Meeting Point will begin selling excursions and activities in the Canary Islands online in mid-August in German, English and French and will open to other markets of origin. Venancio Lorente, CEO of Meeting Point, which has its fiscal headquarters in Sonneland, said that the service of guided tours and B2C activities will support the current growth of the destination agency. It will be offered to tourists on site via a .com and, after the start in the German-speaking home market, will also be available to book for all other English and French markets from September. Upon arrival at the desk, guests should receive a brochure with which they can use a QR code to access tours, car rental reservations, and pickup information for return transfers. This sets the course for future-oriented destination management.
This summer Meeting Point Spain will serve a total of 170.000 international guests. For the winter, he predicts that “if all goes well, there will be a total of 500.000 visitors in Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Tenerife and Lanzarote,” says Lorente. In addition to the classic markets of origin such as the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands, the booking figures for France and Italy would also approach the level of winter 2018 and 2019. The good evolution is also due to the fact that Meeting Point Spain has " opened new source markets, especially in Eastern Europe.
Other providers in the south of Gran Canaria, such as TUI, which has declared the acquired activities division TUI Musement as a strategic business area, are also seeking to sell tours and activities through digital tools. Digital sales are likely to increasingly take a backseat to the classic sale of excursions and other activities by local tour guides. Travel agencies are skeptical of this development because it could reduce the physical presence of tour operator contacts in destinations.
