UK visitors to Tenerife to exceed two million in 2016

Visitor arrivals from the UK to Tenerife are set to exceed two million for the first time this year.

The Canary Island and timeshare hotspot has enjoyed a bumper year of growth, welcoming more than 1.55 million visitors from the UK between January to September 2016 – an increase of 19.9 per cent on the same period last year.

The figures, released by the Tenerife Tourism Corporation, demonstrate the continued strength of the UK market to Tenerife. The UK remains the island’s largest source market, accounting for 36.9 per cent of all its visitors.

Alberto Bernabé, Tourism Minister for the Tenerife Island Government, said: “This is excellent news for the island as the numbers show that this year we have welcomed about 350,000 additional British visitors to the island.

Brits’ top choice

“One out of two Britons coming to the Canary Islands choose Tenerife as their preferred destination – and nearly four out of ten visitors to Tenerife come from the UK.”

Carlos Alonso, President of the Tenerife Island Government, is confident that the growth will continue until next summer thanks to the “increase in air capacity and the launch of new routes”. There will be five new UK-Tenerife routes this winter; from Manchester (Vueling and Norwegian), Birmingham (Vueling), Newcastle (Ryanair) and Belfast (Ryanair). In addition, Thomson Airways recently launched a weekly service with from Humberside Airport.

The Irish market has also performed extremely well this year: a total of 73,001 visitors from Ireland travelled to Tenerife from January to September 2016, an increase of 19.2 per cent compared to the same period in 2015. In total, Tenerife welcomed 4,212,827 worldwide visitors in the first nine months of 2016, a 9.2 per cent upsurge on the previous year.