As furious locals across the Canary Islands are expected to take their anger to the streets and participate in a march against overtourism on April 20, a leader in the tourism sector has defended it.
Jorge Marichal González, the president of both the hotel employers’ association for the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife – Ashotel – and of the Spanish Confederation of Hotels and Tourist Accommodations, said tourism has become a “scapegoat” for issues being experienced by people living on the Canary Islands.
However, he said the type of tourism represented by his association is not to blame for the lack of housing, strained infrastructure and suffering environment being witnessed in the Canaries.
He told Diario de Avisos: “Let’s also bear in mind that in 2003 we had 1.7 million inhabitants in the Canary Islands and in 2023 we had 2.2 million. That’s 600,000 more people!
“Do you think that the infrastructure, the water pipes, the motorways and roads have grown by 30 percent, that schools, universities and hospitals have grown by 30 percent? They have not. Therefore, we are using tourism as a scapegoat, when in reality, the tourism that I represent, in terms of entrepreneurs, has decreased and the tourists that we receive are practically the same as seven years ago, when we had 15 million tourists, approximately.”
The number of beds in hotel and non-hotel establishments, he also claimed, fell by some 56,000 over the past two years, due to the “residentialisation of tourist complexes”.
However, he added: “On the other hand, however, we have seen an increase of almost 250,000 bed places in holiday homes. At the same time, there has been no growth in public works for social housing, there has been no growth in housing stock because the local councils have not adapted their planning and the results we are seeing are these”.
Mr González also touched upon the allegations, levelled against entrepreneurs among others by the Canary Islands president, that the tourism sector does not distribute wealth in the region.
He replied: “It is true that we are accused of not sharing income, but we have one of the highest-paying collective agreements in the Canary Islands. We are always being blamed for paying too little, but when we compare the collective agreements of the different sectors, the tourism sector is one of the first.”
Without the rise of the tourism sector experienced in the region over the past six decades, the entrepreneur added, the “Canary Islands as we know them today would not be possible”.
While Mr González hit out at local administrations, saying the Canaries have been in need of housing development for years, the president of the Canary Islands government, Fernando Clavijo, sided with protesters and called for a rise in salaries in the tourism sector to “democratise the wealth” it generates.
In a statement to SER Canarias, he claimed “tourism has to be aware that it is our main source of wealth, and being so and earning a lot of money, they [tourism entrepreneur] have to be responsible that this wealth has to be democratised because they are exploiting something that belongs to everyone”.
The official, who had previously called angered locals for calm, said this week it is “important that society goes out and shows its discomfort, because it is a wake-up call for everyone”.”
