Tourists not welcome? Of course they are!

Tenerife has hit the headlines in the UK recently for apparently “waging war on British tourists”, according to one tabloid newspaper, with graffiti popping up in areas of the south with slogans such as “My misery your paradise” and “tourists go home!” However, despite this pocket of hostility, this columnist believes the entire situation is being misread by almost all parties.

Firstly, the British press - ever the victims - seem to think the local’s frustration is directed only at British tourists, like some kind of reverse British exceptionalism.

Of course, the graffiti appears to be aimed at tourists, regardless of where the visitor may be from, and it’s understandable that some people would perceive this, but their frustrations are primarily with the government who have let this situation happen, highlighted by the protests taking place in Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, and Fuerteventura on April 20^th.

Secondly, while there are some fair points raised by the wannabe Banksies, they’re missing the bigger picture. They correctly point out that the cost of living and accommodation has gone up disproportionately to income, and that there’s a shortage of residential housing due to the rapid emergence of Airbnb style accommodation known as VVs (Vivienda Vacacional).

They also point out that the wages over here are low; usually coming away with 1,350 euros once the deductions for social security and tax have come off their gross pay of around 2,100 euros per month.

But while the above is all true, creating a toxic environment for tourists is not the answer.

Thankfully most of the residents in Tenerife realise that tourism is the lifeblood of the island, and similarly, most tourists will realise that these protests are by a tiny minority of people.

There are two factors that can help ease the situation:

1. Creation of more residential housing either by building more and not allowing it to become VV accommodation, and, or rescinding the current VV licences and offering tax incentives for owners to return to long term leasing, and protecting owners better from squatters.

2. The removal of some of the taxes from workers’ pay packets.

Rather than paying for health care by taxing the workers to the hilt, if the Spanish and Canarian governments worked together to tax the hotel industry a little more, it could afford to take less off workers gross pay instead.

For example, all companies in the Canaries can take advantage of a scheme called RIC. In short terms, this is essentially a way of swapping paying tax in favour of re-investing in your business over a five-year period. Companies can ‘roll over’ their tax and spend the money on tangible assets to avoid paying tax.

This means hotels will carry out renovations, replace all their TVs or sunbeds etc, instead of paying tax, which is a good way of keeping the standards up for tourists, but doesn’t help the people who work there.

I’m not suggesting it be stopped completely, but when a small aparthotel decides to not pay their €250,000 tax bill and only pay €25,000 and ‘rolls over’ the rest in return for promising to spend it on improvements over the next 5 years… and meanwhile a worker on the minimum wage pays almost half that amount from their wages (€8,500 a year), something is clearly wrong and it is easy to see why people are upset with their conditions.

However, the target of the frustration should not be the tourists themselves, after all they are the biggest source of income for Tenerife and all of the Canary Islands, and if it weren’t for them unemployment would be much higher compounding the misery of these angry protestors further.

After all, once all the tourists have gone and there’s more living accommodation available - what good is it if you don’t have a job to pay your new lower rent?

Instead of telling tourists to go home - we should all be welcoming them, but pushing the powers that be to stop giving hotel chains massive tax breaks and taxing the workers so much, as ultimately, they will spend the extra in the local economy and not take it out of the islands as most of the big hotel chains do!