The Ministry of Tourism of the Canary Islands had to pull out all the stops last week to prevent Germany from putting the islands on their list of risk areas and advising against travel to the archipelago, which they with Catalonia and Cantabria due to the rise in infections, however, there are many doubts that this will be maintained in future reviews unless the current curve is bent soon.
Contagions on the islands are rampant and the cumulative incidence of the Canary Islands in seven days is double that allowed by the Robert Koch Institute to classify an area as at risk. Yesterday it closed at 103.5 compared to the 50 set by the reference epidemiological centre in Germany.
With regard to the UK, the situation is even worse. The Canary Islands remain on the amber list and everything indicates that the UK Government will allow those vaccinated to travel to areas in amber colour from later in the month without having to quarantine on their return.
However, the tourist sector of the Canary Islands fears that if the cases continue to rise, the islands will be put on their red list in the next few days, which requires quarantine in a government hotel at a cost of £1,750, because an incidence rate of 50 over 14 days is required by the United Kingdom, and the Canary Islands were at 163.2 yesterday and rising.
The president of FEHT, José María Mañaricua, warns that international tourist reservations are stagnant for the summer and that uncertainty continues to be the dominant reason. As he explains, in the case of Germany as in any European country, those who have a test, have had the disease in the last six months or have been vaccinated can travel freely in the Schengen territory. The problem is that only 40% of the population has been vaccinated and hence the number of Germans, Dutch or Belgians on the islands is very small. As for the United Kingdom, Mañaricua indicates that the traffic light system makes tourism impossible. "Now we are in the amber but more than likely when the travel restrictions are lifted we will be in red, and we will continue the same", he said.
Even though some travel platforms such as TravelgateX, which yesterday said that travel reservations to the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands had skyrocketed, after Boris Johnson announced the end of the restrictions for July 19th, Mañaricua and other industry experts are keen to emphasize that this is not true and that reservations from the UK have stopped because the announcement from Boris Johnson has not yet materialized.
In the same sense, the general director of Be Cordial & Resorts, Nicolás Villalobos, says that he considers that British reservations are not moving "because at the moment there is still no certainty. We see that the end of the tunnel is approaching, but we are still in the tunnel," says Villalobos, who, like Mañaricua, believes that there will be no return of foreign tourism in high volumes until October or November.
THE REAL RISK IS NON-COMPLIANCE WITH REGULATIONS
The Ministry of Tourism warns that the "real risk" the Canary Islands have of losing the little foreign tourism that is expected for this summer, is if the public and businesses do not act accordingly and comply with all measures to stop the advance of Covid. “We don't have Brits and the Germans are suspicious and much of our future depends on them. Summer is already going to be difficult and we have to look to October, but many companies will not be able to hold out that long,” they said.
“Going to a red or risk list means a stoppage of trips, but the big problem is the amount of time it takes to recover. We have to act before it happens as it’s too late once it has, as those trips won’t start again for several weeks afterwards. Please act now.”
