Attractions Tenerife

The Russian cyclist Alexander Vinokurov from the Astaná team highlighted during an interview given to the Italian sports journal “La Gazzetta dello Sport”, the excellent conditions the island presents for cycling training. The cyclist, who has prepared for the upcoming road competitions in Tenerife, said that “this island has everything: sun, roads, mountains and height”.

Vinokurov explained that the perfect conditions of the island make that many cyclists, including himself, choose Tenerife for their training. “I am not the only one; hotels were full of them, who were by themselves or with their teams”, he said.

The Tourism counsellor of the island, José Manuel Bermúdez, underlined that “the island is now recognized as a privileged place for top athletes to train; they come every year to Tenerife to train for the competitions’ seasons”.

This Russian cyclist has recently wined the “Giro del Trentino” tour in Italy, after the two-year-sanction period he had to comply with after a positive dope test result in 2007. Among Vinokurov achievements it can be mentioned the “Vuelta de España” tour (2006), the “Vuelta de Alemania” tour (2001), the “Vuelta a Suiza” tour (2003), the “Paris Niza” tour (2002 – 2003) and the “Dauphiné Libéré” tour (1999) apart from being the winner of uncountable stages of different tours, and finishing in third place in the “Tour de France” 2003.

About a year ago, the Astaná team with Alberto Contador and Lance Amstrong as team leaders spent a few training days in Tenerife. At that moment, Amstrong said that Tenerife was “one of the best places to train because of the weather, the roads’ condition, and the people, who are patient and kind”.

Football teams from the first European divisions as well as athletes from different disciplines, make use of the excellent training conditions that Tenerife offers. One of the latest examples is the German Football team who trained in the south of the island a few weeks ago, using the Tenerife Top Training facilities.

Canarias is leading the number of tourists who travel in low-cost airlines to Spain receiving 20.9% of the total of arrivals, which is equivalent to 443,613 passengers, according to the data provided today by the Industry, Tourism and Commerce Ministry.

Besides, Canarias increased in March 11.3% the arrival of visitors to its islands in these low-cost airlines, strengthen its leading position above the province of Catalonia, which has the 20.4%.

Below are situated the Valencian Community with the 14.2%, Balearic Islands with the 14.1%, Andalusia 13.8%, and the Community of Madrid with 12.7%. These last ones were the ones which had a higher grow having Madrid +29.1%, and Valencia +12.5%.

From the beginning of this year, Canarias, Catalonia, and Valencia headed the ranking of tourists arrivals in low-cost airlines with the 23.3%, equivalent to 1.22 million passengers, 20.8% (1.09 million passengers), and 13.8% (726,462 passengers) respectively. Madrid had 27.2% passengers more with regards to the previous year, and Catalonia registered a 1.6% passengers lost.

The Balearic Islands registered 11.8% receiving 621,550 tourists, while Andalusia registered 13% (686,322 passengers) from the total.

In a national scope, the low-cost airlines transported 5.26 million passengers during the first quarter of the year, which means 4.9% more than last year with respect to conventional airlines, which transported 5.12 million passengers maintaining the same number that last year.

From January to March, low-cost airlines grabbed more than the half of the international passengers’ arrivals in Spain, equivalent to 50.7%, while conventional airlines held the 49.3% of the flights.
In the first quarter of this year, Spanish airports received 10.4 million international passengers, 2.8% more than 2009.

According to the farm manager, Paulino Delgado, the compost they produce is a mixture of wood, barley husks, tomatoes, bananas, fruits, plants and other vegetables. This is an organic product, free of pesticides and artificial fertilizers, which results perfect for any garden, banana plantation or vegetables plantation.

Making quality compost avoiding the use of chemical components is a hard work, because it takes from three to four months for this mixture to be ready for packaging. First of all, organic scraps are stored, and then they go through a grinding process, being sometimes mixed with barley husks. After that, they are placed in bands to go through a turn-over machine. Finally, the product goes through a winnowing machine and ends in the packaging section. The surplus of compost is put in the machine again to be re-utilized.

“Not always the compost is mixed with barley husks”, said the manager of the farm Canarias Forestal which produces this compost. This farm has sixty head of cattle and they also use the manure of the animals for the compost, although they sell this manure unprocessed as well.
The Guía de Isora, Santiago del Teide, and Adeje municipalities leave all their biodegradable wastes such as plants, flower and tree prunes, and grass in Canarias Forestal. Adeje, for example, leaves almost all their waste from gardens and parks. Besides, some hotels bring the grass they cut in their golf courses, and many breweries also provide this farm with their barley husks.

“At the beginning, we produced the compost for our own use, but because economic reasons we started to sell it with a good demand of it”, said the manager of the farm. They can produce three hundred compost packs per day, which are sold 3 euros each one.

“The majority of our customers are farmers and agricultural cooperatives”, said Paulino. Likewise, Canarias Forestal produces compost tea that is added to the crops by irrigation. “This way, we close the circle bringing back to earth what was taken from it”, he said.

Airports’ closure in northern Europe because of an ash cloud caused by the eruption of an Iceland’s volcano last Wednesday is the responsible for the cancellation of more than one thousand flights from and to Canarias, leaving grounded in this archipelago more than 75,000 people.

This Saturday, 496 departure and arrival flights to Canarias were cancelled and about 42,000 people couldn’t travel. The most affected island was Gran Canaria, with 153 international flights cancelled, followed by Tenerife, which ‘Aeropuerto Sur’ had a total of 140 cancellations. Fuerteventura Island also had 135 cancelled flights while Lanzarote and La Palma islands had 62 and 6 flights cancelled respectively.

AENA confirmed this Sunday that from the total of scheduled flights between Canarias’ airports and European airports, 337 were cancelled. The northern Tenerife airport has two cancelled flights while the southern Tenerife airport had 123 cancelled flights. Gran Canaria had 83 cancellations, Lanzarote 99, and in Fuerteventura 30 flights were cancelled.
‘Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea (AENA) a public entity in charge of airports’ operation has a crisis committee functioning on each Canarias’ airport to provide information to the passengers affected by this situation, and to provide them assistance during their stay at the archipelago until they can return to their country of origin. On the other hand, Turismo de Tenerife, an organization devoted to tourism promotion in Tenerife, is running its tourists assistance procedure for this kind of situations with the intention to make tourists’ wait in the island as comfortable as possible.

Tenerife has won the Luxury Tourism Award 2010 at the international tourist exhibition of Lugano for the best seaside destination. The island won this award together with Baden-Baden (Germany), an acknowledgment given by the professionals who participated of this exhibition that took place last week in this Swedish city.

The insular tourism counsellor, José Manuel Bermúdez, said that the winning of this prize “is an acknowledgement to the continuous work of the ‘Turismo de Tenerife’ office to promote the island as a luxury destination”. This award means “a clear signal that we are in the right path and it confirms that we are one of the main European destinations in this category” he added. Other international destinations were competing for the same award. Among them there were Pakistan, Turkey and Italy.
“The presence of the island in this event gave us the chance to make known our most exclusive tourist offer to the milliard of professional luxury travel buyers that participated in this exhibition”.

One of the goals of Tenerife for this exhibition was to promote its brand ‘Tenerife Select’ among 120 companies from about 30 countries participants of this exhibition. ‘Tenerife Select’ collects the most exclusive tourist offer of this destination, from accommodation to gastronomy and leisure, which includes theme parks, shopping malls and golf courses.
The Luxury Tourism exhibition of Lugano is an event meant for tourism professionals which consists on meetings and workshops. During its presentation at the exhibition, Tenerife participated in about 50 meetings with the main tourist operators and travel agencies specialized in luxury travel for customers of high purchasing power.
Four hotels accompanied ‘Turismo de Tenerife’ to this exhibition: ‘El Mirador’, ‘Las Madrigueras’, ‘El Botánico’ and the ‘Bahía del Duque’.

“TURISMO DE TENERIFE” (web tenerife) Has published 9 new leaftlels with updated information about all the things you can do in the island of Tenerife.

Leaflets embeded bellow:

Tenerife for the family

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Games and activities

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Tenerife Gay Friendly (LGTB)

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Traditions of Tenerife

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Tenerife gastronomy

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Tenerife by car

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Tourist guide of Tenerife

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Get Active on Tenerife

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Tenerife Golf

Tenerife Convention Bureau

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Tenerife, an island to enjoy

The Tourism Revolution in Spain movement will present this Thursday in the Tenerife’s municipality of Puerto de la Cruz, the transformation of the tourist model with the aim to “incorporate to the tourist business ecosystem some elements such as innovation, and values such as sustainability and environmental impact or social responsibility”.

“All the experts agree on the fact that the tourist model in Spain is declining, and that the economic crisis has aggravated the factors that cause the lost of competitiveness. However, this same crisis promotes the flourishing of transformation dynamics”, states in a release the “Fundación Empresa de la Universidad de La Laguna” (De la Laguna University Business Found), which has promoted this initiative.

Tourism Revolution (TR) is a movement based on the transformation capability of the nets formed by the people part of this movement. It is configured as a business ecosystem where the open innovation leads. The TR movement identifies the different actors according to their capabilities and area of activity. This group forms the TPR (Tourism Revolution People).
From this movement comes the idea that “the fragmentation, the predator models of large tourist groups, and the short-time visions of all the involved actors have generated dynamics that work against the progressive transformation of the tourist business to the achievement of sustainable competitiveness”. As an alternative, they propose “a transformation that allows the development of a tourist business community which serves the society and the environment, which are the reason for their existence, and not the other way round, consequence of speculation and short-time planning”.
This is the approach that will be set out in this convention that will start at 8.30 a.m. ending at 2.30 p.m. There will be initial contextual speeches, formative and informative pieces aimed at taking actions, as well as workshops to get more interaction between participants and speakers. The event is addressed to innovation managers and tourist business professionals including related areas professionals (TIC, energy, environment, among others); university students with entrepreneur motivations; university researchers and management professionals in the public area among other interested actors.

Among the speakers will be Alfonso Castellano, Tourism Revolution Ecosystem in Spain leader and member of the Tourist Marketing Experts Committee of the Government Tourist Department, and manager of “Re-Animación” and “InnovaTravel”. Eduardo William, co-leader of this movement will participate too, who is the author of the doctoral thesis live broadcasted about abundance model applied to tourist business and founder of the Canarias’ regional cluster of tourism.

Canarias islands may be visited for many reasons. Tenerife for example, an island which has the 48 percent of its territory protected, and where you can practice active tourism including activities such as diving, surf, golf or whales watching, another remarkable event is the vegetation blooming in May and June.

Canarias islands are one of the most important volcanic areas in the world. They started emerging from the ocean’s bottom 23 million yeas ago, as a consequence of the magma activity. This magma constituted a spectacular natural scenario which is now known as the “Parque Nacional Las Cañadas del Teide” (Teide’s Streams National Park) located in the Tenerife Island, being part of the UNESCO World Heritage since 2007.

Bloom at “Cañadas del Teide” brings color to the wide mass of vegetation that covers this park, where the most important vegetal specimens of the Canarias’ islands can be found. Blooming provides the perfect scenario for hiking and the observation of the “taijanaste rojo” (Echium wildprtii), which is a bright symbol of the park during its brief spring bloom when it covers with tiny red flowers. This plant that has three meters high, blooms only one time in its life and then it dies the same as the “taijanaste azul” (blue taijanaste).

This arid and hostile environment provided by the volcanic rocks of the “Cañadas del Teide” park is the home for the “violeta del Teide” (Teide’s Violet), a violet species that grows only in this island like the “taijanaste”. This violet is considered a unique and extremely beautiful specimen which is rare to find. Other rare and beautiful vegetal specimens that can be found there are the “Edelweiss del Teide” (Gnaphalium teydeum) and the “retama del Teide”, which are particular of this territory, and grow in this marvellous park where visitors can appreciate the struggle of natural life to survive in such a extreme environment.

A new initiative by the “Turismo de Tenerife”, called “TBC Academy”, has stated-up to train congress, conventions, and incentive travel planners about the tourist attractions of the island. These meetings and events bring to the island about 80,000 tourists per year.

The initiative will start-up in two weeks and will have to parts: one theoretical and one practical. The theoretical part will take place in the native cities of the professionals, and the practical part will take place in the island, where the participants will be able to know at first-hand all the available offers. José Manuel Bermúdez, counsellor of tourism and main authority of “Turismo de Tenerife”, said in a communiqué that “initiatives like this one are intended, first, to make the island known and second, to make the congress planners enjoy the island to the maximum. This way, when a company comes to them requesting the planning of an event, these professionals can transmit them their experience, and therefore, influence them to make the event here”.
The counsellor reminded the importance of this kind of tourism, “which year by year bring to the island about 80,000 tourist who participate in a milliard meetings and events we hold”.

The first two training courses organized by “Tenerife Convention Bureau” (TBC), and the “Turismo de Tenerife” office which is in charge of the promoting of the island as place for congresses, meetings and incentive travel, will take place in Barcelona and Madrid the 20th and 22nd of April. This training course will have a participation of about one hundred companies.

In this training course, the island will be presented as one of the most important destinations for congresses; the advantages that Tenerife has for event planners will be explained apart from providing several examples.

In June, the participants to this event will have the chance to put in practice what they learned through the project ‘The Ultimate Tenerife Experience’ which celebrates its six season in Tenerife, and will provide the participants a first-hand knowledge of everything the island offers to make this kind of events.

Although the initiative is limited to Barcelona and Madrid for the moment, it is expected to broaden it to other regions of Spain and abroad.

Tenerife is one of the candidates for the ‘Luxury Tourism Award’, which awards the best tourist destination in the world, under the category of luxury destination in the coast. This award will be presented during the International Tourism Exhibition in Lugano (Switzerland) that will take place from the 8th to 10th of April, when the Island will have the chance to show its appeal as tourist destination.

The island counsellor of tourism and main responsible of the ‘Turismo de Tenerife’, José Manuel Bermúdez, highlighted in a press release the importance of this nomination that confirms the island to be “one of the first luxury destinations in Europe”. The counsellor added that the presence of Tenerife in this event “will allow us to show our most exclusive offer to thousands of professional buyers of luxury trips who will be present at the show”.

Tenerife will be present in this event, where 120 companies of about thirty countries participate, to make known its brand ‘Tenerife Select’, that gathers the most exclusive tourist offer of Tenerife regarding accommodation as well as gastronomy or leisure which includes from theme parks to golf courses or shopping malls.

The Lugano exhibition is meant for professionals where meetings and workshops take place. Tenerife will participate in about 40 meeting with the main tourist operators and travel agencies specialized in luxury travel and personalized packages for high purchasing power.

Together with ‘Turismo de Tenerife’, three hotel members of ‘Tenerife Select’ will participate of this exhibition: ‘El Mirador’, ‘Hotel Botánico’ and ‘Las Madrigueras’. Besides, ‘Bahía del Duque’ hotel participates with its own stand.