The Canary Islands want to be Europe's base destination for working remotely
The Minister of Tourism of the Canary Government, Yaiza Castilla, has told the president of the global ‘Wifi Tribe’ community, Diego Bejarano, that the Canary Islands aspires to become a base destination in Europe for those who travel and work, or want to settle for a long season and work remotely.
The Ministry of Tourism explains in a statement that ‘Wifi Tribe’ has more than 900 members of 63 nationalities and is present in 75 destinations around the world, and adds that the meeting has been to study collaboration projects that place the Canary archipelago as a point of reference for that customer segment.
The meeting was also attended by the real estate director Gabriela Larenas, and the director of Marketing Communication Projects of Promotur Turismo de Canarias, Alberto Ávila.
Climate, time zone, infrastructure, broadband, nature, and health security are the main values that those responsible for ‘Wifi Tribe’ highlight of the Canary Islands when it comes to being chosen as a destination for teleworkers, especially North Americans, it says in the statement.
In addition, according to the Ministry of Tourism, Bejarano said that the Canary Islands "is arriving before other destinations in the world in terms of promoting itself among this segment of clients, whose average salary is somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 dollars a year, and the expenditure in destination is wide since the stays can be up to 3 months.”
Yaiza Castilla highlighted that Turismo de Canarias has launched an action plan with an initial budget of 500,000 euros with which it is intended to reach this category of travellers to be a reference destination, gaining positions compared to other destinations in the world.
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Castilla added that “The Canary Islands can be and will be the place in Europe that captures this category of tourists, for which we are making a decisive commitment to a target audience that is characterized by being little permeable to classical advertising, which requires a different marketing strategy.”
The Ministry of Tourism explains that, according to Eurostat data, in 2019 5.4% of the active population of Europeans teleworked, and the countries with the highest number of remote workers are the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Switzerland, France, Ireland, Austria and Estonia.
A high percentage of them choose this system to reconcile work and family life, although not all are willing to leave their habitual residence, especially in the case of households made up of adults with children, which account for almost half of teleworkers in the eurozone.
The motivation of this group is mainly to travel and see new places, and even to enter the life of the communities they visit, while telecommuting thanks to the freedom that technology offers them.
They are defined by having qualified professions in which their geographical location does not limit them, and although freelancers predominate, more and more those who work for others are joining, yes, with a dynamic and unpredictable work trajectory. In addition, they value quality of life, free time, flexible hours and are totally dependent on high-speed internet.