Spain to introduce Canary and Balearic Islands travel corridors to boost tourism

‘These protocols are the first and we hope to be able to extend them to other popular tourism destinations within Spain’s mainland,’ says tourism minister

Protocols are being introduced for travel to the Balearic Islands, including Mallorca (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Spain has said it will establish travel corridors between the Canary and Balearic Islands and other European countries in order to boost the tourism industry.

The government is introducing new protocols, focused around coronavirus testing, to enable safer travel to the islands during the pandemic.

Tourists entering the islands from a European country where the Covid-19 case rate is 50 per 100,000 inhabitants or less need not get tested in advance.

However, anyone arriving from a destination where the rate is higher than 50 per 100,000 will have to present a negative Covid-19 test result taken no more than 48 hours before their flight.

All tourists will also be tested for the virus for free 48 hours prior to their departure.

Anyone who tests positive will have to quarantine on the islands, but accommodation and other associated costs will be provided by the authorities free of charge, along with any necessary healthcare or hospitalisation as a result of the infection.

“The protocols are a useful measure to reach agreements with our European partners to allow us to recover mobility and reactivate the flow of tourists with safe conditions”, said the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto.

“These protocols are the first and we hope to be able to extend them to other popular tourism destinations within Spain’s mainland.”

Spain was removed from the UK’s own list of “travel corridors”, from where arrivals are not required to quarantine for two weeks, back in July.

The UK recently overtook Spain with its number of cumulative new Covid-19 cases in the previous seven days, recording 166.3 compared to Spain’s 151.6.

There is much speculation that the UK will soon change its quarantine policy after no further countries were removed from the travel corridors list last week, despite several having crossed over the previous case-rate threshold of 20 per 100,000.