“The Canary Islands showed in June the dynamism that is specific to the tourism sector, which allows us to confirm a recovery in activity for the first half of the year, already close to 90% of that registered in the pre-Covid period.”
With these words, the Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce of the Government of the Canary Islands, Yaiza Castilla, has assessed the statistics of Frontur Canarias, made public this morning by Istac and in which the arrival of tourists is estimated at 1,105,959 people to the islands during the month of June, just 21,408 less than in the same month of 2019.
Adding these data to the rest of the first six months of the year, a total of 6,666,012 visitors arrived in the Canary Islands in the first semester, 11.3% less than in the same period of 2019.
Despite the difference of around 852,000 fewer tourists between the two periods, the Minister considers that "it is a fact that we should be proud of if we take into account that until the month of March, the tourist activity in the Canary Islands was very low as a result of the restrictive measures applied to the mobility of people due to Covid, some restrictions that were still maintained in the first months of the year, while we must not forget that the winter months are the high season in our archipelago”. Proof that the recovery is gaining strength as the year progresses is the data for June, which represents a recovery percentage already above 98%.
Even so, "The Canary Islands have shown a great capacity for recovery thanks to their image as a safe and reliable destination, above the rest of the Spanish autonomous communities," added Castilla, since together with Catalonia they are the two regions with the highest number of foreign tourists between January and June (5,745,662 Canary Islands and 6 million the Catalan community).
The counselor recalls that, as anticipated, the summer season (understood from April to October) has started with a great commitment by the airlines to the Canary Islands.
The programming of regular air seats to the islands for this period is almost close to 11 million, which represents 9.8% more than in the same seven months of the 2019 summer season.
For the current month of August, according to information from the airlines managed by Turismo de Canarias, the places offered to date are 6% higher than those of August 2019; for September, 8% more and for October, 7% higher.
Yaiza Castilla highlights as important qualitative aspects that "market diversification continues to advance, adding new routes in connection with the Canary Islands", since a total of 17 new routes have been launched this summer.
With these figures published today by Istac, Castilla maintains the forecast for the end of the year in the Canary Islands, with more than 14 million tourists, around 6% less than in 2019, but with a turnover of more than 17 billion euros as a result of higher spending per tourist. This is a higher turnover than that of 2019, although inflation also has to be taken into account.