SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 29 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The supply of regular air seats to the Canary Islands planned for the first semester has registered an increase of 1.5% in relation to the first semester of 2019, with 9 million seats, which means 131,644 more than from January to June of the year precovid.
This has been reported in a parliamentary committee by the Minister of Tourism of the Government of the Canary Islands, Yaiza Castilla, who estimates that in this first part of the year 85% of the volume of tourists that we had before the pandemic may have been recovered and thus give way to a summer that expects “very positive”.
The counselor explained that for May and June, months traditionally with less tourist influx in the Islands, the data of air seats already put up for sale are very positive. Thus, the planned capacity for May is 1.5 million seats, 13% more than in May 2019, while for June it is 1.4 million seats, which represents an increase of 8%.
Yaiza Castilla clarified that, aside from the prevailing scenario of uncertainty right now due to the war unleashed in Ukraine, which has generated a rise in inflation and an increase in the price of oil, “we can already talk about facts, which show that the Canary Islands has reinforced its position as a safe and reliable tourist destination”.
This is evidenced by the airlines, recalled the counselor, by betting heavily on the Islands, as well as the demand that, since the restrictions on mobility have been eliminated, has shown an enormous desire to travel by European citizens and to do so to destinations like canaries.
An optimism that he shares with the private sector, since, according to the survey of hotel expectations prepared by Istac, the confidence of hotel businessmen has recovered significantly to above pre-Covid levels. Specifically, the value of the index reached in the second quarter of 2022 was 115.7 points, well above the 91.1 points of the second quarter of 2019.
The harmonized business confidence indicator (ICEA) also grew, which increased by 1.4% in the Canary Islands in the second quarter of the year, being the second community with the highest increase and one of the three that presented positive figures in all of Spain together with the Balearic Islands and Navarre.
SMART CAMPAIGN.
In another order of things, the intelligent campaign launched by the Ministry of Tourism, through the public company Turismo de Islas Canarias, in the United Kingdom and Germany has been “a complete success”, as the minister explained. This collaboration with the technology group Amadeus, in which Turismo de Canarias invested 100,000 euros, has managed to generate tourist spending of at least 10.5 million euros.
“At the end of January we promoted this campaign that aimed to stimulate sales in our two main source markets for the first quarter of the year and advance reservations for the summer,” Castilla said at the parliamentary headquarters. This initiative placed special emphasis on families in the United Kingdom, since Spain had recently lifted the entry restriction for British youth between the ages of 12 and 17 and, in addition, both adolescents and children were enjoying school holidays at that time.
The action used the complex digital ecosystem of Travel Audience, owned by Amadeus, and included digital formats, video views and content on social networks to have a presence throughout the user’s environment.
From a tactical point of view and with a view to planning the campaign, Castilla explained that three objectives were set: notoriety, traffic to the holaislascanarias.com website and conversions in travel sales. “To achieve them, we designed a specific strategy for channels and pieces, thus achieving an impact on users throughout their ‘customer journey’, that is, in the different phases they go through in their purchase process,” explained Castilla.
At the end of the campaign, there were a total of 10,006 travel sales conversions, of which 5,018 were from the UK and 4,988 from Germany. Taking this data, applying an average stay of nine days and an average daily expenditure per person of 117 euros “we can conclude that the campaign generated a successful return on investment, since with a budget of 100,000 euros on our part we generated an expenditure of the total of visitors of 10,536,318 euros”, affirmed the minister.
Bearing in mind that the campaign included the February school vacation period, Castilla clarified that “this highly positive result is also quite conservative, since it counts only one person per reservation, despite the fact that we are sure that the tourists who arrived were many more and that spending at destination was, therefore, much higher”.
