The Hotel and Non-Hotel Association of Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera, and El Hierro, Ashotel has urged, through a statement, the Canarian Federation of Municipalities (Fecam) to address, in a meeting requested over two months ago, a study conducted by the hotel employers’ association on the housing needs in tourist areas, especially in Tenerife.
This statement from ASHOTEL comes just a few days before the scheduled demonstrations on the eight Canary Islands for a movement named Canarias is reaching its limits! For a change in the model! and aims to be “the largest in history.”
In this sense, hoteliers are offering to build housing for tourism company employees at affordable prices to try to expedite the bureaucracy on this matter, a proposal that has been presented to several political figures some time ago.
The statement mentions that the hotel employers’ association and the major union in the sector, Base Unionists (SB), have held numerous meetings with various mayors of tourist municipalities in Tenerife, the Canarian Government, and Fecam itself with the aim of finding quick solutions to facilitate affordable rentals. In the meeting held last November with the Federation’s president, Mari Brito, Ashotel committed to conducting a survey among workers in the southern Tenerife accommodation sector about housing issues, which would provide an initial assessment of the situation. Since the beginning of the year, the hotel employers’ association has had this data and wants to present it to Fecam in a meeting requested in February.
Jorge Marichal, president of Ashotel. / E. D.
Ashotel’s president, Jorge Marichal, referred to the bureaucratic delays in land allocation for public housing construction. In the meeting last November, Marichal urged the search for faster and more feasible solutions, such as municipalities with established residential land resulting from 10% of Partial Plans enabling, through the appropriate legal tools, the construction of housing projects by entrepreneurs willing to subsequently rent those houses to workers at set prices. Marichal clarified that this is not a social rental scheme for families in precarious situations, which involves its own procedures and specific beneficiaries, but rather affordable rentals for working individuals in areas close to tourist areas, whose prices can be covered by the salaries paid in the hospitality sector.
Clavijo’s warning to employers: “They need to change”
Ten days ago, Fernando Clavijo, the President of the Canary Islands, sent a message to Canarian entrepreneurs saying that “business owners are well aware that they need to change. They didn’t like it in January at Fitur when I told them they had to increase workers’ wages and received harsh criticism. Tourism must realize that it is our main source of wealth and, given that, and making a lot of money, they must be responsible for democratizing that wealth and boosting other sectors as well.”
“I believe that for the first time, we all agree that we cannot continue like this. All political forces and also society, which should come out and express their discontent because it is a wake-up call to everyone,” said the president.
Holiday housing pointed out
“The housing problem is urgent in the Canary Islands, the autonomous community with the highest demand for social housing and, at the same time, almost 20% of the current housing stock (2 out of every 10) is empty or unoccupied (Tinsa report), a total of 211,000 flats. Furthermore, although not the sole cause, the rise of holiday housing has also strained the long-term rental market and prices. The lack of urban planning regulation that currently determines in the Canary Islands where holiday housing can and cannot be exploited has led to an exponential increase in tourist rental units over the last decade, now recorded at 220,000 in the Canary Islands, according to government data.
Ashotel and SB have been united since 2014 for an effective regulation of holiday housing, which already has a draft law from the Canarian Government, a move the hotel employers’ association considers positive simply because there will finally be regulation of an activity that has operated without any control so far. This phenomenon has contributed to the displacement of workers from the tourist hubs where they work to more distant areas, causing mobility issues in daily commutes and, consequently, an increase in work absenteeism,” the statement reads.
