Gran Canaria tourist competitiveness: competitor markets behaviour (Tunisia, Turkey And Egypt) and future forecasts

Abstract

The provisional data available for 2018, despite denoting a negative average annual growth continues maintaining the Canary Islands with the best data in ADR and RevPar throughout the state, just below the Balearic Islands, that perhaps have suffered less intensely the recovery of competitor markets and the evident economic slowdown of the last year.In these circumstances, Tourism figures of 2018 can not be more promising, both in Canary Islands and in Gran Canaria. More than 15 million tourists visited the Canary Islands in 2018, of which 4.5 million did so on Gran Canaria, which means 28,98% of the total number of visitors to the archipelago.It is evident that since 2016, the high point of these last years since 2011, there has been a deceleration of tourist arrivals in parallel in the Canary Islands and Gran Canaria, suffering even in 2018 a setback in relation to the year 2017. The data of the last three years, must necessarily relate to the behaviour they have had in the same years, three destinations, direct competitors of the Canary Islands such as Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey.In absolute terms, it seems logical thinking that more than 4 million tourists in 2018 year could be considered good data in order to maintain the participation of this sector in the island economy. However, it is the comparison with previous years and the behaviour of the competitor markets that should put in question the different magnitudes analyzed previously. Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey are the markets that are the object of this analysis, their behaviour in recent years and the forecasts for the next ones, which will oblige the Canary Islands in general and Gran Canaria in particular to make a greater effort in the battle for competitiveness. As regards Tunisia, it continued in 2018 with a percentage variation of 20,4% to 8.4 million tourists. As for Egypt, the year 2018 was the consolidation of the recovery of the Arab Republic and 11.9 million tourists, with a percentage increase compared to the previous year of 44,5%, which was 3.6 million increase tourists. And finally, Turkey in 2018 and in the same trend as the previous year, the increase in tourists, more tempered, accounted for 18,15%, reaching 45.6 million tourists and earning 7 million more tourists in relation to the previous exercise.