Tourist Numbers Tumble In Canary Islands

The current pain in Spain´s tourist industry continued in the Canary Islands last month. As tourist arrivals to this key holiday destination and former property investment hot spot continued to drop dramatically.  According to new figures just released by the Spanish airport operators AENA.

Worst hit was Lanzarote – the eastern most link in the Canary Island chain.  Which last year welcomed just over 1.5 million foreign tourists.  A figure that will clearly not be matched this year according to AENA´s latest statistics.  Which indicate that arrivals fell by nearly 20% last month.  Dropping from 169,065 in March 2008 to 135,663 – a decrease of 19.75%. 

To some extent these figures are slightly skewed by the fact that Easter fell in March last year.  But this cannot hide the fact that the number of tourists arriving on flights to Lanzarote fell by a total of 17.36% during the first quarter of 2009.  The largest percentage fall of any of the seven Canary Islands, according to figures from both AENA and the Canarian Government Tourist Board.

Of the other islands in the archipelago Gran Canaria has been the least affected to date – with first quarter arrivals down by 11.55%.  Followed by La Palma (down 12.9%), Tenerife (16.19%) and Fuerteventura (16.28%). 

The larger percentage falls on Lanzarote can partly be explained by the fact that the island has traditionally been reliant on the UK market for visitor numbers.  Last year alone for example British arrivals accounted for around 60% of Lanzarote´s 1.5 million tourist visits.  The islands biggest market by far.

However, now that the credit crunch has combined with the deprecation of sterling against the euro to make European travel that much more expensive arrivals from the UK are tumbling.  With AENA´s figures revealing that the number of British tourists visiting the island dropped from 82,940 in March 2008 to 66,239 last month.  With first quarter figures now showing a cumulative fall in UK arrivals of 19.31%. 

By comparison, tourist numbers from other key markets such as Germany (Lanzarote´s second largest) and Eire (the third largest) fell by 13.95% and 10.87% respectively across this same first quarter period.

Tourism is Lanzarote´s key economic activity – accounting for around 85% of total island GDP.  So the current decline in visitor numbers is having an inevitable knock on effect across virtually all sectors of Lanzarote´s economy.  With hotels in Lanzarote reporting double digit drops in occupancy levels.  Whilst the Lanzarote property market remains largely becalmed.