Between 6,000 and 8,000 tourists did not arrive in Lanzarote between Friday and Saturday as a result of the wildcat strike by air traffic controllers. This was stated by the vice president of Asolan, Francisco Martínez, who pointed out that the tourist occupancy on the island, which was "forecast at 80 percent", has suffered "a drop of 20 points" during this Constitution holiday weekend.
The Lanzarote tourism employers' association has not yet been able to quantify the losses suffered on the island, but, according to what has been pointed out, initially the sabotage of the controllers has meant "losses of around 50 million euros in revenue throughout the Canary Islands", since it was expected that "around 45,000 tourists" would arrive to the islands.
Regarding the island, they hope to have a clear vision by this Thursday of what the direct damage has been. And, Martínez has stated, "if the losses are significant, the pertinent legal actions will be taken". "I believe that the controllers are a bunch of shameless, fresh people, a kind of elite civil servants, a kind of very strange feudal nobility, who deserve, absolutely all of them, an exemplary punishment. And I understand that the losses, if they can be quantified, must be paid with their own assets", Martínez specified.
The vice president of Asolan has also shown his fear of the future consequences of this event. And it is that, according to what he has said, there have already been last-minute cancellations, due to fear. "Ryanair flights, which come from the United Kingdom with an occupancy of 85 percent, have already arrived with 35 percent", he pointed out.
Compensations
However, not only the accommodation sector has suffered losses, but the complementary offer has also been affected, although, in this case, says the secretary of Aetur, Francisco Dorado, it is very difficult to quantify the damages. "It can only be done in comparison with last year and that is very difficult to take to court", he pointed out.
Even so, Dorado insisted, we must add to this "all the money from the promotion that we have been spending to attract tourists, which has just gone down the drain". "And not only that, but now we have to redouble those promotion efforts to partially compensate for the loss of image and make everyone forget those bad times", he adds. "It has been a lost holiday weekend and an economic attack".
For this reason, from Aetur they raise the possibility that the Lanzarote Foreign Promotion Society (SPEL) "take measures and file a complaint against the people who have caused this situation". A fact that has not been ruled out by SPEL itself since, according to its manager, Héctor Fernández, "some type of compensation should be demanded".
And it is that, in Fernández's opinion, the controllers' strike has been a blow to the tourism sector. "When we are making a serious effort to recover the market and show the best image of the island, it is thrown away. It will be very difficult to recover the image of a destination like the Canary Islands", he pointed out.
The manager of SPEL has already announced that "what happened will be studied". And it is that, according to what he affirms, even "when the situation is apparently normalized", they continue receiving "emails from Aena, with situations on the part of the controllers that continue to be abusive, leaving planes without landing for a matter of minutes or diverting flights when the schedules are exceeded by seconds". "We believe that they are provocative attitudes that must be reviewed and, even, at least as far as local controllers are concerned, consider some type of attitude so that it does not happen again", Héctor Fernández stated.
"They have only done harm"
The secretary of Aetur, Francisco Dorado, believes that the only thing that the controllers have achieved with this massive abandonment of their jobs is "to do harm". "They have lost all the image, they have been insulted in every corner, and the measures that are adopted now will be to change the system. They have achieved nothing. These gentlemen are alleged criminals, who have attacked the jobs of the Canarians", he added.
This vision is shared by the vice president of Asolan, Francisco Martínez, who also considers that responsibilities should be "purged in the Aena dome". "In a normal company, when a staff gets out of control to such an extent, there are more people responsible than the workers, and it seems that nobody wants to purge responsibilities in this sense", he specified.
"From Aena or from the Government, they must also pay for this. I think it is time to cut heads seriously, create a temporary employment company that assigns controllers to Aena, and get it out of their heads that they are essential", Martínez concluded.
