October Tourist Arrivals Up 17.2% On Lanzarote

(TRAVPR.COM) SPAIN - December 12th, 2013 - The popular holiday destination of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands is on course for its best and busiest year for tourist arrivals since 2001, as the latest passenger figures for October 2013 reveal a 17.2% year on year increase in the number of holidaymakers touching down at Arrecife airport, whilst overall arrivals for the year to date are up by over 5% for the first ten months of this year.

Tourism in the Canary Islands is really starting to take off again, according to the latest data released by Frontur and IET Spain.  With the Canary Islands emerging as the second most popular regional destination in the country after Catalonia during October, with just over 1 million visitors.  Whilst for the year to date these seven islands situated off the North West coast of Africa attracted 8,517,660 arrivals.

Lanzarote accounted for 208,738 of these visitors in October and the island is now on course to break the 2.1 million arrivals mark for the year, which would represent its best performance since 2001.  And it’s not just arrivals by air that are on the up, as the number of cruise passengers docking in Lanzarote has also increased by 15.47% during the first ten months of the year (source : Las Palmas Port Authority).

Indeed the upsurge in arrivals has even caught a number of local hotel groups on the hop, as planned renovations at certain sites on the islands have been postponed in order to accommodate the unexpected increase in arrivals.

The rise in arrivals in the Canaries and on Lanzarote in particular is primarily being driven by holidaymakers from the UK, with British passenger numbers climbing by 17.5% in October alone, according to the Canarian Institute of Statistics.  Other key markets such as Eire, the Low Countries and Scandinavia have also recorded plenty of positive growth during the first ten months of 2013.

“Lanzarote is benefiting from the improving economy in the UK and the ready availability of cheap flights from budget operators”, according to Nick Ball, spokesperson for Optima Villas, who offer self-catering breaks on the island. “Turmoil in the Middle East has also forced many tourists to switch to the Canaries from destinations such as Egypt and Tunisia”.  

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