The alert level 4 in which Lanzarote was during the entire month of February did not prevent tourists from continuing to arrive on the island, although the reduction was 95% compared to the same month of the previous year. In total, 10,908 people stayed in hotels and non-hotel establishments on the island in February, compared to 228,757 in the same month of 2020, according to information compiled by the Cabildo Data Center.
The figure also represented a reduction of more than half compared to January of this year, when 22,251 tourists stayed in Lanzarote. It was in the middle of that month when Lanzarote began to climb in its alert level, going from level 1 to level 4 in two weeks. And this caused several establishments to decide to close their doors.
Of the approximately 260 hotel and non-hotel establishments on the island, only 114 were operating in January and in February the number dropped to 94. In total, in February, 32 hotels out of the 78 in Lanzarote and 62 non-hotel complexes out of the 182 that were open just a year ago, before the pandemic was declared, remained open. Compared to the previous month, nine more hotels and 10 more non-hotel establishments closed in February.
In terms of places, this meant that in February there were 22,572 on offer on the island, compared to 33,498 in January and 71,307 in February 2020. And the occupancy they had did not reach 14%. Specifically, it stood at 13.79% of rooms or apartments (11.1% of beds), compared to 12.13% in January 2021 and 79.80% in February 2020.
Those 114 establishments that remained open in February took in a total of 2,388,752 euros, again with a decrease compared to the previous month of almost one million euros, although distributed among fewer hotels and apartment hotels. A year ago, with all establishments open, the sector's income was more than 57.8 million euros, which was a figure that had been reached and even exceeded every month.
In addition to occupancy, the crisis has also lowered prices. A year ago, the average rate in Lanzarote was 85.94 euros (100 euros in hotels and 63 in non-hotel establishments), and in February it was 63.13 euros (70 in hotels and 46 in non-hotel establishments).
