The debate about the quality of tourism and whether the islands are becoming ‘saturated’ is a hot topic at the moment, after the president of the Lanzarote Cabildo publicly stated that their aim was to reduce the number of ‘low quality’ British tourists in favour of ‘higher quality’ European visitors, but now a British woman has caused debate in the UK by posting a video and saying “It’s no surprise that they don’t want us in the Canary Islands.”
Lanzarote is not the only island to study tourism, Tenerife and Gran Canaria have both looked at ‘mass’ tourism questioning whether or not the islands can sustain the volume of visitors to the islands, or whether they need fewer visitors that spend more per head, but Lanzarote is the only one who’ve had someone say it so clearly in public.
However, a British woman who just returned from a two-week holiday in Tenerife has caused controversy on parenting platform Mumsnet, posting pictures and videos of British tourists on the island saying that she "observed some pretty bad behaviour on several occasions from British tourists”.
She explained that the hotel she was staying at "not only had British tourists" but that they were the ones with "unpleasant attitudes and stupid behaviour" that caused any problems.
The woman was very clear with her opinons: “I am not surprised that some islands do not want some tourists who visit the Canary Islands, especially some British. I have just spent two weeks in Tenerife and I observed very unpleasant situations, with very drunk people”.
“It’s the British tourists who caused problems, but it is a resort that is visited by couples, families, and tourists from all over Europe, of many nationalities. It is not a hotel for bachelor and bachelorette parties, but a family hotel, but the ones who were out of order were English”.
She continued by giving some examples: “Drunken young people at dinner time who were shouting and saying many swear words with children in front of them. Girls from a bachelorette party who were dedicated to climbing on the hotel furniture, with a lot of shouting or people who got drunk watching football, shouting and insulting people”.
After its publication on Mumsnet, a significant amount of users have acknowledged and agreed that sometimes it is "very embarrassing”, and sarcastically add that their actions “make you proud to be British”, adding that they even try to find resorts or destinations that a large number of British people don’t go to.
On the other hand, there are thousands that don’t see any problems and claim that “we built their economy” or “without us they wouldn’t have anything” or that “Tenerife is a destination for stag and hen parties", which although that may be true, doesn’t mean the islands don’t want to evolve, or need to evolve as they don’t have the infrastructure to support it.
The other point of view was that of British residents in Tenerife. One of them admitted that: "tourism was greatly missed during the pandemic but people have been different since they started coming back. They have more aggressive attitudes and it’s not what the Island needs. That way of having fun does not boost any economy," he insisted.
CANARIAN WEEKLY SAYS:
Here at Canarian Weekly, having been operating on the island for over 25 years and having staff who have lived here for over 30 years, we fully understand that we need tourism, and support British tourism of all types. But ask yourself how other things have changed in the last 30 years.
Has tourism changed or is it that there are now social media platforms that can show the good and bad very quickly? Is the fact that you are coming on holiday really an excuse to behave in a rude or arrogant manner, or have the resorts got fed up with that now and the younger generation of workers won’t accept it? Can local bars survive by charging a euro for a pint with the same increasing costs that you have in the UK?
The Canarian authorities do want British tourists in the islands, and they do want numbers to boost the economy, however, as a resort, we are open 12 months of the year which has positives and negatives. The positives are obvious, the negatives are that it’s understandable that people involved in tourism and hospitality get tired of dealing with people’s attitudes day in day out, week in week out, and month in month out.
Everyone wants here and everyone wants you to have fun. But fun is one thing, and abuse is something completely different, and abuse is not acceptable.
