oil would rebound and the average inflation rate could reach 2.8% for the year.