Coalición Canaria in the Cabildo of Lanzarote has denounced that the queues that are usually seen at the entrance of the Montañas del Fuego could be reduced "to the minimum" if the measures proposed by the party when it governed were resumed,
"The queues of visitors at the gates of the Montañas del Fuego could have been avoided just by maintaining the measures that we already put in place during our time at the head of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, establishing a tariff discrimination that rewarded those who made the visit in the afternoon, extending the hours and informing operators and tourists," explains the spokesperson for CC in the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés.
The nationalists point out that Lanzarote has been in the news this summer "for the lamentable image of the endless queues of visitors to access the Montañas del Fuego", which they say "has once again highlighted the poor management of the Centers of Art, Culture and Tourism (CACT)". "They have turned an extraordinary experience into a real ordeal, and they have been forced to wait long periods inside their vehicles, also suffering the very high temperatures that we have had on the island during the month of August," denounces the formation, which also points out that it is a fact "that is especially aggravated in the case of visitors who were accompanied by small children".
In this sense, San Ginés has been forceful against the management of the CACT: "They have abandoned tourists to their fate, just to save costs that mask their lack of management capacity, generating work overload, a terrible external image and unnecessary suffering to thousands of visitors."
Coalición Canaria denounces that the truth is that, with the arrival of the current government group, from the current management of the Centers of Art, Culture and Tourism "it was decided not only to eliminate a measure whose effectiveness was proven by raising the price of tickets during peak hours and maintaining it in the afternoon, but they also stopped extending the hours by two hours in summer and carrying out the powerful campaigns informing of the measures and the recommendation to visit them in the afternoon, which has disappeared even from the website of the CACT themselves".
"In short, they neither extended the hours in the afternoon, nor established a differential price, nor informed tourists and tour operators. That's why the queues have returned to Timanfaya," adds San Ginés.
"Indeed, the current management of the centers decided to eliminate the massive information campaigns both in local media, which are prescribers of the CACT measures, including radio stations in English and German, as well as the information campaigns through the employers' association and tour operators with brochures in several languages that were distributed in hotel receptions," they add from CC.
For San Ginés "the queues of hell", as they are already known on social networks, are the result, among other things, of the fact that "the CACT website itself, as of today, does not recommend visiting the centers in the afternoon but in the morning, just the opposite of what its CEO Benjamín Perdomo publicly says".
"Currently, the last visit is established at 3:45 p.m., which means that the center is open until 5 p.m. when in the previous term the hours for visits were until 6 p.m., and in summer until 7 p.m.; which means a reduction of two hours at present compared to 2019," adds San Ginés.
"All this, I know that it was warned by the tourism employers' association that requested the adoption of these measures of proven effectiveness, as well as others of a similar nature in centers such as Cueva de los Verdes, Jardín de Cactus or Mirador del Río, where the hours have not been extended either," the nationalist spokesperson highlighted.
"From Coalición Canaria we hope that they have taken good note and in the future resume the application of the measures they eliminated to face this problem and that had managed to alleviate the queues considerably, as I have no doubt that the workers of the center also know, who have been subjected to a significant overload of work to save costs," concludes San Ginés.
