The goal is to attract more than two million tourists to Santa Cruz in 2022, a number similar to those who visited the capital before the pandemic. To this end, the Santa Cruz City Council, in collaboration with Ashotel, have launched a crash plan, endowed with 600,000 euros, to turn the city, between September and December of this year, into a point of tourist attraction. This was announced yesterday by the mayor of Santa Cruz, José Manuel Bermúdez, together with the councilor delegate of the Development Society, Alfonso Cabello, who estimated the losses of the tourism sector of the capital at 65 million due to the impact of COVID. According to municipal figures, tourist spending fell from 111 million in 2019 to 45 in 2020. In the first of the years 2.5 million tourists visited the capital, in the second, only 896,000.
The mayor valued the public-private collaboration to carry out initiatives such as the emergency plan, highlighting that “Ashotel is an essential ally in the recovery of Santa Cruz.” The legs on which this initiative will be supported are tourism marketing, marketing, and revitalization.
In this way, as explained by the delegate councilor of the Development Society, “in addition to achieving two million tourists in the capital, the second objective is to progress as an intelligent tourist destination, a concept that is based on sustainability, modernity, quality and competitiveness ”.
Cabello explained that the first line of action, that of tourism marketing, is aimed at the travel sales platforms with which the City Council works (Expedia and El Corte Inglés), the option of visiting Santa Cruz is the one suggested as first on the list to users seeking to travel to the Canary Islands. “The destination of this line is the international and national market, with the idea that through these sales channels, Santa Cruz becomes more directly visible.”
The second line, that of communication and marketing actions, directed in this case to the peninsular market, focusing on those provincial capitals with direct flights to Tenerife, in which digital campaigns and national radios will be developed, with the aim of attract visitors by viewing the city directly in the searches that potential tourists make on the Internet. “This is a programmatic digital campaign with which we want that, when they search the Internet for the Canary Islands or Tenerife, accommodation in Santa Cruz be suggested as a priority. To this we will join radio campaigns, in which they will talk about the benefits of Santa Cruz, with ideas such as being kilometer 0 to visit Tenerife ”.
This same line has its version for the regional market, in which on this occasion, Cabello explained, “we will try to attract visitors from the rest of the Islands.” To do this, the City Council will turn to the figure of the Influencers so that they are, through their social networks, the ones that offer information about the city such as places to visit, where to eat or where to stay. In terms of revitalization, “Plenilunio, Tecnológica, Black Week and Christmas, are the milestones that we have ahead these three months with which we intend to position the Santa Cruz destination not only locally but also regionally.”
From Ashotel, its vice president, Gabriel Wolgeschaffen, stressed that “from our organization we only have words of gratitude, because since we began to talk about tourism in the capital we have gone one step at a time together with the City Council.” He pointed out that “wickers are good for recovery, because both in terms of flights, in which we have recovered almost 100% of connectivity, and cruises, the figures for this winter will be similar to those of 2019 ”. Wolgeschaffen recalled that 91% of the hotel plant in Santa Cruz is already open and that they were the first to do so, although he admitted that, as city hotels, those in Santa Cruz are taking a little longer to recover.
The Strategic Tourism Plan, another tool
Alfonso Cabello defended that, in addition to this shock plan, whose stimuli could be extended until the first half of 2022, it will be supported by the future Strategic Tourism Plan 2022-2026, which is already being worked on and which will establish the strategic lines of the tourist development in the city, adapted to the new circumstances. Some words that were seconded by the Councilor for Economic Promotion who stressed that “Santa Cruz, Ciudad Segura was the message that we included as soon as we took office in 2020 and we have shown that they were not just words, but deeds, which is what we they ask for entrepreneurs and freelancers ”.
