Adeje’s lack of blue flag beaches is because the region did not participate in the 2019 programme because of its involvement in the Intelligent Tourism Destination (DTI) project

Adeje Ayuntamiento has issued a statement following the blue flag beach announcements in which the municipality’s beaches did not receive a single award. The council says that in actual fact it decided not to be part of the applications for consideration in 2019 since the region’s Adeje Intelligent Tourism Destination (DTI) project meant that there could be no guarantee that at any given moment the proper conditions to be awarded a blue flag would have been in place. The council says that this should not remotely be taken to indicate that the quality of these beaches or the services on offer has suffered any reduction, and they continue to operate as top quality locations with top class services.

The DTI project proposes, among other things, ‘smart beaches’, which will use an integrated information technology, with up-to-the minute monitoring, recording numbers of beach users, the real-time state of services, cost of water in the showers, etc, to improve the beaches. The installation of these new services and technologies implies, by necessity, a series of work and structural modifications which would have had implications during the Blue Flag inspection period, although none of the new installations will in any way be detrimental to the quality of the beaches or the services on offer.    

As such, therefore, Adeje hasn’t actually “lost” blue flags, but decided not to seek inclusion in the campaign for the above reasons. This does not, in any way, signify that the quality of the Adeje beaches has been compromised; in fact the opposite is the case, with months of work to regulate, improve and increase the services and conditions of use and quality on the beaches. This is reflected in the recent Trip Advisor beach voting which listed the El Duque beach as the best in Tenerife and the sixth best in Spain in their “Travellers Choice 2019”.

For more information about the blue flag awards in Tenerife please see HERE, and for the Intelligent Tourism Project in Adeje, please see HERE.

Source: Janet Anscombe