The President of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, has announced that the Government of Spain has made official its support for the proposal of the Canary Islands to host the future headquarters of the European Tourism Agency.
Torres has conveyed that the Minister of Tourism, Reyes Maroto, has contacted him in recent hours to inform him that she has sent a statement, in which they officially support the proposal of the Canary Islands, to the Director General of Overseas of France, Sophie Brocas, who is ultimately responsible for preparing the conclusions.
The support for the Canary Islands' candidacy has been endorsed within the framework of the XXVI Conference of Outermost Regions (ORs) in Martinique by the Secretary General for the EU of the Government of Spain, María Lledó, who participated in the working session between the ORs presidents and the representatives of the three States (Spain, France and Portugal).
Torres believes that the Canary Islands' proposal is more than justified "by our infrastructure, our potential for the development of sustainable tourism and for being the European destination with the most overnight stays in the European Union," he pointed out. In addition, the president added, "there are no headquarters of any European agency in the outermost regions and this is an ideal opportunity for that step to be taken."
The head of the Canary Islands Executive highlighted the 15 million tourists that the Canary Islands receives on average per year, and that the average stay is also longer than in any other tourist destination (between 7 and 8 days), "another strong argument." Similarly, he valued the strength of the Canary Islands as a first-class tourist destination "that is recovering in record time, already achieving tourist records that existed before the pandemic."
Torres insisted that the Canary Islands are "more than prepared to host the headquarters of the European Tourism Agency and to host events of international relevance such as the one that will take place in the Islands in December of this year, with the celebration of the Ministerial Conference of Digital Economy of the OECD, which brings together the highest authorities in the field from the 38 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development."
It should be noted that the candidacy of the Canary Islands was proposed in 2021 and was subsequently approved by the Governing Council of the Canary Islands and unanimously supported by the nine outermost regions.
