LAS PALMAS DE GRAN CANARIA – The Canary Islands continue to record impressive numbers in terms of international tourism, with a whopping 1,156,001 visitors visiting this archipelago in April.
These numbers show a recovery from the pre-pandemic year of 2019 when 1,093,021 people visited the islands. This is a positive signal that tourism on the islands is returning to normal levels.
German tourists show a strong recovery
What emerges strikingly in the report of Turismo de Islas Canarias is the recovery of German tourism. In April there were 244,436 German visitors. That is almost 17,000 more than in the same month of 2019.
This is particularly good news for the Canary Islands, as Germany is the most important market after the UK. German tourism has suffered greatly from the economic turmoil caused by the war in Ukraine.
In 2022, the Canary Islands received 18% fewer German tourists than in 2019, and the average number of visitors between 2016 and 2019 fell by 27%. However, April 2023 happened to be the only month in 2022 in which there were more German tourists than in 2019.
The United Kingdom remains the most important market
The United Kingdom remains the main tourism market in the Canary Islands, with 461,533 visitors. That was an increase of 7.2% compared to April 2019. Other markets that also saw significantly more visitors to the archipelago include the Netherlands, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland.
In contrast, the number of tourists from the Nordic countries, which historically have a strong presence on the islands, has fallen sharply, except for Denmark. Sweden showed a decrease of 34% and Finland delivered almost half as many tourists as before.
Strong start to 2023 with almost 5 million visitors
The high season has brought promising results for the Canary Islands, with a total of 4,937,189 foreign tourists visiting the islands in the first four months of this year. This number is higher than the 4,762,843 visitors recorded in the same period before the pandemic in 2022.
In addition, these arrival figures for 2023 exceed those of the first four months of the record year 2017 for tourism on the islands. Then there were a total of 14.4 million visitors.
The recovery of tourism in the Canary Islands is a positive development for the economy of the islands, which is highly dependent on the tourism sector. They show that confidence in travel to the islands is returning.
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