Tenerife tourism expects to close the year with an all-time high record number of visitors, according to the town council president Carlos Alonso, who said that the island could end 2017 with more than 5.7 million guests. Such amount would represent an all-time record.
The president said that Tenerife "continues showing its strength as a tourist destination because the influx of visitors to the island is continuously increasing despite the recovery of competing destinations such as Turkey, Egypt or Greece."
The Tenerife tourism councilor, Alberto Bernabé, said such figures reflect the reinstatement of the hotel supply that was on a renovation process, especially in the north, which is attracting new tourists and this gets reflected in the accommodation data.
Between January and September, the island accommodated a total of 4,301,221 tourists, which is 2.1% more than in the same period of 2016, with positive figures for both hotel (+ 1.6%) and non-hotel related businesses (+ 3.2%).
Regarding the main source markets, Tenerife has accumulated a total of 3,333,715 foreign guests from January to September, 1.8% more than during the same period of last year.
The British market recorded a total of 1,587,261 guests until September, which represents an increase of 2.2 percent when compared to the previous year. The French (+ 8.4%), the Belgian (+ 1%) and Irish (+ 13%) markets have grown as well.
The number of tourists from Austria (+ 8.7%) and Switzerland (+ 2.2%) and the tourism coming from Eastern Europe (+ 11.9%) are also positive. In addition, the Nordic markets are recovering with a 2.5% growth during the same period.
The German market, on the other hand, with 452,382 guests, decreased by 6 percent. The influx of Italians (-5.4%), Dutch (-0.8%) and Russians (-7.4%) decreased as well.
In terms of spanish tourism, it increased by 3.3 percent in the first nine months of the year to reach a total of 967,506 Spanish tourists lodged in the island's hotels.
From January to September, there were 31,816,808 overnight stays in Tenerife, practically the same as in the previous year. The average stay in the island during these months is 7.40 days on average, about -0.16 less than in the same period of 2016. From January to September the hotel occupancy reached 73 percent, 0.5 percent lower than in 2016.