FITUR: The Canary Islands hope to see pre-pandemic levels of tourists this year

The Canary Islands Government gave their first press conference yesterday before the start of the FITUR travel fair in Madrid next week, with the Minister of Tourism, Yaiza Castilla, emphasizing that the archipelago expects to see recovery to the tourist levels seen before the pandemic, after the set back of good forecasts due to the impact of the sixth wave of Covid and the Omicron variant.

Castilla said that this wave has been particularly tough as recovery had begun with high levels of arrivals seen from all source markets before this latest setback, and that the Government forecasts are that the islands can reach the pre-pandemic tourist figures in 2022, or approach them as long as “no new problems arise” along the way.

‘Fitur Canarias’ will try to strengthen the main issuing tourist markets for for the islands, which are the Germans and the British, as well as focusing on national tourism from other regions of Spain.

According to Castilla, 1.3 million people visited the islands from the mainland last year, saying "the national market largely alleviated the stoppage suffered by our sector due to the continuous mobility restrictions caused by the pandemic. Together with Canarian residents, they greatly supported the Canarian tourism sector in 2021.”

The Fitur travel fair has aroused great interest from Canarian tour operators and travel companies, and there is a much bigger representation from the archipelago compared to 2021, with 267 companies attending the Ifema fairgrounds as opposed to 159 last year.