The Canary Islands hopes to become a "refuge destination" and that tourism will not suffer from the war

The Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce, Yaiza Castilla, declared this Friday that although “all tourist destinations are going to go down” due to the war in Ukraine, it is possible that the archipelago will become a “refuge destination” to which those who spent their vacations in areas closer to the conflict choose to travel.

Yaiza Castilla has pointed out that it is necessary to “wait to see the evolution”, but has insisted that for the moment no cancellations have been detected, in any case postponements, and the increase that occurred in previous weeks is maintained.

“Every week we grow in reservations; this week we have grown 10.8% compared to the previous one”, the counselor assured, despite “the harshness” of the current situation in Europe.

The objective of the Ministry is that the effort made to alleviate the negative effects that the pandemic had on the main economic engine of the islands does not fall on deaf ears now and can benefit “the economy of the Canarians”.

Castilla added that the market diversification strategy continues to work and that countries such as the United States are in the spotlight, which are of interest because they are tourists who spend more at the destination.

Likewise, the counselor has pointed out that “as it could not be otherwise”, all promotions in Russia have been closed, but the rest of the international campaigns launched continue to function normally.

Finally, Castilla has valued as something “positive” that the hotel association has become involved in welcoming Ukrainian refugees who were on vacation in the Canary Islands at the time of the start of the conflict.

In the case of Tenerife, there are 200 Ukrainians hosted in hotels, which shows that the Canary Islands “has a solidarity character” and is “a safe place”.