This year there have been protests in many popular holiday destinations by locals being fed up to their back teeth by over-tourism. They can´t find affordable places to live, shops they need close in favour of yet more boozers or nightclubs, rental cars clog up the roads and increasing damage is done to property and nature as well as resources being depleted and wasted. One of these places is Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Island off the coast of Africa.
Officials are increasingly put under pressure to redefine who will be welcome to the Island in future. Dimple Melwani, CEO of Tourismo de Tenerife, is defining the as socially (meaning housing, services, essentials available for residents), economical (to address the current imbalance of income from tourism which today stand at 40% and diversify) and environmentally (create awareness of the scarcity of resources and to minimise the damage done by tourism) sustainable. At the moment this aim seems far away, especially when listening to entitled package tour tourists who believe they are doing the locals a favour by partying, drinking and lying around on the beach where sand has been brought in from the Sahara.
Here is the story of a type of visitor who epitomizes all that is being criticised by the locals. Enter Jay Salter, a 19 year old criminal (he and some others were attacking another teenager with a machete back in his native Lancashire) who´s not come to Tenerife to experience and learn about a different culture but to attend a rave in a resort in Southern Tenerife. Whilst there he engages in criminal behaviour, bragging about a watch he stole, and goes off with two other foreigners to their rental flat in the North of the Island. Once there he turns around and leaves attempting to walk back to the resort - he has no knowledge of where he is, what the terrain is like (arid cliffs and ravines of a national park of volcanic rocks, cacti and sheer cliffs), he has no food or water, no gear, isn´t properly dressed for the cold night temperatures, isn´t experienced in outdoor pursuits, does not understand the language or, it seems, has done any kind of familiarisation with Tenerife before his arrival. He doesn´t arrive back at the resort and has now been lost over three weeks with wild conspiracies springing up all over the place, mainly by Social Media types who have just as little knowledge of the terrain as Jay did.
Th young man with his irresponsible behaviour during his short visit to a foreign country has not contributed an ounce to the people or economy of Tenerife, he has also disrespected the law and the search for him has tied up local police and other service and has caused great expense for the Islanders.Maybe it is therefore time to discourage this type of visitor from coming altogether by a number of municipal measures to prevent activities that do not contribute to the local economy.
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