The Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, through the Secretary of State for Tourism, has approved the financing of the Lanzarote Tourism Sustainability Plan, called 'Lanzarote, the energy of the volcano', channeled through the Ministry of Tourism, Industry and Commerce of the Government of the Canary Islands and proposed by the Island Council, as announced this Wednesday at the meeting of the Sector Conference attended by representatives of the different autonomous communities in the field of tourism.
The Secretary of State for Tourism has chosen this plan from among the 42 plans proposed by the Canary Islands to the Program of Tourism Sustainability Plans in Destination in its ordinary call of 2021, of which 27 belonged to the category of rural destination; 10, to the category of sun and beach and 5 urban.
The Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce of the Government of the Canary Islands, Yaiza Castilla, will propose that the 41 plans not selected have a new opportunity to access co-financing, and therefore to their execution, through what they call the Tourism Sustainability Strategy in Destination that the Ministry has also planned for this year and that was approved today.
The Lanzarote plan has a total budget of five million euros, of which the State will contribute 1.6 million, another equal amount from Tourism of the Canary Islands and the rest will be borne by the Cabildo of Lanzarote, an entity that will be responsible for executing it within a period of three years.
The Lanzarote Tourism Sustainability Plan includes a set of proposals to improve the complementary offer that, according to the Canarian Government, "will add value to urban environments and nuclei linked to sun and beach tourism, while directly supporting entrepreneurs through training, advice and the promotion of entrepreneurship".
In this way, according to Yaiza Castilla, "a strengthening of the destination will be achieved, resulting in a competitive improvement of the offer, in general, and that will be an impulse for the tourist take-off of the island after the crisis derived from the pandemic".
New models of tourism development
As explained by the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Teresa Berástegui, who participated in the Sector Conference, "the approved document reflects the implementation of initiatives to improve quality at the destination, actions in the urban space, consultancies for innovation and the quality of the complementary offer, a business training program, the development of the smart-city system, and a business communication and revitalization plan". In this sense, she stressed the importance of focusing on the sustainability of the destination, innovation and quality.
Tourism sustainability plans seek new models of tourism development from sustainability with approaches that include the best use of resources, the creation of new products and the improvement of the quality and competitiveness of the destination.
In total, this year the autonomous communities, except Navarra, Basque Country and Catalonia, have submitted 301 projects, twice as many as in 2020. Of these, the Secretary of State for Tourism, depending on the budget, has proposed the financing of at least one plan for each community. The total budget allocated to this call has been 23,230,000 euros.
