Southern Europe opens doors for tourists but witnesses meager tourists

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

The south-western coast of Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands is normally busy and lively But now, a month after Covid-19 lockdown ended, the doors to many resorts remain shut.

Although tourism is returning to southern Europe from Portugal to Greece, its revival is slow in the midst of new cases of outbreak in some countries. Bookings have dropped 80 percent in Italy in spite of government incentives. Ferries to the Greek islands are carrying half the load they once did.

Although Europeans are now traveling more within their own countries, fewer are traveling beyond their borders, especially the holiday makers from Britain, Germany and other northern countries who typically visit south each year, spending billions of Euros.

And visitors from outside the continent are still infrequent: Just 13 countries are on the list of those considered safe by the European Union, and that excludes the United States. This blow can be sharply felt in tourist destinations that are dependent on air travel, like the Canary Islands, hundreds of miles from mainland Spain. Property owners in the Canary Islands have opened only around 20 percent of the tourism beds in the archipelago.

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