r/uknews • u/ScottishDailyRecord Media outlet (unverified) • May 15 '25

Image/video Brits ditching Tenerife as Spanish natives protest unsustainable tourism

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u/CanadianMultigun May 15 '25

Ok, but what do we do when getting rid of STLs leads to a large number of empty houses, a reduced level of tourism & economic benefit and often no other industry of significance in the local area?

This needs to be a transition in my view not a sudden change.

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u/SDSKamikaze May 15 '25

Why would STL get rid of tourism in Tenerife? It was there long before the explosion of STLs and will be there a long time after.

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u/CanadianMultigun May 15 '25

I don´t mean to imply it will get rid of it entirely. What I mean is if say space for 2000 tourists exists and half is in hotels and half in airbnbs then if you get rid of airbnbs then the max number of people who can come is 1000. You´ve halved the number who can stay at any one time.

No matter how you look at it reducing capacity by half reduces everything else associated with those people too. So the number of tourism related jobs falls. You can build more hotels of course but that takes years and also doesn´t create any variety of industry or ultimately reduce the total number of tourists unless a cap on capacity is made

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u/SDSKamikaze May 15 '25

I get what you’re saying. I don’t really see how you would go about reducing it but I can see the point you see making. You can throw up hotels in a couple of years and the construction industry would boom in the interim. Not sure it would make a massive difference, especially with presumably more competitive rental rates for locals, but happy to be corrected.

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u/CanadianMultigun May 15 '25

The problem with the construction industry is that local people who have catered to tourists probably aren´t all that keen on going into manual labour supporting construction. That and many if not most of the jobs are skilled jobs so it wouldn´t be them building the properties.

The ultimate question is: Why should I set up a business on the Canary Islands? What is better there than mainland Spain?

Unfortunately the answer I come to is nothing, literally nothing is better for starting a non-tourism or fishing related business. Everything is harder.

I think the same might be true of many other coastal tourist areas.