SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 27 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Ministry of Tourism, Industry and Commerce of the Government of the Canary Islands, through the public company Tourism of the Canary Islands, has increased the budget of the strategy to attract ‘remote workers’ or teleworkers, after a year 2021 in which they accounted for 3,852 monthly, that is, a cumulative of 46,224 over the past year, according to the specialized portal ‘Nomad List’.
“We have more than met our expectations, as we intended to attract 30,000 teleworkers in five years, a figure that we have managed to exceed in just one year,” says the Minister of Tourism, Yaiza Castilla.
Without a doubt, he continues, “it is a milestone that favors our destination, since we are talking about a niche segment that benefits us for its long stay and for generating a higher and better distributed tourist turnover”.
Turismo de Canarias invests 2 million euros in consolidating the arrival of three long-stay tourism segments: ‘remote workers’, ‘silver plus’ and professional sports tourism, exceeding the 500,000 euros earmarked for each during the previous year.
An amount that in the case of remote workers will increase to 600,000 euros in 2022 and that, among other communication actions, will be used to launch a promotional campaign that will start in different European markets at the end of the year.
“We are making an unprecedented commitment to diversifying our tourism model in order to reduce dependence on other, more fragile segments,” says Castilla.
With regard to ‘remote workers’, “we managed to position the Canary Islands as ‘the office with the best climate in the world’, a communicative concept that has allowed us to climb positions in the ranking of the best locations in the world for teleworkers, among the that ‘Nomad List’ includes four islands, Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura”, adds the minister.
This platform also anticipates that 87,480 remote workers will arrive in the archipelago annually in 2023, which would mean a 90% growth in this tourism segment.
THE MAIN MARKETS
The ‘Nomad List’ platform collects data on the popularity of each destination in the different sending countries, taking into account the number of teleworkers who visit the destination in relation to the total population of each country.
The Czech Republic, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France are the European issuing countries with the greatest depth in the Canary Islands in proportion to the size of their population of origin.
In absolute terms, responding to the estimates of the same reference portal, the European markets that most choose the islands to telework are the United Kingdom (33%), France (15%), Germany (14%), Spain (9%) and Italy (7%).
PRIVATE PROJECTS
When it comes to achieving these data, Castilla highlights “the high involvement of the private sector in supporting the Canary Islands Tourism strategy, with the reformulation of part of the accommodation sector to adapt it to these tourists and the development of ‘coworking’ spaces, ‘ coliving’ and other specialized products, which allow us to continue advancing and be able to confirm that in recent months the destination has established itself as a benchmark for this new travel formula”.
One of these projects is the Tigotán Hub Cowork & Sand, the new bet of the Hotel Cristina by Tigotán, a hotel between the urban and the holiday located in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and which integrates into its business model a new line especially dedicated to teleworkers with a space of 1,800 square meters dedicated exclusively to this new style of work and life.
Added to this is the holding of specialized meetings, such as the third edition of ‘Remote Towns’, an initiative that links teleworking with the rural world and which, as a novelty, is being moved to La Palma on this occasion, a clear reflection of the importance that this island is adopting in the ‘remote working’ market and the adaptation of its offer.
The deadline to sign up for this experience that lasts three weeks (from June 4 to 25) is Saturday, April 30 and registration can be done on the website www.pueblosremotos.com/fuencaliente.
Another recurring meeting focused on teleworking that is held on the islands is ‘Thriving Nomads’, whose third edition took place in Gran Canaria last March.
Thus, it is a forum that brings together experts from the ‘remote working’ sector with the aim of promoting practices and strategies with a positive impact for companies and freelancers who choose to adopt a philosophy of relocated work.
One of the speakers at this event was Nacho Rodríguez, founder of Repeople and creator of the Repeople Conference event, which highlights the potential of this segment to attract markets that differ from traditional tourism.
“Teleworkers don’t have as much trouble traveling further because they are going to spend more time at the destination,” he recalls.
In addition, it highlights the importance of having a direct flight with the United States for this summer, “which gives the Canary Islands access not only to the world’s largest market of ‘remote workers’ but also to the one with the greatest purchasing power and allows the islands to compete with their most natural destinations such as Mexico, Costa Rica or Colombia”.
The Ministry also details that the Canary Islands were the origin of DigiNomads (www.diginomads.app), an application to find professional collaborators and generate community based on geolocation and developed by Giacomo Bastianelli, a teleworker who moved to the archipelago during confinement.
Since then, the promoter of the project has shared his time working remotely from Italy, France and the Canary Islands.
Canary Islands also has ‘The RemoteBook. Canary Islands’ (www.theremotebooks.com), a guide to the archipelago prepared expressly for teleworkers and created by Canarian teleworkers, one of whom founded the Escuela de Trabajo Remoto, the first agency in Spanish for advice on ‘remote working’.
