When in Tenerife covering a huge overtourism protest I saw something that convinced me Brits will not be changing their travel habits any time soon. Throughout my visit, tourists from the UK told me that they sympathised with campaigners but the issue is not unique to the island. Tourism is having negative effects across the world, including in Britain, but it injects vital money into Tenerife’s economy, they claimed. One person, for example, said in the Playa de las Americas, where visitors flock to Irish and Scottish bars, that the area would be a “ghost town” without tourists.
James Nairn, 78, a retired insulation engineer from Liverpool, said the protesters were shooting themselves in the foot. But the most stark image, which to me showed beyond doubt that people will keep coming from the UK in similar numbers, came quite late on, during my last day on the Spanish island. I was speaking to people living in dwellings they had created themselves in the countryside, right next to a new hotel that is still being built. There were also workers using large construction equipment to clear an area next to the sea, apparently for a new resort.
It was a stunning metaphor for activists’ claim that high rents as a result of the tourism industry were making homes too expensive.
We were told that a mix of locals, including some that use them as free holiday homes, and individuals from other countries who had come to the island seeking a different life live in these DIY shelters.
As we drove away from the shanty town, we encountered three people – Greg Robinson, 50, from Hull, and two others, who seemed to be his children – carrying towels and wearing swimming costumes.
They looked to be on their way to the beach, and to get there they were walking along the road, right next to the large site containing makeshift huts.
Speaking to Mr Robinson through our car window, we asked him what he made of the situation on the island, and the protest that had taken place the previous day.
Before being urged to move on by a young woman he was with, he suggested that overtourism was not just an issue in Spain but in the UK as well. Using a local example, he said: “It’s in Whitby”.
The Yorkshireman was not the only one, as a group of Welsh holidaymakers told me the same day that people were buying up property to use as a second home in places like Pembrokeshire.
Brits will keep coming to Tenerife, even if they have to pay more taxes, as they view a high level of tourism as a fact of a existence for a part of the world that people want to come to.
