Tourism, main driving force of Canarias’ economy, may be the way to get the archipelago out of the deep crisis in which it is immersed in. This is the conclusion form a report presented yesterday at the council session by the counsellor Rita Martin, who predicted a positive summer for the islands.

The main reason for this prediction according to Martín is the increase of 14% in the airlines capacity and the information gathered in Canarias during the first quarter of this year. She admitted that in 2009 the archipelago lost tourists as consequence of the tourism fall in the entire world. However, Rita Martin pointed out that “Canarias is still a top destination for the British and German markets, which together with the Scandinavian countries concentrate the 89% of the visitors to the island.

For this reason, Rita Martín stated that the advertising campaigns in the United Kingdom and Spain have been boosted, increasing the tourists’ numbers in islands such as Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. On the contrary, Tenerife lost more than a 3% of its visitors in 2009.

The councilwoman of the PSC party agreed with Martín’s statements and she admitted that due to the slight recovery of the issuer countries, “Canarias can have higher expectations”. In spite of this, the councilwoman Olivia Estévez said that “we are still in Intensive Care Unit because we do not count with a diagnosis that provides us the proper treatment”.

On the other hand, the councilwoman Belen Allende from the CC party pleaded for a change in terms of attitude and mentality about tourism, which according to her depends on “forgetting about high profitability in the short term”.

The councilwoman Águeda Montelongo form the PP party agreed in that respect, and considered that “we have to increase our presence in the Internet”. She said that is good news the increasing in the slots number for next summer as well as the number of seats and air connections.