The United Kingdom has revised its list of safe destinations this Thursday and has included the Balearic Islands but has left out the Canary Islands, as was foreseeable given the current incidence figures of Covid-19 in this archipelago. In fact, the Canary Islands are among the four communities with the worst data in Spain; and 13 points above the national average, dragged down by the data from Tenerife. At the opposite extreme is the Balearic Islands, which this Thursday is the second community with the lowest incidence, with almost half the cases per inhabitant than the Canary Islands.
"It is a significant stain on the good image of the islands as a safe destination that has been reaped for more than a year," lamented the Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce of the Government of the Canary Islands, Yaiza Castilla, who warned that this decision by the United Kingdom may extend to other countries "if we do not control the pandemic." Until now, the Canary Islands had fought to receive differentiated treatment from the rest of Spain in the green lists of issuing destinations, but now its figures are worse than those of most of the country.
For this reason, Yaiza Castilla has made a call "to the individual responsibility of all Canary Islanders to strictly comply with health measures and be able to join the green list as soon as possible." "It is very frustrating that after all the effort that the sector and workers have made for more than a year, the behavior of some means that we cannot reactivate the economy and compromise the economic and social recovery of the archipelago," added the Minister.
However, the Minister highlighted as positive the fact that for the first time the United Kingdom distinguishes the island territories from the mainland territory. "It is true that they keep us on the amber list of territories, but we have managed to separate ourselves from the peninsular territory, which makes it easier for us to access the green list once we lower the epidemiological index of the entire autonomous community," she explains, while expressing confidence that with the effort of the entire population, the Canary Islands can improve their data. "We have achieved it on other occasions and I sincerely believe that we can also achieve it this time," she said.
The Minister recalled that the United Kingdom is the main source market for tourists arriving in the Canary Islands, with almost 5 million in 2019, which represents a third of the number of tourists who visited the Canary Islands that year.
However, it has been the pandemic and travel restrictions that have placed the United Kingdom at the bottom of the list of source markets for the Canary Islands. Since the opening of borders in July of last year until April 2021 (latest data available from Frontur), the contribution of the British source market has been 14%, due to the successive changes in the health classification of the United Kingdom, Spain and the islands, which has led to openings and closures of tourist flows to the Canary Islands. Moreover, so far in 2021, the share of Britons in the Canary Islands has been 1.7%.
"They have practically disappeared from our beaches and there is not enough volume of tourists from other markets to replace them in the short term," she warned.
