Canary Islands Tourism Board just released Canarias Destino (Canary Destination). This is the transformation strategy to build, over the next few years, a more competitive tourism by improving its resilience, a greater commitment to climate neutrality and an enhancement of its capacity to generate value, in favour of the citizens and businesses of the Canary Islands.

The covid-19 has profoundly affected the Canary Islands' tourism activity, pushing the resilience of its businesses and human capital, and even its own production model, to the limit.

Since then, Canary Islands Tourism Board, faced with the economic and social imperative of the necessary reactivation of the sector, has managed a strategy aimed at prioritising health safety throughout the tourist value chain of the Islands. From the strategy articulated around the "Canarias Fortaleza" project, work has been and continues to be carried out to provide an urgent response to a crisis which, unfortunately, is still dragging on.

The strategy

Canary Island is looking at a transformational rethinking that will allow citizens and businesses of the Region to exploit intelligently and efficiently the new opportunities that arise.

The future competitiveness of Canary Islands tourism will depend on its capacity to adapt to the changes that will define tourism in the future:

• Behavioural changes of tourists, who will look for more authentic experiences, in line with the increasing awareness of the environmental impact their trip can have.
• Changes on the global tourism model, with the digital transition as the main element for change.
• Changes in the consideration of the tourism impact in the territory, the economy, and society that develops it, which requires a greater value creation. In short, it requires a broader sovereignty over the fate

The Canarias Destino strategy aims to achieve three basic and main objectives for the transformation of the Canary Islands tourism model.

1. Improving the resilience:

In face of many challenges and constant changes, the only option is to increase the capacity for prevention and adaptation of our tourism model in the face of the changes to come.

2. Increasing its commitment to climate neutrality.

In line with the SDGs and Agenda 2030, the expectations of the visitors and the future of the Canaries’ citizens, the commitment to reducing carbon emissions from tourism-related activities must be increased.

3. Enhancing its capacity to generate value for the economy and citizens of the Canary Islands.

The success of the Canaries’ tourism model depends on ensuring that the rest of the economic activity in the Canary Islands takes more and better advantage of the traction it can offer in terms of generating wealth, employment and social welfare by extending its value chain to other sectors and boosting its capacity for innovation.

These objectives will be reached through 7 strategic axes:

• The digital leadership: the digitalisation is a key element for the transformation of the Canaries’ tourism model.
• The direct connection with the visitor: in order to know and answer their needs and desires.
• The management of the knowledge: the information is power, and the Canaries aim to transform the tourism intelligence one of their biggest strengths.
• The innovation and creativity: the maturity of destinations seems to be a threat, and the Canaries’ want to respond with more innovation and creativity.
• The extension and cohesion of the value chain: increasing the presence the “Canaries component” in all the tourism services, will make tourism fairer.
• Learning and constant iteration: In face of a scenario of constant change, Canaries want to strengthen the capacity to adapt by anticipating international trends, training professionals in competencies and change management skills, making processes more flexible.
• The empowerment of the destination: Tourism is a complex activity with a global dimension characterised by the origin-destination dichotomy. The challenge is to overcome this dichotomy in order to achieve a greater degree of control of the entire tourism production process through convergence and cooperation with the other agents involved.

Find out more about information at the webpage of Canarias Destino