The leaders of the Canarian nightlife sector met yesterday at the Hard Rock Hotel Tenerife, in Costa Adeje, to discuss the state of the sector in the Archipelago and reflect on the opportunities that have arisen after the pandemic. All this in the VIII International Nightlife Congressa meeting co-organized by the Circle of Entrepreneurs and Professionals of the South of Tenerife (CEST). In this context, round tables were held in which they discussed the future of the sector and highlighted its survival and resilience in recent years.
The president of CEST, Roberto Ucelaytogether with the Councilor for Tourism and Sports of the Adeje City Council, Adolph Alonso; the Deputy Minister of Economy of the Government of the Canary Islands, Blas Acosta; the vice president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Enrique Arriagaand the vice president of the International Nightlife Association, Camilo Ospinainaugurated this meeting in which numerous relevant personalities of the Canarian nightlife met.
Ucelay highlighted the strength of the sector after the pandemic and claimed leisure as “one of the great pillars of the tourist offer of our land, so working in favor of this sector and its promotion becomes a necessity.” He also alluded to the need for the administrations to “give a push” to the nightlife business with “a new regulatory framework” that facilitates openings and improving the current offer. He defended that “this type of regulatory modification will create employment, improve economic activity and, with it, tax collection, so it is essential to work in this direction from now on.”
In Adeje alone, there are more than 1,200 establishments that make up the sector
Adolfo Alonso, Councilor for Tourism and Sport of Adeje, stated that in Tenerife, and especially in Adeje, “we are increasingly aware of the great axis that nightlife represents as an economic engine.” He gave as an example the more than 1,200 establishments that make up the sector of the municipality and that “work day after day to offer tourists and residents a better offer.” He indicated that congresses like this “become an essential event from which to leave with new learning, in which the Costa Adeje destination has a lot to contribute since it is a benchmark in Europe”, he added.
The vice-president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Enrique Arriaga, defined the meeting as “the perfect opportunity to mark a new roadmap that involves both businessmen and administrations”. Along these lines, the Deputy Minister of Economy of the Government of the Canary Islands, Blas Acosta, commented that “a congress of these characteristics is useless if we do not execute the lessons learned and good practices that come from it, so we will try to work for it”.
The insular director of Tourism, Laura Castro, took advantage of the event to present the new Tenerife Tourism campaign, highlighting the diversification of the tourist offer. In this sense, he pointed out that “the new profiles have among their motivations to have fun and that leisure plays a relevant role. For this reason, in this congress we transfer our actions to the sector so that, with this shared leadership between the public and private sectors, we contribute the quality experiences that every traveler wants to live in Tenerife”.
The round table on the state of nightlife in the Canary Islands was another of the most relevant points of the II Canary Leisure Congress. The mayor of Puerto de la Cruz, Marco González; the Councilor for Festivals of the Santa Cruz City Council, Alfonso Cabello; the president of the Leisure Association of Gran Canaria, Alejandro Negrín, and the president of the CEST, Roberto Ucelay, debated for an hour the current situation in which the sector finds itself and how the institutions have also worked in its favor with initiatives such as the Phe Festival, in the case of Puerto de la Cruz, or the Summer Carnival, in the case of Santa Cruz.
Ucelay took the opportunity to talk about employment. “In 2019, before the pandemic, the leisure sector generated 90,000 jobs on the Islands, a figure that we hope to gradually resume if the situation continues with the improvement that we have experienced in the last half of 2022.”
The day continued with tables such as the challenges and opportunities of professionalization in the sector or how leisure in the open air has become an essential activity in the Archipelago. In both sessions, top-level experts highlighted the joint effort of the sector in recent years to emerge resilient from a crisis situation marked by zero tourism.
