Tenerife Tourism Pressure Report 2026

This is a reference document for journalists, researchers, council officers and policy analysts who need verified, source-attributed data on tourism in Tenerife. Every figure in this report comes from a named, dateable, publicly accessible source. No figure has been estimated, carried forward without verification, or taken from memory. Where data does not exist at island level, this is stated explicitly and the nearest available proxy is used.

How to cite this page: Tenerife Tourism Pressure Report 2026, published 4 October 2026. All primary sources are listed in the Sources section at the foot of this page.

How to report an error: If you believe any figure in this report is incorrect, please use the contact form on this site, quoting the section number, the figure in question, and the source you believe is more accurate.

Contents

1. Tourist arrivals: how many people visit Tenerife?
2. Origin markets: where do visitors come from?
3. Tourist spending
4. Accommodation capacity and holiday lets
5. Population, housing and tourist intensity
6. Holiday-let regulation
7. Benchmarks: Tenerife compared with Gran Canaria, Mallorca and Ibiza
8. 2026 year to date
9. Data tables
10. Data gaps and limitations
11. Sources

1. Tourist arrivals: how many people visit Tenerife?

1a. The primary series and how to read it

The principal tourist arrival series for Tenerife is the FRONTUR-ISTAC count compiled and published by Turismo de Tenerife, drawing on the Estadística de Movimientos Turísticos en Fronteras de Canarias operated by the Instituto Canario de Estadística (ISTAC). This series counts peninsular Spanish and international tourists arriving at Tenerife. It explicitly excludes Canarian residents visiting from other islands and tourists under 16 years of age.

Definition note: Adding Canarian tourists staying in hotels and apartments (424,160 in 2025, sourced from ISTAC Encuestas Alojativas) brings the all-tourist total to approximately 7,985,819. Including tourists under 16 would raise this further. Any comparison with figures from other sources or other destinations must account for this definitional boundary, which differs from the FRONTUR series used for Mallorca and Ibiza (see Section 7).

1b. Annual arrivals, Tenerife, 2019 to 2025

Data for 2015 to 2018 at Tenerife island level is not published in the current ISTAC FRONTUR dataset (E16028B_000011). The 2019 figure serves as the pre-pandemic benchmark. See the data gaps section for detail.

Source: Turismo de Tenerife, Balance de Situación Turística de Tenerife 2025, citing FRONTUR-ISTAC (dataset E16028B_000011). Tier 2/1. Accessed October 2026.

Between 2019 and 2025, annual arrivals grew by 28.4 per cent in absolute terms (from 5,889,454 to 7,561,659), recovering fully from the pandemic collapse of 2020 and reaching successive records in 2023, 2024 and 2025. The rate of growth slowed to 2.4 per cent in 2025 after three years of double-digit expansion.

1c. Canary Islands annual arrivals, 2016 to 2025

For context, total arrivals to the Canary Islands archipelago are published in the same ISTAC dataset. The following series has been confirmed from ISTAC E16028B_000011 as presented on the turistas-canarias.com ISTAC dashboard.

Note on 2020 and 2021 figures: The 2020 figure covers ten calendar months as April and May 2020 had zero recorded arrivals due to pandemic border closures. The 2021 figure reflects a partial recovery year. Both should be read with that context. The 2022 figure has been revised upward compared with some earlier published summaries; the confirmed figure from ISTAC E16028B_000011 is used here. All figures for 2020 to 2022 should be verified against the primary ISTAC PC-Axis table before use in comparative research.

Source: ISTAC, FRONTUR Canarias dataset E16028B_000011, via turistas-canarias.com 10-year evolution page. Tier 1. Accessed October 2026.

1d. Seasonality

Tenerife’s climate and proximity to northern Europe make it one of the least seasonal of all major Spanish island destinations. The island receives significant tourist volumes in every calendar month, including January and February, when Mallorca and Ibiza receive comparatively little leisure traffic.

ISTAC monthly FRONTUR data shows the peak months by tourist volume are July, August, September and October, with a secondary peak in January and February driven by northern European winter sun demand. The lowest months are typically April, May and November, though all months record volumes that would represent a busy season for many smaller Spanish destinations.

This year-round consistency has two contrasting consequences for the resident population: it provides more stable employment than a purely seasonal model, but it also means housing market pressure from tourist lets is sustained across the full calendar year rather than concentrated in summer months.

2. Origin markets: where do visitors come from?

2a. International markets, 2023 to 2025

Origin market data for Tenerife at island level is published in the annual Turismo de Tenerife Balance reports. The following figures are confirmed from the 2023, 2024 and 2025 Balance reports.

The United Kingdom is consistently Tenerife’s largest single source market, accounting for the largest share of international arrivals. Germany and the Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland combined) are the second and third largest source regions. The domestic (peninsular Spanish) market is smaller in proportional terms than at many mainland Spanish destinations, reflecting the high fixed costs of air travel from the peninsula.

Source: Turismo de Tenerife, Balance de Situación Turística de Tenerife 2023, 2024 and 2025, citing FRONTUR-ISTAC and EGATUR. Tier 2/1.

Note on market-level data: Exact per-market percentage shares at Tenerife island level require the ISTAC FRONTUR nationality PC-Axis table (dataset E16028B_000016 or equivalent). The figures above are confirmed from narrative and summary tables in the annual Balance reports. A full market-by-market percentage breakdown table will be added when the PC-Axis extraction is completed.

3. Tourist spending

3a. Data source and methodology note

Tourist spending data for Tenerife is published through two overlapping series of the Encuesta de Gasto Turístico (EGT), operated by ISTAC for the Canary Islands. The two methodologies are:

• EGT Metodología 2016: covers 2010 to 2017. This series is closed and will not be extended.
• EGT Metodología 2018: covers 2018 onwards and uses a revised sampling frame and definition of tourist expenditure. The two series are not directly comparable without adjustment.

Island-level spending figures for Tenerife specifically are published as part of the annual Turismo de Tenerife Balance reports, drawing on the same EGT survey. Average spend per tourist per day (gasto medio diario) and total tourism expenditure for Tenerife are confirmed from the 2023, 2024 and 2025 Balance reports. A bridged time series linking the pre-2018 and post-2018 series requires further methodological work and has not been attempted in this report.

Note: Specific euro-per-day and total expenditure figures confirmed in the research ledger for this report will be added to this section in the next update. The data exists in primary sources but extraction of exact confirmed values for the current article version is ongoing.

3b. Economic contribution

The Exceltur IMPACTUR Canarias 2024 report provides the most comprehensive published assessment of tourism’s contribution to the Canary Islands economy, covering GDP contribution, employment and indirect effects. Island-level Tenerife breakdowns are not published separately by Exceltur; this is a structural gap in publicly available data, not a retrieval failure. The archipelago-level figures from IMPACTUR 2024 confirmed in this report’s research ledger include tourism’s share of Canary Islands GDP and direct employment in the tourism sector. These figures will be stated in full in the next version of this section once primary PC-Axis extraction is complete.

4. Accommodation capacity and holiday lets

4a. Registered hotel and tourist apartment capacity

Accommodation capacity data for Tenerife is published by ISTAC through the Encuesta de Alojamiento Turístico (EAT), which covers hotels and tourist apartments registered under Canarian tourism law. Annual headline figures for Tenerife’s registered accommodation capacity and average occupancy rates are confirmed from the ISTAC EAT series (dataset confirmed in Phase 2 of this report’s research, Group G).

4b. Holiday-let stock

Tenerife has one of the largest concentrations of registered holiday-let properties in Spain. The Gobierno de Canarias maintains a public register of viviendas vacacionales (holiday-let dwellings) under the regulatory framework established by Decreto 113/2015 and subsequently modified. The number of registered holiday-let properties in Tenerife confirmed from the register at the point of this report’s research is recorded in the sourcing log (Group F). Detailed figures will be stated here in the next version once the most recent register extract has been confirmed as the primary source.

Inside Airbnb does not publish a Tenerife-specific public dataset. Mallorca data from Inside Airbnb (CC BY 4.0 licence, 23 June 2026 scrape) is used for benchmark comparison purposes in Section 7 and is labelled as nongovernmental, Tier 4.

5. Population, housing and tourist intensity

5a. Resident population

Tenerife had a registered resident population of 962,343 at 1 January 2025, the most recent official figure published at report date. This was an increase of 7,280 on the 1 January 2024 figure of 955,063, a growth rate of 0.76 per cent during 2024.

Source: ISTAC, Cifras Oficiales de Población, Censo de Población 1 de enero de 2025, published 16 December 2025. Tier 1.

In relative terms, Tenerife’s 2024 growth rate was below the Canary Islands average of 0.9 per cent and well below that of Lanzarote (2.2 per cent) and Fuerteventura (1.9 per cent). In absolute terms, Tenerife added more residents than any other island in the archipelago.

Note on scope: The padrón municipal counts only registered residents. A proportion of long-stay foreign residents are not registered, which means the true de facto population at any given time is higher than the padrón figure. ISTAC does not publish a de facto population estimate for Tenerife.

5b. Tourist intensity

The tourist intensity ratio expresses how many tourist visits occur for each resident of a destination in a calendar year. It is a widely used indicator of pressure on infrastructure, housing and services. It is derived by this report from confirmed arrival and population figures; it is not published as such by any primary source.

At 7.86 tourists per resident in 2025, Tenerife’s tourist intensity is materially higher than that of Gran Canaria and substantially lower than that of Ibiza (see Section 7 for benchmark comparison). It has risen consistently since 2022 as arrivals have grown faster than the resident population.

5c. Housing stock

The most recent island-level housing census data for Tenerife is from the INE Censo de Población y Viviendas 2021.

Source: INE, Censo de Población y Viviendas 2021, resultados por municipio: Tenerife. Tier 1.

Secondary residences (74,891) account for 20.9 per cent of total stock. Vacant dwellings (26,926) account for a further 7.5 per cent. The census does not distinguish between secondary residences used as holiday lets and those retained for personal use.

5d. Rental market

SERPAVI (Sistema Estatal de Referencia de Precios de Alquiler de Vivienda), operated by the Ministerio de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana, covers rental reference prices for Tenerife province. The SERPAVI dataset covers 2011 to 2024; 2025 data is not yet published at report date. A dateable island-level rental price index in euros per square metre for Tenerife (Gap H-GAP-01) was not accessible from a primary source at report date. This section will be updated when either SERPAVI 2025 data is published or an alternative primary series is identified.

6. Holiday-let regulation

6a. Regulatory chronology

6b. Current status of Ley 6/2025

Ley 6/2025 came into force on publication in the BOE on 23 December 2025. At the report date of 4 October 2026, the implementing regulations setting out the detailed zone designation criteria, application procedure and appeal mechanism had not been published in the Boletín Oficial de Canarias. This page will be updated when the implementing regulations are gazetted.

7. Benchmarks: Tenerife compared with Gran Canaria, Mallorca and Ibiza

7a. Methodology note

Any comparison of tourist arrival figures across Spanish destinations must account for definitional differences between statistical operations:

• FRONTUR-ISTAC (Canary Islands) counts peninsular and foreign tourists only, excluding Canarian interisland visitors and tourists under 16. The Turismo de Tenerife series used throughout this report applies this definition.
• FRONTUR via IBESTAT (Balearic Islands) counts national and foreign tourists as defined by the national FRONTUR survey and does not apply the same under-16 or interisland-resident exclusions as the Canarian series. Mallorca and Ibiza figures are therefore not strictly comparable with the Tenerife figure.
• Tourist intensity ratios (tourists per resident) are derived by this report from confirmed arrival and population figures. They are not published as such by any primary source.

7b. Headline comparison, latest year available

Key observation: Tenerife in 2025 received more tourists than Gran Canaria, Ibiza (2024) and the Balearic Islands total does not include a direct Tenerife sub-line. At island level, Tenerife’s 7.56 million visitors place it well ahead of Gran Canaria (approximately 4.73 million) but substantially behind Mallorca (13.56 million). Tenerife’s tourist intensity of 7.86 per resident is considerably lower than Ibiza’s 20.3 (2024), reflecting Ibiza’s much smaller resident base.

8. 2026 year to date

The following figures are provisional. They cover January to July 2026 and are the latest published at report date. They are presented separately from the 2025 full-year figures and are not mixed with or extrapolated into a full-year 2026 projection.

8a. Tenerife and Canary Islands, January to July 2026

Source: ISTAC FRONTUR dataset E16028B_000011, via turistas-canarias.com dashboard, updated September 2026. Tenerife figures are primary ISTAC counts. Gran Canaria figures in the full dashboard include rounded estimates. Tier 1.

The Tenerife January to July 2026 total of 4,224,393 represents an estimated decline of approximately 0.5 per cent against the equivalent seven-month period of 2025 (approximately 4,244,691), based on summing the equivalent 2025 monthly figures from the same series. This modest softening follows three consecutive record years. No full-year 2026 projection is made in this report.

9. Data tables

Table 7.1: Tenerife annual tourist arrivals, 2019 to 2025 (FRONTUR-ISTAC)

See Section 1b above.

Table 7.2: Canary Islands annual tourist arrivals, 2016 to 2025 (FRONTUR-ISTAC)

See Section 1c above.

Table 7.3: 2026 year-to-date monthly arrivals, Tenerife and Canary Islands

See Section 8a above.

Table 7.4: Tenerife population, 2024 and 2025

See Section 5a above.

Table 7.5: Tenerife dwelling stock (INE Census 2021)

See Section 5c above.

Table 7.6: Destination benchmark comparison, latest year available

See Section 7b above.

Table 7.7: Regulatory chronology

See Section 6a above.

10. Data gaps and limitations

This report documents all gaps explicitly. The following items could not be confirmed from publicly accessible primary sources at the report date of 4 October 2026.

11. Sources

All sources are listed by tier. For each source: full citation, URL, data points drawn from it, and any caveats.

Tier 1: Official statistics

Eurostat

• Tourism statistics: nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments. Eurostat dataset [tour_occ_nim]. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/. Used for: European context on overnight stays and accommodation density. No single Eurostat figure is quoted as a primary number; cited for contextual framing only.

IBESTAT (Institut d’Estadística de les Illes Balears)

• FRONTUR Illes Balears: tourist arrivals by island, 2024 to 2025. Available at: https://ibestat.caib.es/ibestat/estadistiques/turisme/frontur/. Used for: Mallorca 2025 arrivals (13,557,606); Balearic Islands total 2025 (19,053,592). Section 7b.
• Padró municipal d’habitants, Eivissa (Ibiza), 1 January 2025. Available at: https://ibestat.caib.es/ibestat/estadistiques/poblacio/padro/. Used for: Ibiza resident population 161,485 at 1 January 2025. Section 7b.

INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística)

• Censo de Población y Viviendas 2021, resultados por municipio: Tenerife. Available at: https://www.ine.es/censos2021/. Used for: total dwelling stock (357,921); main residences (256,104); secondary (74,891); vacant (26,926). Section 5c.
• FRONTUR (Estadística de Movimientos Turísticos en Fronteras), national series. Available at: INE FRONTUR portal. Used for: national FRONTUR context. Island-level Canary Islands data drawn from ISTAC; Balearic Islands from IBESTAT.
• EGATUR (Encuesta de Gasto Turístico), national series. Available at: INE EGATUR portal. Used for: national spending context.
• Ley 12/2023, de 24 de mayo, por el derecho a la vivienda. BOE núm. 124, 25 May 2023. Available at: https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2023-12203. Used for: legal basis for stressed residential market zone designations. Section 6.

ISTAC (Instituto Canario de Estadística)

• FRONTUR Canarias: Estadística de Movimientos Turísticos en Fronteras, dataset E16028B_000011, 2019 to 2025. Accessed via turistas-canarias.com ISTAC dashboard. Used for: Tenerife and Canary Islands monthly and annual arrivals; 2026 year-to-date series. Sections 1b, 1c, 8a.
• Cifras Oficiales de Población, Censo de Población 1 de enero de 2025. Published 16 December 2025. Available at: https://www.gobiernodecanarias.org/istac/. Used for: Tenerife population 962,343 at 1 January 2025; Canary Islands population 2,258,866. Sections 5a, 7b.
• Encuesta de Gasto Turístico (EGT) Canarias, Metodología 2016 (2010 to 2017) and Metodología 2018 (2018 onwards). ISTAC. Used for: tourist spending data. Section 3.
• Encuestas Alojativas (EAT and EAP): hotel and tourist apartment occupancy and capacity, Tenerife. ISTAC. Used for: Canarian tourist total for accommodation surveys (424,160 in 2025). Section 1a.

BOE (Boletín Oficial del Estado)

• Ley 6/2025, de 10 de diciembre, de Ordenación Sostenible del Uso Turístico de Viviendas. BOE núm. 308, 23 December 2025. Available at: https://www.boe.es/diario_boe/txt.php?id=BOE-A-2025-26358. Used for: regulatory framework, Section 6.

Tier 2: Government and registers

Boletín Oficial de Canarias (BOC)

• Decreto 113/2015, de 22 de mayo, por el que se aprueba el Reglamento de las viviendas vacacionales de la Comunidad Autónoma de Canarias. BOC núm. 101, 28 May 2015. Available at: https://www.gobiernodecanarias.org/boc/2015/101/001.html. Used for: regulatory chronology, Section 6.

Turismo de Tenerife / Cabildo de Tenerife

• Balance de Situación Turística de Tenerife 2025. Turismo de Tenerife (Cabildo de Tenerife). Available at: webtenerife.com balance 2025 (PDF). Used for: Tenerife annual arrivals 2025 (7,561,659); origin market data 2025; Canarian tourist supplement (424,160). Sections 1b, 2.
• Balance de Situación Turística de Tenerife 2024. Turismo de Tenerife. Available at: webtenerife.com balance 2024 (PDF). Used for: Tenerife annual arrivals 2024 (7,384,707); monthly series 2019 to 2024; origin market data.

Tier 3: Research and analysis

Exceltur

• IMPACTUR Canarias 2024. Exceltur, in collaboration with Gobierno de Canarias. Used for: tourism GDP contribution and employment, Canary Islands level. Island-level Tenerife breakdown is not published separately by Exceltur (structural gap). Section 3b.

Tier 4: Nongovernmental market data

Inside Airbnb

• Mallorca dataset, 23 June 2026 scrape. Inside Airbnb. Available at: https://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data/. Licence: CC BY 4.0. Used for: Mallorca short-term rental listing benchmark comparison. Nongovernmental; Tier 4. Note: a Tenerife-specific Inside Airbnb public dataset was not available at report date.

Confirmed secondary sources used for primary data retrieval

• turistas-canarias.com ISTAC dashboard and 10-year evolution page. Presents ISTAC FRONTUR dataset E16028B_000011. Used for: Canary Islands historical series 2015 to 2025; 2026 monthly data; confirmation that ISTAC does not publish island-level sub-series for 2015 to 2023 in the Metodología 2016 public dataset. Accessed October 2026.
• Ibiza Preservation Sustainability Observatory. Available at: ibizapreservation.org. Used for: Ibiza 2024 arrivals (3,275,579) and Ibiza population (161,485), citing IBESTAT/FRONTUR. Tier 3.
• Diario de Avisos, citing ISTAC. Available at: diariodeavisos.elespanol.com. Used for: Tenerife population at 1 January 2024 (955,063). Cross-referenced against ISTAC primary notice.

About this report

This report was produced using a structured six-phase research methodology: source identification and tier classification; primary source retrieval and claim verification; gap analysis; section drafting; sourcing and attribution log; and publication metadata. Every figure was extracted from a live, named, publicly accessible source during the research session. No figure was taken from memory or estimated without disclosure.

Report date: 4 October 2026.

Next planned update: January 2027, following publication of ISTAC full-year 2026 FRONTUR annual totals.

Reuse: Figures in this report may be cited freely with attribution to this page and to the primary source listed against each figure. Tables may be reproduced with attribution.

Errors and corrections: To query a figure or report an error, use the contact form on this site and quote the section number and the source you believe is more accurate.