Thirty-eight thousand, one hundred and eighty-eight people in one month. The next month, ten thousand, eight hundred and ninety-three. That drop tells the story better than any press release of what happened once an eco-tax took effect on 19 January 2026 on the two busiest routes in Teide National Park, trails PNT 10 Telesforo Bravo and PNT 07 Montaña Blanca-La Rambleta. In the month before the fee kicked in, between 19 December and 19 January, the two trails had logged that first figure. A month later, with mandatory payment for non-Tenerife residents in place, visits fell to just under eleven thousand.
The system grants free access to Tenerife residents and children under 14, charges a token fee to other Canary Islands residents (between €3 and €6 depending on the trail), and asks up to €25 from visitors who don’t live in the archipelago, with the exact amount depending on the route and time slot. The Telesforo Bravo trail also caps daily numbers at 300, with a maximum of 50 people per time slot and mandatory booking through the Tenerife ON platform; the sunrise slot, from 6 to 9am, and the sunset slot, from 6 to 10pm, remain among the most sought after. In its first month, the eco-tax raised roughly €70,096, all of it earmarked, according to the island council, for conservation work in the park.
Booking figures point to quick uptake of the new system: by 12 February 2026, the platform already had 187,914 registered users, with the app downloaded more than 75,000 times on Android and over 47,000 times on iOS. Of the first month’s bookings, 94.3% came from visitors who don’t live in the Canary Islands, 4% from Tenerife residents and 1.7% from residents elsewhere in the archipelago, a breakdown that confirms most of the pressure on the trails was coming from international tourism.
“This eco-tax reflects a clear commitment to conserving Teide National Park, while making sure Tenerife residents can keep accessing it for free,” said Rosa Dávila, president of the Tenerife island council, when the measure was finalised. It’s a line that sums up the council’s stated dual goal: protecting a UNESCO World Heritage site under growing visitor pressure, without penalising the people who live there.
The measure sits inside a wider picture of an island with tourist numbers that keep climbing. The Canary Islands now rank among Europe’s top regions for overnight stays in tourist accommodation, with bookings more than doubling since 2018 according to figures picked up by the Spanish national press, while Tenerife has also introduced a broader tourist tax to curb overcrowding. Whether the drop in visits to Teide’s two trails counts as a success in managing flows, or simply pushes the pressure elsewhere, onto unregulated trails or other islands in the archipelago, is a question the next seasonal reports, likely due by year’s end, should start to answer with harder data.
