SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Sep. 19 (EUROPE PRESS) –
The provincial tourist association Ashotel has shown this Monday its “concern” about the weak air connectivity of La Palma with European destinations for this winter and urges the competent administrations to work to reinforce it.
Although the average hotel occupancy last July (87%) and August (91%) was very good in La Palma, according to the data from the survey prepared by the Ashotel Tourism Competitiveness and Sustainability Observatory, the employers consider it essential for the economic recovery of the island recover air connections for this winter, traditionally high season in the Canary Islands.
The information provided to Ashotel by the tourism promotion office of La Palma shows a “worrying” picture for the coming months, details in a note.
In this sense, it stands out that Easy Jet’s direct flight with Berlin is canceled for this winter season 2022-2023; Ryanair also eliminates its direct connection from Bergamo; Vueling cancels its flight on Thursdays from Barcelona, although it maintains the one on Saturdays, and also eliminates its connection with Paris and only Condor maintains the operation it had this summer with La Palma, with four weekly frequencies with the German cities of Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg and Dusseldorf.
This being the case, it indicates that it is necessary to strengthen promotion in France and Italy and break this situation of “uncertainty”.
Ashotel clarifies that the good summer in terms of occupancy in La Palma has been due to several factors, although the most notable is the lower volume of beds currently open, as the tourist area of Puerto Naos remains closed due to gases, one of the nuclei palm trees with more accommodation places.
This circumstance yields the data, at the end of July, of 4,948 open beds in hotels and apartments, according to figures from the Canary Institute of Statistics (Istac) which, added to the 3,000 beds that are estimated to be closed in the exclusion zone, they make a total of 8,000 legal.
In Puerto Naos, the Sol La Palma hotel continues to be closed, a 4-star establishment with the largest volume of beds on the island, with 1,000 hotel beds, and other smaller establishments are added that are in the same circumstance, such as the Playa Delphin apartments or The Wall, among others.
If the health conditions allow it and the CO2 levels decrease to acceptable values in Puerto Naos, the sector works to return to tourist activity from November.
The ‘Bono La Palma’ campaign has also worked in the national market, launched by the Government of the Canary Islands, and which will put a total of 20,000 250-euro bonds on the market between February and December of this year.
Until last September 7, just over 17,300 bonds had been activated, according to the latest data from the Canary Executive’s Ministry of Tourism.
ASHOTEL PROPOSALS
The vice president of Ashotel in La Palma, Carlos García Sicilia, recalls that the hotel management, which made itself available to the authorities from the beginning of the eruption, formulated a series of proposals for economic recovery.
Some of them have been fulfilled (among others, the elimination of airport taxes) but there are others that Ashotel considers important and that have not been carried out.
“It is essential to further strengthen public-private collaboration; the competent administrations in the different areas of management of this exceptional situation on the island must rely on the knowledge of the private sector, because we know that the most effective way to move forward is to add the participation everyone,” he says.
In this sense, Ashotel, aware and in agreement that the social emergency has been and is the priority in this natural catastrophe that devastated almost 3,000 homes and affected more than 1,200 hectares, also recalls that for the palm economy to succeed, tourism it is one of the priority sectors and one that could more easily contribute to getting out of a difficult situation like this, as long as measures are adopted.
Among the proposals that have not been accepted by the administrations is tax relief for tourism companies that, not being in the exclusion zone, also suffer from the crisis.
A few months ago, the hotel management pointed out the need to immediately articulate direct aid to these companies in order to guarantee their survival and move away from the financial strangulation of a sector that, together with agriculture, is the main engine of the palm economy.
García recalls that the Government of the Canary Islands has increased its income from IGIC collection in the first half of 2022 by almost 12%, to 931 million euros, compared to the first half of 2019, and that in exceptional circumstances such as this one could use part of that increase to help tourism businesses that need it most.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY PLANNING
Among the proposals that Ashotel has also been formulating is the necessary planning for the economic reconstruction of the island, an action that continues to be urgent, despite the passing of the months. “After a year of the eruption, there is still no unified plan that says what is going to be done or is being done, in what terms, how and which entities participate,” recalls García Sicilia.
Likewise, the tourist promotion of La Palma requires a document that brings together all the actions that have been launched or are going to be launched in the future.
This tourist promotion of the island, in the opinion of the vice president of Ashotel, must pivot on two fundamental axes.
On the one hand, to reinforce the message that La Palma is a safe island and, on the other, to take advantage of this natural phenomenon to promote the island as a volcano destination.
The hotel sector also considers that it would be very useful and decisive to be able to participate in the design of this specific promotion plan.
The hotel management emphasizes that it was and is very aware of the eruptive phenomenon in La Palma and its consequences.
From the first minute he made himself available to the island authorities to collaborate in whatever was necessary, an agreement was reached with the La Palma & Teneguía Princess hotel to house hundreds of people evacuated from the exclusion zones (still 107 evacuated people remain in that establishment, many of them from the Puerto Naos and La Bombilla centers) and in all those regional and national forums a battery of proposals for reviving the tourism sector has been exposed for when the eruption ended, in the middle of December 2021.
Even this battery of recovery measures was exposed in October 2021 in the Parliament of the Canary Islands by the president of Ashotel, Jorge Marichal, during the visit of King Felipe VI.
