The tourism pioneer who lifted the Iberian Peninsula and the Canary Islands out of the poverty they suffered and we suffered, back in 1961, was the Danish businessman Simón Spies. I remember, back in ...
The tourism pioneer who lifted the Iberian Peninsula and the Canary Islands out of the poverty they suffered and we suffered, back in 1961, was the Danish businessman Simón Spies.
I remember, back in 1960, when I was about nine years old, the few tourists who appeared in Lanzarote could be counted on the fingers of one hand and came from England, Germany and France. These people usually stayed in some guesthouse or in the old Arrecife Tourist Hotel. But things changed with Simón Spies' initiative.
The still not magnate Spies, back in 1956, had the idea of starting the mass tourism business, offering cheap trips from the capital of Denmark, Copenhagen, to Marbella by bus and cruises to Mallorca. About four years later, he organized trips to Gran Canaria and Tenerife for the price of about 300 Danish crowns, for a week's stay with breakfast, (equal to about 30,000 pesetas at that time). Then with the opening of the Hotel Fariones and the apartments that were made around it in Puerto del Carmen, Spies began, from 1963, to send Scandinavian tourism to our island, thus giving birth to the era of winter tourism in Lanzarote.
While the years passed, and in Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Lanzarote and other islands of our archipelago, the tourism business grew, English, German and French businessmen copied the ideas of Simón Spies, until mass tourism became a general business all over the world. Today, most of the Scandinavian tourism has stopped coming to the Canary Islands in winter and, as can be seen, fewer people visit us in summer than in the past.
Short biography of Simón Ove Christian Olievie Spies
The pioneer and magnate of charter flights, known as "Simón Spies", was born in Hilsengoer, Denmark, on September 1, 1921, and died on April 16, 1984. He was poor in his childhood and his father was a painter. He studied physics and politics at the University of Copenhagen.
Regarding his life, many anecdotes and gossip are told: He was a man who liked women, parties, table tennis, and extravagances, such as bringing water to drink from Greenland or going to the theater and buying three tickets for himself, his cane and his dog.
Also, to get a job, he joined the Danish Nazi party, DNSAP, in 1942. In 1965, he started his business with the company (Spies Rejser), cheap bus trips and cruises to Marbella and Mallorca. Then in 1960, he bought the bankrupt company Flying Enterprise and formed Conair. From 1960 he sent his first tourist charter flights (from all the Scandinavian capitals) to the south coast of Spain and, following on from those places, also to the Canary Islands and other parts of the world.
On May 11, 1983, he married his 21-year-old secretary Janni Brodersen, born on September 19, 1962, in Copenhagen after four divorces. After Spies' death, Janni Spies took over the company and continued with the tourism business. He built several hotels in various parts of the world, including La Santa Sport in Tinajo, Lanzarote. In 1989, he bought his competitor's company, Tjaerborg Prest, and continued with the business.
Then Janni married Kjaer and they had a son. A few years later, the world tourism business passed into the hands of many companies, and Janni Spies Kjaer divorced and sold her company to the English.
P.D: The Canary Government should make a monument in each of our islands in memory of this great man: it would be marketing for the Canary Islands and a pride for the Scandinavians.
