By Corina Pons
PUERTO DE LA CRUZ, Canary Islands, Spain (Reuters) – The number of German visitors to Spain’s Canary Islands has slumped as their country suffers a recession – but tourists from elsewhere seeking cooler summer temperatures amid global heatwaves are picking up the slack.
The Atlantic Ocean archipelago off the coast of Africa boasts year-round spring-like weather. Along with Britons, Germans are traditionally the largest tourist contingent.
The largest island, Tenerife, received 4% more tourists in June than in the pre-pandemic 2019. But there were 22% fewer Germans, a clear sign of how the energy crisis and economic woes have weighed on travel decisions.
Meanwhile, hotels in traditional hotspots for German tourists, such as the town of Puerto de la Cruz in northern Tenerife, are now filling up with “weather tourists”. “I used to visit Lake Constance in Germany every year, but I didn’t want to suffer another heatwave, so I came to Tenerife,” said 78-year-old Japanese retiree Shizuko Hotta, who was enjoying a three-week stay in a waterfront hotel by the mountains. This year, 18% fewer Germans went on summer holidays than in 2019, according to Germany’s tourism industry group DRV.
According to Spanish official data, in the first half of 2023, 14% fewer Germans visited Tenerife than in 2019.
Hotta said her German friends had recommended the island, but “they come less often because life has become too expensive”. In contrast, the number of visitors from the United States and Canada to Tenerife rose 80% and 60% respectively in the first half compared to 2019. There were also marked increases for a range of Asian and Eastern European countries.
Pent-up demand after the pandemic is one of the reasons, as evidenced by a rise in overall tourism to Spain’s much hotter mainland, but weather is becoming a key factor.
“Most people know these islands for escaping the European winter, but as we get more global warming, they will look at them as a place to escape the really hot summers,” said visiting U.S. businessman Diego Bejarano during a festival for working nomads. “While Europe is experiencing heatwaves, it’s a fact that it was wonderful to be here.”
Hotel Tigaiga owner Enrique Talg, 53, cited a much more diverse mix of international tourists than in previous years in a shift from the pre-pandemic German contingent of about 80%.
“It is a potpourri. More and more guests are looking for this hotel because of the climate,” he said.
The average temperature on Tenerife’s beaches in August does not surpass 28C and is usually lower in the mountains.
(Reporting by Corina Pons in Tenerife, with additional reporting by Sarah Marsh, editing by Andrei Khalip and Angus MacSwan)
