Lanzarote’s tourism figures are on target to finish the year with the most arrivals since way back in 2003! Thank you all!
October
The month of October was another good month for arrivals in Lanzarote. It’s thought that we might hit a record of a million British visitors by the end of 2013. The previous record set was 926,000 in 2003 and we have a strong commitment from British tour operators for this winter season with over 300,000 seats available. The year to date figure until October is 803.049, which reflects an increase of just under 6%. October’s arrival figure of 95,932 tourists is a 17.5% increase on the same period in 2012.
Héctor Fernández from the Sociedad de Promoción Exterior de Lanzarote prefers to be cautious when predicting a record year for British tourists to Lanzarote, the data is on track but he said he would rather wait for the final results.
The best performing markets over the first ten months of 2013 are British tourists 803,000 (5.94% more), Irish tourists 179,800 (21% more), Dutch tourists 64,300 (8.56% more) and French tourists 47,000 (114% more). Germany is still the second most important foreign market with 234,300 tourists YTD but a drop of 5.68% less than last year. The domestic market has fallen by 3% but still accounts for 234,300 tourists from the mainland.
October was a good month for occupancy - the hotels and complexes reported their beds were at 85.23% of capacity. Playa Blanca had the highest occupancy at just under 88%, Puerto del Carmen recorded 86%, Costa Teguise 82% and a surprising 80% for Arrecife. Year to date occupancy figures from January to October for Lanzarote were around 79.5%, compared to the same period in 2012 which was 74.5% occupancy.
November
The Canaries received 3,050,157 passengers during November 2013, which reflects a 13.1% increase on the previous year. Lanzarote’s arrivals were up by an incredible 21.2% with 473,530 passengers arriving at Arrecife Airport as recorded by AENA. Of these passengers 350,518 were International which is 23% more than November 2012.
Tourist Spend Analysis
Not all of the news was positive, the Deputy Minister of Tourism for the Canary Islands recently highlighted that €7 out of every €10 euros spent on holidays in the islands are actually paid in the tourist’s home countries, and only €3 are spent locally on excursions, activities and establishments here.
In 2012 overseas tourism represented 12.600 million euros, of which 8.927 million (70.4%) was paid at home and 3.752 million (29.6%) locally here in the Archipelago. If we look back to data from 2006, the tourism spend was lower at 10.730 million euros with 6.682 million (62.3%) spent in origin and 4.048 million (37.7%) spent locally. This is a loss of 296 million euros over the last seven years for Canary Island based businesses such as car hire companies, excursions, activities, bars, restaurants and shops. The fall is blamed on tourists booking packaged holidays and extras through intermediaries and tour operators.
In the past year, visitors from Germany spent 2.377 million euros at home for their holiday versus 684 million locally, for the United Kingdom that equated to 2.432 million at home and 1.066 million during their holiday and the Nordic countries 1.289 million versus 575 million. The average spend per tourist per day is more or less the same year on year, it was €125 in 2012 and €122 for the year to date in 2013.
Antonio Rodríguez, a professor at UNED stated that All-Inclusive has done a great deal of damage to the Canaries and the spend in local establishments here, the tourist profile indicates they are booking package holidays and the majority of that money stays in their place of origin. Rodríguez also explained that the islands had experienced a “tourist miracle” because occupancy four years ago was less than 60% and it was the instability in the Middle East and north Africa that drove a massive diversion of travellers to the islands. The market is still adapting to this situation, we should consider what would happen if stability returns to Egypt & Turkey.
Summary
It’s clear to see that Lanzarote remains a very popular holiday destination in the Canary Islands, a big thank you to everyone who has already visited this year.
You can all help to make a difference, firstly by returning to our beautiful island in the future and secondly by not packaging all of your holiday extras so that you support our local economy.
We already know that the island is busy for Christmas & New Year, let’s hope 2013 sets a new record, a million British tourists would definitely be something to celebrate.
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