The crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic caused the Canary Islands tourism sector to lose some 3.87 million foreign visitors and 4,794 million euros in spending during the first half of the year.
In the case of the island of Lanzarote , which represents twenty percent of the total tourism that reaches the islands and 7 percent of tourism revenue, we would be talking about losses amounting to 760,000 tourists and about 335 million euros that have ceased to enter as tourist spending.
The National Statistics Institute (INE) published on Monday the surveys of border tourist movements (Frontur) and tourist spending by international tourists (Egatur) for June, with accumulated data for six months.
That month, with the first measures to reopen the sector after the end of the de-confinement process, the Canary Islands received 2,201 foreign tourists, after more than 75 consecutive days of zero visitors (the second half of March and April and May in full).
This figure confirms the Canary Islands as the tourist community hardest hit by covid-19 , with an interannual decrease in visitors of 99.8% (in June 2019 it received 931,782 foreign tourists).
In June, the communities that were previously open to foreign tourism already registered figures of 76,634 visitors (Catalonia), 31,487 (Valencian Community) and 28,382 (Balearic Islands), although in the three cases with interannual decreases of more than 96 percent.
In the accumulated index of the year, the Canary Islands ended the first semester with 2.73 million foreign tourists, almost the ones it had on March 14, when the Council of Ministers declared a state of alarm.
On the other hand, in 2019, also on June 30, the islands had already been the vacation destination of 6.60 million foreign tourists.
The comparison between both figures shows a decrease of 3.87 million tourists in the semester (-58.6% year-on-year), concentrated in three and a half months, since the activation of the state of alarm.
In terms of spending, the 2,201 foreign tourists in June invoiced 2.70 million euros on their trips to the Canary Islands, which represents a drop of 99.76% compared to the 1,137 million income recorded by the sector in the same month of 2019.
However, those 2.70 million euros are the first expenses generated by foreign tourism in the Canary Islands in two and a half months, since the second half of March.
In accumulated data, the Canary Islands reached the end of the first semester with a tourist expense generated by foreign tourists of 3,454.89 million euros, again almost the same as at the end of the first half of March (3,452.20 million).
In the first semester, the sector saw a reduction of 4,794 million in the turnover generated by foreign tourists compared to the same period in 2019, which represents a drop of 58.12% concentrated in three and a half months (from the alarm state) .
