SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 17 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
39.5% of employers in the transport and hospitality subsectors have difficulties finding suitable labor in the Canary Islands, 27 points more than in January last year, according to the latest survey of the Business Confidence Indicator, which also points to that there are problems of insufficient equipment (which goes from 4.9% to 10.5%) and increased competition (which rises from 16.5% to 29.7%).
For the president of the Chamber of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Santiago Sesé, this progress in the difficulties to find personnel “makes it a priority” to address “at once a comprehensive employment plan that serves to respond to this multifactorial problem “.
“It will be necessary to analyze the degree of training of the unemployed and how they can be retrained to find work, but the islands have other collateral problems that make it difficult to formalize new contracts, such as the collapse of transport routes or the housing shortage, especially in areas of high tourist intensity, among others,” he detailed in a note.
In his opinion, “if we are able to achieve these results with the current difficulties, I wonder what new record we can break if we manage to solve this imbalance between supply and demand in the workplace”.
In addition, he considers that in order to consolidate this data and have a solid base on which to continue growing, the training level “of all the parties involved in the labor market must be strengthened, helping unemployed people to find employment, increase and update the skills of those who are working to thus improve their productivity.
IMPROVE KNOWLEDGE
Even, he points out, “businessmen themselves must improve our knowledge in matters such as digitization, thus making the work processes of our businesses more profitable, which will make us more competitive.”
According to the Tourism Sectoral Bulletin for the fourth quarter of 2022 prepared by the Chamber, the Canarian tourism sector closed a year with excellent results that allowed it to reach unprecedented levels in the behavior of its labor market.
Thus, this sector reached an all-time high in the figures for affiliation to Social Security in the hotel business, which includes accommodation and restaurants.
The islands, therefore, at the end of December 2022 recorded a sum of 154,707 employed people, data that represents an annual increase of 14,030 more workers (10% compared to December 2021).
The registered unemployment data also behaved very positively, with a drop of 4,457 unemployed people (-14.2%), closing the last quarter of the year with a record low of 26,857 unemployed in the hotel business.
On the other hand, if the field of study is limited to only the personnel employed in hotel establishments, data recorded by the INE in its Tourist Accommodation Occupancy Survey, a similar behavior is observed, registering an interannual increase of 15.6% in the average of the fourth quarter.
THE NUMBER OF FOREIGN TOURISTS GROWS, BUT IT DOES NOT EQUAL THE DATA OF 2019
According to the data published by the INE in its Survey of Tourist Movements at the Border, throughout the fourth quarter of the year the Canary Islands received a sum of 3,590,285 foreign tourists, improving by 18.3% the data registered one year before.
In the year as a whole, the islands welcomed 12,329,172 visitors, a figure that represents a notable increase of 134.5% compared to 2021 -when some restrictions due to the pandemic were still in force-, but which cannot be matched the 2019 figure, remaining 6.2% below (817,690 fewer tourists).
Regarding tourism spending, the Egatur survey, also carried out by the INE, shows how during the fourth quarter of the year there was an increase of 27% compared to the same period in 2021.
This represents a growth in average daily spending per tourist of 9.2%, standing at 168 euros per person per day at the end of the year.
Analyzing the whole of 2022, total spending on the islands was 142.8% higher than in 2021, this time exceeding the data for 2019 with 3.5% more.
These data, underlines the Chamber, are in tune with the behavior of the activity of hotel establishments, as can be seen in the number of travelers staying in Canary Islands hotels.
This indicator, recorded by the INE, registered a variation of 18.3% in the last quarter of 2022, while the annual average was 95% compared to 2021 data.
In both cases, as usual, it is foreign tourists who mark this increase (22.1% in the quarter and 137% annually) compared to residents in Spain (4.8% and 25.7% respectively). .
In light of these results, the Canarian tourism business community conveys especially positive results in its Business Confidence Indicator, with an advance of 1.5% in the January survey, after having previously chained successive growths well ahead of the rest of the sectors.
Of the companies surveyed, 51% stated that they had improved their results in the period from October to December, a figure that represents an improvement on the forecasts they had for that period (40%).
In addition, despite these good results, a third of the companies surveyed (33%) still believe that there is room for growth and have growth forecasts.
