Cruises are Arrecife's thing

Tourist cruises are an opportunity for Lanzarote, just as Lanzarote is an opportunity for the development of this tourist offer in the Archipelago.
The characteristics of our island, from its dimensions to the excursions it offers, together with its unique landscape and its varied complementary offer, make it a particularly attractive place for the thousands of tourists who prefer to approach our islands from the sea, where they enjoy the services of these luxury boats that take them from one port to another between scheduled visits to the territories in which they dock.
The experience lived before the pandemic speaks very well of the growing interest that Lanzarote awakens in these visitors and of the positive impact on the island and its economy. Now it is up to us to guarantee that this flow intensifies and does so with all the guarantees.
No one doubts, least of all me, that the ideal place for this type of tourism to settle is Arrecife, the capital of the island, where it acts as an opportunity to reactivate its economy, battered in these years of important transformations of traditional commerce.
Cruise tourists in Arrecife offer the desired possibility to revitalize the capital and bring it to the level it deserves. That is beyond all discussion, cruises in Lanzarote enter through Arrecife and irrigate the capital and the rest of the island with its visitors.
But if that is so, it is no less true that the qualification of a port like Playa Blanca for this activity cannot be dispensed with.
To replace Arrecife? Of course not. To compete with Arrecife? Of course not. Then what for? Simply to strengthen Arrecife's cruise offer, as a reference for this activity on the island of Lanzarote.
Playa Blanca does not need cruises to consolidate itself as one of the main tourist areas, hosting thousands of tourists in its territory who barely detach themselves from its jurisdiction during their stay. But Arrecife does need the claim of Lanzarote in the world of cruises to be a destination not only consolidated but also safe and guaranteed.
If for whatever conditions, a cruise cannot dock in Arrecife, the fact that it can do so in Playa Blanca saves all the service reservations made on the island and does not frustrate travelers who came with the illusion of disembarking and enjoying their stay on it.
It is not about displacing or competing. Quite the opposite. It is about guaranteeing and strengthening the destination. The idea remains the same: any cruise that wants to come to Lanzarote and can do so through Arrecife, should do so there preferably. But what do we do with those who cannot enter Arrecife, for whatever reason? Do we send them to another island, to another country, canceling their reservations and their expenses in Lanzarote? Honestly, in those cases, I prefer that the port of Playa Blanca be enabled for cruises, saving all those reservations and giving tourists the possibility of enjoying their vacations as they had planned.
I think it will be better for Lanzarote, for Arrecife, and for everyone, that when tourists arrive in their country they can tell their family and friends wonders about Lanzarote and not that they return frustrated telling them that they could not visit Lanzarote for one reason or another.
That is what my proposal is about, putting all our island infrastructures at the service of our objectives, and it does not matter if it is in Playa Blanca, since it will be very useful to strengthen Arrecife as the gateway for cruises to the destination of Lanzarote.