The Secretary of State for Tourism yesterday referred to European funds as a “unique opportunity” for the sector to overcome the “exceptional situation” generated by the pandemic. This was stated by Fernando Valdés after a meeting with the mayor of Adeje, José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga, just before participating in a meeting with businessmen from the South and the president of the Cabildo, Pedro Martín.
Among the challenges facing the main economic segment of the country, Valdés cited the “transformation of destiny”, “digitalization” and “energy efficiency”.
“We want destinations to be socially sustainable and for the wealth generated by tourism to be shared,” he said during a meeting with journalists in which he underlined the role of sun and beach tourist municipalities. In this sense, the Secretary of State indicated that “sustainability is quality”, a bet that he considers key to differentiate itself from other competing markets, and underlined the leading role of municipalities such as Adeje when incorporating new projects to “the opportunity that the European funds”.
“We have to recover what we have lost with COVID-19,” remarked Valdés, who recognized the needs of tourist destinations to deal with factors such as the “large population” of foreigners that they receive, which forces them to provide “some services that they are up to the task”. For his part, the mayor of Adejero, who chairs the Alliance of Tourist Municipalities of Spain and the Association of Tourist Municipalities of the Canary Islands, highlighted the “good harmony” with the Ministry of Tourism and pointed out that the central government “has been up to the task” throughout the pandemic, “keeping the sector alive”. Rodríguez Fraga called for the “repositioning” and “redefinition” of destinations associated with the sun and the beach: “Green tourism, yes, but also blue tourism.”
The councilor stated that both the economic crisis of 2008, in which tourism resisted and maintained the type, and the current one due to COVID-19, which came to empty the hotels of the Archipelago, have placed the sector at a level in which “is recognized the importance it has in national wealth and in the international context.”
Currently, Rodríguez Fraga insisted, “we are in a transition model in terms of the tourism model, but also in the sense of recovering our initial position.”
