The volume behind the problem
Spain received 96,770,515 international tourists in 2025, up 3.2% on the year before, according to the INE (provisional FRONTUR figures). By country of residence, the United Kingdom came first with 19.07 million, followed by France (12.80) and Germany (12.02). By destination, Catalonia received 20.06 million, the Balearic Islands 15.71, the Canary Islands 15.69, Andalusia 14.47 and the Valencian Community 12.42.
Two things follow, and both matter to a pharmacy. First, the foreign customer is not an oddity of the Mediterranean coast; in several regions they are a structural part of demand. Second, the main source markets speak English, French and German, but the INE does not say what share of those visitors walk into a pharmacy, and nobody should make that number up. What a given shop earns from tourists is something only that shop knows, from its own till receipts.
What happens to a customer who can't read the shelf
Picture someone with sunburnt skin after a day on the beach, standing in front of a wall of sun creams and after-sun lotions and unable to tell which is which. Or a German father looking for the syrup he gives his child at home and not finding it, because here it has a different name and sometimes a different active ingredient. At that point he either asks, with gestures and a translation app, or leaves with the first thing he understands.
The counter absorbs some of this, but not the self-service shelves. There the customer is on their own, and clear information in their language saves the staff from answering the same question over and over, and the customer from buying the wrong thing.
Multilingual NFC product pages: what they offer and what they don't
The idea is simple. Each shelf label carries an NFC chip; the customer holds their phone against it and a product page opens in their language, with images, directions for use and price. That is the proposition FarmaConnect makes on its website, which speaks of more than 60,000 product pages in 18 languages and no app to install. The figure comes from the product's own site and we have not verified it independently; before relying on it, ask the supplier for the actual list by category.
What a well-made page can do:
- Say what it is and what it is for, without depending on the packaging carrying the customer's language.
- Explain how and how often to use it, which is what people ask most about creams, sun care and travel products.
- Say who it is not suitable for, such as small children or pregnancy, always sourced from the authorised leaflet or the manufacturer's data sheet.
What it cannot do: replace the pharmacist when there is a symptom, an interaction or a question about a medicine. And a practical point that is easy to miss: if the translation is automatic and nobody checks it, a mistake in a warning is worse than having no page at all. That is why the key question for the supplier is who writes, who translates and who reviews.
Categories that sell most in season
There is no reliable public statistic on what tourists buy in pharmacies, so what follows is the reasoning any owner would do, not data.
| Category | Why it matters in a tourist area | What the page should say |
|---|---|---|
| Sun protection and after-sun | Impulse and seasonal purchase, with a lot of brands to choose from | SPF, water resistance, reapplication, sensitive areas |
| Insect bites and repellents | Urgent need on the spot, especially in summer | When to use it, minimum age, application |
| Travel and digestive | Changes of diet and heat | Usual use and signs to seek advice |
| Dermocosmetics | Customer looks for their usual brand and can't find it | Equivalent, composition, skin type |
| First aid | Minor cuts, blisters, mild sprains | What it is for and when to see a doctor |
Brand equivalents: the delicate part
A British or French customer will often ask for the brand they use at home. With cosmetics, offering a comparable alternative is a reasonable sales move. With medicines it is not: the decision to substitute one drug for another belongs to the pharmacist, on the basis of active ingredient, dose and form, and should not be delegated to a label. A product page can say which Spanish product is sold and what it is for, but matching it to a foreign medicine has to be done case by case at the counter.
A prescription from another country
This is a common question. A European ePrescription system (MyHealth@EU, Mi Salud@UE in Spain) allows, between participating countries and regions, a medicine prescribed electronically in the home country to be dispensed at a pharmacy. According to the Ministry of Health, dispensing is only possible in the autonomous communities where the service is available, and not for every product. This affects the counter, not the shelves or the labels, but it is part of serving a foreign customer well. The mechanism does not apply to visitors from outside the EU. Always check the current position with your regional pharmacists' association.
Seasonality and what it means for labels
The tourist peak determines what moves and when. In a seasonal pharmacy, what changes most is the make-up of the shelves: sun care and repellents come in, other lines go out or shrink. Every campaign means rearranging and relabelling. That is where electronic shelf labels save work, as they do in parapharmacy, and where it is worth asking how long it takes to change a whole area overnight.
If the pharmacy is in a city with year-round tourism, the sums are different from those of a coastal village with three months of activity. Comparing urban and rural pharmacies helps put those questions in order. To understand the technology without reference to any supplier, the general guide to what an electronic shelf label is and the entry on NFC explain it from scratch, and the guide to digital signage in pharmacies clarifies what to show and what not to.
How to test without overspending
- Measure first. For two weeks in season, note how many questions in another language the shelves generate and in which categories.
- Start with one area, usually sun care and after-sun, and ask for the pages for those specific products so you can review them yourself.
- Check the text. Have a pharmacist on your team read the pages in a language they command and confirm they match the leaflet or data sheet.
- Put the exit in writing. What happens to the contract if the season is poor.
Who publishes this page
FarmaConnect is a Keonex product, and Keonex also publishes etiquetaselectronicas.io, the electronic shelf label reference cited on this page. The language list for the product sheets, who translates and reviews them, the price and examples from tourist-area pharmacies are not here yet; they will be added once confirmed, with their source.
