The tourism sector in Spain is showing some optimism about the prospects for the Canary Islands as regards the up-coming season after considering the results of the first few weeks of the summer campaign. There has been an increase both in the number of airline seats sold to the islands and in the sales of vacation packages with the major tour operators from Spain and abroad over the next few months.

The president of the hotel association in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Ashotel), José Fernando Cabrera, stated that “in general the Canaries could increase their occupancy levels by some 10% compared to last summer and Tenerife hotels would probably slightly exceed the overall average of the Canary Islands, with an expected increase of 12%. For the first time since 2008 in this quarter we will improve visitor numbers and hotel occupancy rates.  By the end of the summer season in Spain occupation rates could be as high as 70% in the Canary Islands and 72% in Tenerife. Tenerife is the island that receives most guests from outside Spain, as confirmed by data provided by Thomas Cook in relation to the British market, in addition to information from other tour operators working with the German market”.

Cabrera considers that “we in Spain must seize this moment to start the long-awaited recovery in this sector.  If we keep these occupancy levels during the winter we could close 2010 with an increase of 5% or 6% above last year’s index when we barely reached 54% occupancy, making it the worst year ever”.

However, these encouraging omens contrast with the pessimistic figures recently released by the Institute of Statistics of the Canary Islands (ISTAC).  According to a survey carried out by this body in relation to hotel expectations for the third quarter of the year, hotel occupation levels will not exceed an average of 68% in any of the Canary Islands during the summer months. As with the rest of the hotels in Spain, August would be the busiest month with 67.36% occupancy, followed by July with 62.43% and finally, in September there will be 61.07% occupancy in most hotels. These percentages would improve a few tenths in the case of 4 and 5 star establishments, but neither would reach 70% occupancy in any month.

Broken down by individual islands, the hotels in Tenerife expect to cover 61.67% of their vacancies in August, while in July they will reach 57.65% and 57.52% in September. According to this survey 1 and 3 star hotels will not get an occupancy rate of 45% throughout the whole summer. However, the Minister of Tourism of the regional government in the Canary islands, Rita Martín, considers that the increase in occupancy levels which started early this year will continue, and it was only interrupted in April, following the closure of airspace over Spain due the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud. She stated that the report provided by ISTAC is based on the results of a survey which was carried out at a time when the situation was very difficult all over Spain.  The passenger data received for May showed a recovery of 9% compared with the same month in 2009.