Amid rising tensions, thousands of defiant Brits have booked holidays to Tenerife and Lanzarote. British tourists in the Canary Islands have been on edge in recent months due to an influx of holidaymakers and protests from locals over their behaviour.
But package tour company On the Beach has seen sales rise by a third compared with the two weeks before the protests, with bookings already up 18% over 2023, and about 14 million tourists visited last year, 13% up over 2022.
Local resident Samantha Hasara told The Sun: “Lots of people are saying ‘we don’t want any more tourists’ but it’s not about the British because most of the tourists are British and we love the British.”
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Lee Buckingham, who bought a package holiday on April 26, said: “We saw the protests but it didn’t stop us from going – it just reminded us we need to book. We love it here and go almost every year – who can argue with lots of sun, sand and sangria?”
Zoe Harris, from On the Beach, said: “We’ve been analysing booking numbers closely since the protests and it appears that we’ve only seen an uptick in bookings from British people, with thousands of people making concrete holiday plans over the past few weeks.”
“We expect to see an increase in air bookings.” The Canaries’ seven main islands are home to 2.2 million people and are set to welcome around 14 million international tourists in 2023, up 13 percent from the previous year.
In the Canaries, where tourism accounts for 35 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, Andy Ward, director of Tenerife Real Estate Agency, told Sky News that media reports about the “tourists go home” graffiti were “100 times greater than the reality on the ground,” and that there was little visible hostility there.
“The government here has completely ignored this need and instead is selling off the land for more hotels and luxury villas and apartments that locals can’t afford,” he said.
