The President of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, and the Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce, Yaiza Castilla, met this Tuesday with the CEO of Jet2.com and Jet2holidays, Steve Heapy, to share the British tour operator's plans with the Canary Islands and the measures that are being implemented from the islands to guarantee the development of tourist activity in safe conditions, once European markets are allowed to reopen.
The meeting, which was also attended by Janice Mather, Head of Airports and Tourist Organizations; John Taylor, Head of Contracting; and Ricard Querol, General Director of Airports and Tourist Organizations, made it clear that the biggest unknown in the short term, both for operators and for the destination, is when it will be possible to return to normality and the reactivation of the tourism sector. Pending knowing the conditions in which the activity will be recovered, the company has reported that it maintains its planning to start its operations from June 17 on all flights to the rest of the world. As soon as that happens, Steave Heapy was in favor of establishing tests for travelers at the origin, before getting on a plane.
On this issue, the president considers it important that the company guarantees the safety of those who get on their planes because "it is positive for the tourist, for the origin, for the destination, and for the Canary Islands population." In any case, the president pointed out that "in the Canary Islands, we will work on a demanding control, without haste, and that measures will be extreme once tourists are allowed to enter."
Price increase in tickets, estimated at around 33%
The president of the first airline that operates in the Canary Islands from the British market expressed his concern about the consequences that social isolation measures, such as dispensing with seats on airplanes, will have for the travel and vacation sector. In fact, airlines have already estimated that suppressing seats between passengers in aircraft will require a price increase in tickets, estimated at around 33%, given that airline profit margins are below 10% and cannot assume that fact.
Ángel Víctor Torres informed the airline officials of the evolution of the pandemic on the islands. The head of the regional Executive insisted that the Canary Islands has given an effective response from the beginning and that it is currently the region that registers the most favorable data in terms of the control of COVID-19.
In addition, according to the Canary Islands Minister of Tourism, the Canary Islands has "important strengths to speed up the recovery of tourist activity", such as being an isolated archipelago with greater capacity to control epidemics due to its limited access routes, the fact that it is the only medium-distance destination with the capacity to safely open for the next winter season for the European market, and the professional experience and business response capacity of the Canary Islands, as one of the main tourist destinations in the world.
Likewise, and in response to questions from the CEO of the main tour operator in the United Kingdom, the President of the Canary Islands wanted to convey tranquility regarding the plans that are being designed from the regional and central Executive for the tourism industry and that will be complemented with the measures that the European Commission is expected to approve on May 6 specifically for this sector.
Yaiza Castilla also took the opportunity to expose to the top managers of Jet2 the work that has already begun to turn the Canary Islands into a laboratory for redesigning processes throughout the value chain of tourist activity, creating and verifying protocols for each service in order to minimize any risk in order to transmit and guarantee health safety for tourists and residents, and thus be able to plan a prompt and rigorous reopening of the destination.
In addition, as a measure to ensure the entry of income, Jet2 has reported that it has already put on sale the entire summer season of 2021 -until November 14, 2021- and, as they indicated, with very good reception in terms of reservations. However, they clarified that "the same does not happen with tickets for this summer 2020".
Last year Jet2 transferred 1.5 million seats to the Islands. It is the first British airline for the Canary Islands, with its main base in Leeds. It operates from its nine bases in the United Kingdom and Ireland to holiday destinations in the Mediterranean and Central Europe. It started as a low cost model, although little by little it has been developing the tour operator jet2holidays.com in parallel.
Jet2's plans, before the practical paralysis of commercial aviation as a result of COVID-19, pointed to a 22% growth in its places to the Canary Islands for the summer season of 2020.
