More sustainable tourism with better employment

January 27 2024 (17:06 WET)

This week, Madrid once again hosted an edition of Fitur, one of the most important tourism fairs in the world. In which there was, as usual, a relevant Canarian presence, a community where tourism has been vital for its economy and employment for more than half a century. A circumstance that forces the Canary Islands to a permanent reflection (and action) on what is, by far, its main economic sector. To diversify and qualify its offer. To improve the quality of its jobs and increase their remuneration. So that it does not occupy more territory, favoring the renovation of the plant. So that it is decarbonized and sustainable. In short, so that it has a present and, also, a future.

The Covid 19 pandemic paralyzed mobility to save lives and left us practically without tourism in 2020. With a devastating effect on the business fabric and on employment, fortunately attenuated by public aid to companies and ERTEs. There was then a spectacular fall in the Canarian GDP, of 19%, from which we have already recovered by the middle of last year. 

After the relevant recovery experienced in 2022, in the past 2023, without the definitive data yet, everything points to being around 16 million tourists and record figures, also, of spending, well above 20,000 million euros. 

The data offered by the Canarian Institute of Statistics (ISTAC) regarding hotel occupancy in 2023 confirm more than 13.5 million travelers staying. In these ISTAC figures, obviously, the accommodations corresponding to vacation rental homes are not counted, with an increasing weight in the Islands, already representing more than 35% of the accommodation offer in the Archipelago.

Dysfunctions

However, all these macro figures cannot and should not hide the dysfunctions generated by tourism (all economic activities have them, whether agriculture or industry, which occupy territory, generate waste or consume water and energy) and the need not to obsess over breaking records that put great pressure on the territory and the environment, which contribute to an excessive demographic growth - as has happened especially in Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, although not only on those islands - which affects public services, infrastructure, mobility or energy and water consumption; records that, in parallel, do not seem to reduce our high levels of poverty and unemployment. Dysfunctions that, as is happening in other significant tourist destinations in the world, are beginning to awaken a citizen questioning about the benefits of tourism for local populations. Therefore, tourism policies that are limited to counting tourists are doomed to failure.

Tourism-phobia is not desirable nor is the completely unjustified nostalgia for a pre-tourist past that was much worse, with much greater poverty and cyclical migrations of tens of thousands of Canarians to other countries. Nor is it, in my opinion, the uncritical applause "to what there is", the immobility, the refusal to face changes that are essential for tourism to continue playing its fundamental role and be increasingly useful to the whole of Canarian society.

When talking about tourism, its present and its future prospects, it is necessary to talk about aspects such as the qualification of employment and its remuneration, the improvement of its productivity, the capacity for growth and the need to put limits on it, the diversification of the offer, the renovation of the obsolete plant or the rehabilitation of tourist cities.

Also addressing phenomena, such as vacation rentals, which have developed very significantly in the last decade, with data on the supply of beds that are already approaching the numbers of the hotel sector. It must be adequately regulated, avoiding the gentrification of our neighborhoods and the expulsion of resident population due to lack of rental housing. Preventing, in any case, the proliferation of buildings dedicated exclusively to this activity that carry out unfair competition with the hotel sector, generate hardly any employment and do not redistribute income among the local population. As well as putting limits on the sale of homes to non-resident foreigners.

Twenty years ago, after an intense and fruitful social debate, in the Canary Islands we achieved the approval of the tourism planning guidelines. Its central elements - the renovation of the obsolete accommodation plant, the updating and improvement of tourist cities, the diversification and qualification of the offer, the permanent training of personnel... - are still valid. The law of the guidelines also included limitations on tourism growth, conditioned to quality criteria. The obsession with the quantitative only leads to negative impacts on the natural environment and urban environments, an increase in waste generation, an increase in discharges to the coast, as well as in electricity and water consumption, traffic problems on the roads or saturation of health services. 

Planning

I am convinced that carrying out the tasks of a sustainable renovation necessarily requires recovering municipal urban planning, as well as territorial planning, at the regional and island level. The dangerous path of abandoning planning urbanism, replaced by project urbanism, has been chosen with the Land Law of CC and PP. This prioritizes the realization of any type of project without taking into account the determinations of the planning plans for the land on which it is intended to be located. 

From NC-bc we have proposed reaching a Canarian Agreement for Sustainable Tourism, which defines the guidelines for the development of the sector in the coming decades. And that has the support of the Executive, the parliamentary groups, the local corporations and the businessmen and unions, as well as the Canarian universities. Addressing issues such as rehabilitation of tourist cities, modernization and renovation of the accommodation plant, quality parameters, training and employment, decarbonization and digitization of the sector, to which an ecotax of a consensual and widely supported final nature could contribute.

Our climatology, our beaches and the whole of our privileged nature constitute powerful attractions for those who choose the Canary Islands as their holiday destination. We must preserve them as an essential part of our identity as a people and, also, as key elements of our economic model. Avoiding further occupation of the territory and with growth conditioned to island realities. Stopping a limitless growth that turns against both. Today our Archipelago stands out not only for being a sun and beach destination but also for a significant sports, cultural or gastronomic offer. We are aware, in addition, that tourism has to be continuously updated and reinvented. A tourism that in the Canary Islands constitutes an activity that has a great future only if it is clearly sustainable, decarbonized, digitized, responsible and of quality. So that it impacts in a clearly positive way on society and is strongly appreciated by it.

Román Rodríguez is president of Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-bc).

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