Drago Verdes Canarias will defend in the plenary session of the La Laguna City Council this Thursday a motion to urge the municipal government to control and put limits on the phenomenon of vacation rentals in the Tenerife municipality.
If approved, the limitation would become effective by including in the General Urban Planning Plan a moratorium on vacation rentals for those areas of the municipality in which it is pertinent.
The initiative will be presented and defended by councilor Alberto Rodríguez, and aims to limit the consequences that this business model generates on the territory, access to housing, the primary sector and the living conditions of people, according to the formation .
In addition to the moratorium, the text of the motion specifies that if the initiative is approved, the control imposed on vacation rentals would always be limited to the scope of the powers that the La Laguna City Council has on the matter.
In this sense, the agreement also includes the establishment of direct dialogue channels between administrations to ensure that the needs for control, regulation and limitation of vacation rentals are reflected in the legislative development being promoted by the Government of the Canary Islands.
The proposal to limit vacation rentals in La Laguna is supported by a report prepared by the Territorial Analysis and Ecological Transition Block of Drago Canarias and titled Synthetic analysis of vacation rentals in the Canary Islands which arises from statistics published by Eurostat and the main platforms in the sector: Airbnb, Booking, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor.
This report is updated to 2023, and concludes, among other issues, that in the Canary Islands there are 4.3 vacation rental overnight stays for each inhabitant, which places the archipelago at the head of Europe in this classification.
The second region on the list is Iceland, which supports 1.4, while countries like France and Germany only support 0.63 and 0.14 respectively.
Likewise, the report reveals that, in absolute terms of overnight stays in vacation rentals, the Canary Islands are only surpassed by France, Spain (including the figures for the Canary Islands), Italy and Germany.
In this case, the archipelago is in fifth position, with 9,412,551 overnight stays in the period studied, ahead of important tourist destinations such as Portugal, Greece or the Netherlands.
At the island level, Tenerife is by far the most affected island, having gone from 2.9 million overnight stays in 2020 to a total of 7.5 million in 2023. Gran Canaria follows, with 4.3 million in 2023; Lanzarote, with 3.9 million and Fuerteventura, with 2.9, while El Hierro, La Palma and La Gomera remain below 600,000 overnight stays.
In total, during 2023 there will be nearly 20 million overnight stays on the islands.
In percentage terms, Lanzarote is the island whose overnight stays have multiplied most markedly, increasing by 187% between 2020 and 2023; followed by Tenerife, with 157%; Fuerteventura, with 153% and Gran Canaria, with 128%.
On average, every three years the total number of nights spent on the islands doubles, Drago Verdes Canarias points out.
