IT'S A 10 OUT OF TENERIFE!

New sustainable approach to tourism in Canary Islands is paying dividends

- PAUL KAVANAGH

THE Canary Islands have served us well for decades, the year-round sunshine making it an obvious port of call for Irish holidaymakers - but maybe, just maybe, we've been doing it wrong all along.

Lanzarote, Gran Canaria and Tenerife top the bill for sun-seekers to the Canaries, and thousands of tourists flock there every year, with the endless rows of shops and cafes in the larger resorts mostly geared towards Irish and British visitors.

As global weather patterns have become more erratic in recent years, the Canaries have become a more attractive destination due to the relative reliability of the climate there.

The numbers back that up, with Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Tenerife all recording over one million extra visitors per year in 2024 than in 2010, to the extent that the holidaying population now more than trebles the actual living number of people on the islands.

Tourism drives the economies of the islands, but to many of the locals, saturation point has long since been passed. They are fed up with daily traffic gridlock in areas with limited room for manoeuvre.

You may have seen reports of anti-tourism protests in the Canaries (they also took place in several parts of mainland Spain such as Madrid and Barcelona).