Turismo Lanzarote describes its round of meetings to recover air connectivity as "very positive"

The Tourism Promotion Councilor of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, Ángel Vázquez, presided this week over three meetings held in Barcelona by the Sociedad de Promoción Exterior de Lanzarote (SPEL-Turismo Lanzarote) with important national airlines, in order to reinforce the island's connectivity after the bankruptcy of the British operator Thomas Cook and the upcoming closure of the Irish airline Ryanair's base at the César Manrique-Lanzarote airport.

The first of the meetings, in which the CEO of SPEL-Turismo Lanzarote, Héctor Fernández, was also present, took place on Wednesday afternoon with Céline Lacroix, Director of International Business Development at Volotea, "a company that in recent years has contributed outstandingly to the increase experienced on the island by the French market with the opening of routes from Nantes, Bordeaux, Marseille and Toulouse"

In this sense, Ángel Vázquez has highlighted "the growth in the number of seats to the island that this airline plans to carry out" in 2020, "which will proportionally reach a double-digit figure, as a result of the incorporation of two new routes with Strasbourg and another French city yet to be confirmed, as well as the possibility that it may also begin to operate with the Peninsula, Italy and Germany". 

Forecast that Air Europa will increase the connection with Madrid 

The next meeting held by the Turismo Lanzarote delegation took place on Thursday morning with Antonio Carmona, Director of Network Development at Air Europa, a company that has seen its pace of aircraft reception slowed down after the halt in the delivery of the 737 Max model by Boeing.

This situation "has slowed down its growth strategy in the Canary Islands, which contemplates for next year the increase, as the delivery is normalized again, of the connections between the island and Madrid, with the aspiration that it will stabilize in a daily flight", explained the island's Tourism Promotion Councilor, who on the other hand highlighted "the good feeling that our intention to directly establish agreements with the company that were previously collected indirectly through the Globalia group, specifically with the Travelplan wholesaler arm, has caused in Air Europa".

Vueling's intention to open a new route and increase frequencies 

The meeting held first thing on Thursday afternoon with the Vueling management team, formed by Samuel Ferrera, Yago Grela and Mayra Berciano -responsible for the areas of Network Development Analysis, Communication and Public Relations, respectively- which conveyed the company's intention to open a new route next year and increase some of the frequencies with which it currently maintains (Barcelona, Bilbao, Málaga, Valencia, Seville, Santiago, Oviedo, Paris and Zurich), is said to have been equally optimal.

Given Vueling's increasing operation with the island, Turismo Lanzarote offered a multi-year marketing agreement framework, increasing the financial endowment, to the management team of this airline "which aspires to reach a double daily frequency with Barcelona, which would be extraordinarily important for Lanzarote, as it would open a wide range of connectivity with all of Europe from the Catalan capital", says Ángel Vázquez.

Increase the financial endowment and make collaboration agreements multi-year 

The island's Tourism Promotion Councilor has valued as "very positive" these three meetings that add to the one recently held with the same purpose on the island with the general manager of easyJet, Javier Gándara, and trusts that "the loyalty shown by the main air operators for Lanzarote, as a solid and prestigious destination, will contribute to greatly alleviate the impact caused by the bankruptcy of Thomas Cook as well as the closure of the Ryanair base on the island".

In this sense, he recalls the announcement made by the British airline Jet2 to increase, already this winter season, by 40,000 the air seats with Lanzarote, a figure that will cover approximately half of the total seats that Thomas Cook had with the island from the United Kingdom.

Likewise, Ángel Vázquez highlights "the good acceptance that our intention to increase the financial endowment and to raise to multi-year the collaboration agreements that we have been maintaining with these operators in order to reinforce the promotion and air connectivity of the island has had among the representatives of the airlines".