The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TOURISM ON TENERIFE
It was the Victorians who started it. During the late 19th century, British holidaymakers began to flee the chilly winter weather by sailing south to Tenerife. They arrived in Santa Cruz, in the island’s north, and took rooms at the Gran
Hotel Taoro in Puerto de la Cruz, purpose-built for the early – and extremely discerning – tourist.
The Taoro perched atop a hill, gazing down almost imperiously over Puerto’s fishing village turned tourist haven, and was surrounded by lush gardens ripe for post-prandial meanders. This was Tenerife’s first luxury hotel, opening in 1890 and attracting the most well-heeled of British guests – Agatha Christie stayed in 1927 and Winston Churchill paid a visit in 1959. But international travel didn’t come cheap, and so the island remained exclusive, out of reach of the masses.
Everything changed in the 1960s, with the advent of commercial air travel and the package holiday. And then three guys from Liverpool forced the island into the spotlight: George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney visited Tenerife in 1963, taking what was to be their last near-normal holiday.
In the wake of the Beatles came more and more British visitors, but not to the north; instead, the island’s newly developing south pulled them away with its shiny megahotels and hotter, drier weather. Construction boomed and resorts such as Playa de Las Americas sprang seemingly from nowhere.
In 1977, disaster struck, when the world’s deadliest aviation accident occurred at Los Rodeos airport near Puerto de la Cruz: two Boeing 747s collided on the often-foggy runway and 583 people lost their lives. A better site for the island’s main airport was established and the following year Tenerife South opened on the far south coast, bringing the new resorts into easier reach and leaving the north to develop a quieter, more exclusive brand of tourism.
Since the 1970s, British visitors have continued to fall for Tenerife and the island sees more holidaymakers from the UK than anywhere else. In 2019, over a third of the island’s tourists were British, and although Covid restrictions meant British guests couldn’t visit for periods of 2020 and 2021, today visitor numbers have recovered and are increasing: by the end of September 2023, almost 1.9 million passengers had arrived from the UK, an increase on even prepandemic 2019.
But it is the south to which people flock, and the north of Tenerife remains quiet. The discerning visitor, though, has always appreciated its verdant landscapes and authentic Canarian culture, and although a lack of guests forced the Hotel Taoro to close its doors in 1976, it’s set to reopen in 2024.