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Actually, vacationers would now sizzle in the sun here - but because tourists stay at home because of Corona, hotel rooms are becoming small offices.
Pool view included.
Photo: Christine Bay
Yaiza Castilla has a plan.
If it rises, everyone benefits.
The Canary Islands Tourism Minister would like to bring
30,000
teletrabajadores
, Spanish for “teleworkers”, to the islands, preferably permanently.
At least in part, the hotels should be filled again, which are often empty in Corona times.
Conversely, laptop workers plagued by lockdown and winter gray from Germany, Great Britain or elsewhere could benefit from a comparatively unrestricted life under the sun.
Germany makes gloomy and unproductive
Like Christine Bay, a freelance graphic designer and photographer from near Koblenz.
"Traveling is my passion and I always have a camera, computer and graphics tablet with me anyway," says the 30-year-old, "I can work with it from anywhere".
At the beginning of November she flew to Gran Canaria and designed websites, flyers and other promotional materials for her customers from here.
»What should I sit alone at home in my apartment?
In addition to Corona and contact restrictions, there is also winter.
That makes me gloomy and unproductive. "
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With 15 other self-employed and employees from half of Europe - including specialists in online advertising and social media as well as SAP consultants, a financial analyst and a psychotherapist - Christine Bay now lives and works in a small holiday resort in Maspalomas, which has bungalows with office furniture and faster internet the needs of the target group have been adapted.
They use the pool and the nearby beach during work breaks and as a reward or motivational aid.
"Pop-up co-living" is what the providers call their offer in the touristy south of the island and are reacting to the challenges of the pandemic.
Similar to the way in which lanes and parking bays were temporarily rededicated to pop-up cycle paths and pop-up beer gardens in German cities, the holiday complex is now being used by remote workers for four weeks as an accommodation with home office on a trial basis.
Everyone has their own bungalow and keeps their distance
“The concept is great,” says Lars Bornecke, who also lives and works here.
"Everyone has their own bungalow with their own desk, kitchen and bathroom," the mechanical engineer from Bonn lists.
Unlike the co-working and co-living offers that have long been widespread on the islands, everyone can keep a safe distance here.
Meetings with temporary colleagues take place outdoors, by the pool or at the coffee station.
"It just feels safer under Corona conditions," says Bornecke.
The Canaries are currently one of the safest regions in Europe anyway.
In the archipelago, the seven-day incidence value has been below 50 for months, in the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, to which Maspalomas belongs, even below 10. Nevertheless, the tourists stay away.
The holiday resorts designed for mass tourism such as Maspalomas and Playa del Inglés are almost extinct.
Many hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops are closed, some for good.
Return to the Corona winter?
Not planned
80 percent of economic output and 40 percent of employment in the Canary Islands depend directly or indirectly on tourism.
A good 15 million guests came to Gran Canaria, Tenerife and the other islands in 2019, mainly British and German.
Both countries have declared the Canaries a safe travel destination, but are now themselves in the middle of the second wave and restrict public life and air traffic.
"I practically got out of the UK on the last plane before the lockdown made travel impossible," says Lizzie Clitheroe, who flew from London to Gran Canaria in early November.
She heads the marketing department of a start-up in San Francisco that offers solutions against internet fraud and spam emails.
“I moved to the United States in March.
A week later the travel ban for Europeans came.
So I went back to England quickly and worked from there.
Now from the Canaries. "
For a Californian start-up, Zoom conferences are of course by no means new territory, as they are for the many employers in Germany who have now had to give up their reluctance to work from anywhere in the pandemic.
When Lizzie Clitheroe flies home, she also wants to make it dependent on the situation in London.
Maybe it will stay for a long time.
Just like Lars Bornecke from Bonn, who has been living in Gran Canaria for four years and is building software development teams for a Berlin consulting firm that work remotely for customers in Central Europe.
The 33-year-old actually has his office and apartment in the island's capital Las Palmas.
However, he had left the Canary Islands because of Corona and only recently returned from Germany.
For Bornecke, pop-up co-living is an interim solution that he is not unhappy about.
By chance, new contacts to cybersecurity and PR experts emerged at the pool.
"Maybe this will lead to new projects, who knows?"
Telework is more sustainable than mass tourism
It is such flexible, creative and highly qualified employees that the Canarian Ministry of Tourism has considered as a new target group, because they often have a higher purchasing power and can react quickly to changes.
For Minister Yaiza Castilla, the Canary Islands are the ideal alternative to the home office for everyone who »wants to live all year round in a place with good weather, good internet connection and all kinds of accommodation for co-working and co-living and who want to work remotely enjoy a higher quality of life. "
Ideally, the guests settle down, set up companies and employ locals.
"The mass tourism model worked well for 40 years and brought a lot of money - but also environmental problems and poorly paid service jobs," says Nacho Rodriguez, who had the idea for "pop-up co-living" and who runs the one that has been largely empty since March Persuaded Resorts to try something new.
"It's time for the industry and the islands as a whole to focus on quality from quantity," says Rodriguez, whose company Repeople, among other things, runs co-livings in Las Palmas.
The Ministry of Tourism took advice from Repeople and announced a new image campaign and tourism strategy at the end of October.
The targeted 30,000 remote workers with their salaries and different demand behavior could replace a much larger number of missing package holidaymakers and have more sustainable effects - so the hope.
Others believe that "after Corona" everything will be the same as it used to be and the masses will come back.
The operator of the resort in Maspalomas is still hoping for a normal winter when the month-long pop-up experiment ends shortly before Christmas.
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