Tenerife doubled the number of foreign digital nomads and remote workers after the covid-19 pandemic. The data reflects that they went from 10,000 received in 2020 to 23,000 in 2023. 130% more. This is one of the conclusions of the balance of ten years of validity of the investment attraction platform Why Tenerife? The Councilor for Foreign Action of the Cabildo, Liskel Álvarez, recalled that the commemorative act will take place next Thursday, the 30th, at the Mencey hotel in Santa Cruz. It will have four sector tables referring to strategic economic areas, technology and R&D; video game; audiovisual and innovation; free zones, port activity and wind and marine renewable energy.
“Arriving together is progress and working together is success.” The words of Henry Ford, pronounced by Santiago Sesé, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, closed the event. It defines the philosophy of Why Tenerife?, a brand made up of five partners: Cabildo, through the Foreign Action and Tenerife Tourism areas; Chamber of Commerce; Port Authority; Canary Islands Special Zone (ZEC) and Tenerife Free Zone (ZFT). The commemoration of the tenth anniversary will feature a panel of 22 leading speakers who will address strategic lines and projects. Always based on diversifying the economy and generating employment.
Fourteen actions per year
Liskel Álvarez explained that over these ten years an average of 140 promotion actions for Tenerife have been carried out, 14 per year, and 1,000 queries from companies interested in investing in the Island have been answered, with an average of 100 annual.
Álvarez explained that, through Why Tenerife?, promotional materials and information on investments, sectoral sales notebooks, attention services, advice and accompaniment to companies are also prepared, as well as promotional campaigns to publicize the Island as a investment destination.
The platform has enriched its services with the Work and Play program linked to digital nomads and remote workers to promote actions that help create activity for this sector and build loyalty.
Liskel Álvarez underlines the importance of the technology and innovation sector as the third to attract investment, along with tourism and the port, other areas are being consolidated.
For Álvarez, the creation of the platform has been a great success in promoting Tenerife. He emphasizes that “the existence of talent is key to attracting investment, which we have in abundance, to turn the Island into a pole of attraction for knowledge, innovation and technology.”
Santiago Sesé, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, indicates that “Why Tenerife is an example of institutional collaboration that has remained a pillar in the economic development of the Island”. It values advantages such as the geostrategic position or tax incentives. He insists that “it is up to all of us to assume the challenge of being investment facilitators and that goes through streamlining and simplifying the administrative procedures when landing.”
In addition, it states that once they are installed, they must continue to be cared for so that they grow and reinvest in the Island. Thus, they generate employment and a pull effect.
According to data from the United Nations, 60% of the foreign investment that destinations receive comes from companies already installed that decide to reinvest again, “so it is essential that these companies know that we are at their side,” he points out.
The special delegate of the State for the Free Zone, Margarita Pena, highlights that “the success stories with the establishment in recent years of four companies in the sector show that the Free Zone can represent an opportunity for the development of an export industry in Tenerife generating qualified and permanent jobs”. In the coming years, the Tenerife Free Zone aspires to “improve the services it offers”.
The president of the Consortium, Pablo Hernández gonzalez-Barreda, highlights that the Canary Islands Special Zone (ZEC) allows to attract Canary Islands and to Tenerife hundreds of projects that take advantage of the incentives of the Economic and Fiscal Regime (REF) to develop.
Hernández values: ««Unique companies in the world such as a submarine, pioneering circular economy plants, one of serial R&D or animation and video game studios linked to leading world platforms such as Netflix, Apple or Amazon, have settled in Tenerife Thanks to the ZEC.
Hernández qualifies that “it is necessary to value the fact that taxation alone would not have attracted these companies.” He considers that “they come for an ecosystem in which all the institutions that make up Why Tenerife? together with the Canarian Society for Economic Development (Proexca) and the Government of the Canary Islands».
At the meeting, the joint work carried out by institutions and organizations to attract investment was valued. In 2022 the good figures seem to be consolidated. According to recent data from the Data Invest database, the investment in the islands has been 269 million euros. In the last decade, 198 companies from 36 different countries have settled in Tenerife to generate 13,500 jobs. Most come from Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom.
