The Minister of Tourism of the Government of the Canary Islands, Jéssica León (PP), admitted this Tuesday that the IGIC will condition payment to those operators in the service sector with whom the bankrupt tour operator FTI has outstanding accounts. She said that even though it is the third tour operator for the Canary Islands, it represents 3% of the business "and is not comparable to the situation of the Thomas Cook bankruptcy in 2019."
León added that there would be 20 poisoned hotels and 1.500 jobs affected between the south of Gran Canaria, basically, and Fuerteventura. The Tourism Minister announced that this week she is holding meetings with tourism employers and unions to quantify the defaults they may have with the company, "as well as with the island councils to study the situation on each of the islands."
He announced that business owners had to pay the IGIC on invoices that they were not going to collect; they will be able to accrue the IGIC on those invoices and not pay it until they collect their debts. He admitted that at the moment it is not possible to quantify the number of people affected until the company provides this data and, so far, "neither Madrid nor we have been able to contact them." FTI Group does not have its own airline, it has seats with other airlines, so it will indirectly affect connectivity, but not directly as happened with Thomas Cook.