The Gran Hotel Taoro in the city of Puerto de la Cruz will reopen its doors in the summer of 2024 after undergoing refurbishment work that aims to return this legendary establishment, which 130 years ago was the first luxury hotel in Spain, to the tourist offer of the island of Tenerife and the city.
The president of the Island Council of Tenerife, Pedro Martín, the mayor of Puerto de la Cruz, Marco González, and the president of Tropical Turística Canaria, Ignacio Polanco, accompanied by the architect Virgilio Gutiérrez, were the hosts of the symbolic act of the start of the refurbishment of the Gran Hotel Taoro.
Owned by the Island Council of Tenerife, the Gran Hotel Taoro stopped welcoming guests in 1975 and was closed for nearly 40 years as a hotel establishment, being operated as a casino between 1979 and 2006, when it closed its doors. For this reason, the Island Council launched a tender to refurbish and lease the establishment, which was won by Tropical Turística Canaria, with a project by a local technical team that aims to modernise the hotel to give it the necessary standards required by today’s luxury segment, while maintaining the essence of the history and prestige of this emblematic building.
The Gran Hotel Taoro will be managed by My Way Hotels, the hotel operator of Tropical Turística Canaria, and its remodelling will involve an investment of close to 35 million euros, which will enable it to offer 207 rooms (414 beds), spread over the four floors of the hotel and whose west wing will house three heated swimming pools and a new wellness centre.
The president of the Island Council of Tenerife, Pedro Martín, stressed that the refurbishment and commissioning of the Gran Hotel Taoro “will have a great impact on the local economy, adding, together, more than 1,000 jobs”. “Over the next 22 months, nearly 800 workers will help to develop the project of remodelling, restoration and modernisation of the building, signed by Tenerife architects Virgilio Gutiérrez and Eustaquio Martínez. Subsequently, when it is 100% operational, the hotel will employ more than 250 professionals, also directly and indirectly,” he explained.
“Puerto de la Cruz has returned with an emblem that is not only here, in the North, but for the whole island. A hotel that started in 1890, which was the first tourist reference when nobody was talking about tourism yet, is finally going to be refurbished, and which has already managed to get the whole area to start refurbishing, even though the work has not yet finished, and there are hoteliers who will invest in improving their facilities because they will be next to this new Hotel Taoro”, said Pedro Martín.
The president of Tropical Turística Canaria, Ignacio Polanco, stressed that the project with which they won the competition “seeks to care for and respect the essence of the Gran Hotel Taoro as much as possible” in order to “return it to its former splendour”.
After its refurbishment, the new Taoro will optimise the use of environmental resources to reduce the impact on the environment. Sustainability will therefore be one of the strongholds of this hotel, which will have up to 700 square metres of solar panels on its roofs, whose energy will mainly be used to generate hot water and heat the swimming pools in winter, which will be built with heat recovery systems and low salt electrolysis (to avoid the use of chlorine and chemical products).
The commercial director of My Way Hotels, Brendan Green, was the conductor of this symbolic groundbreaking ceremony, which allowed the media, personalities and authorities in attendance to check the state of the building, thus kicking off the countdown to the pre-opening of the Gran Hotel Taoro, scheduled for the summer of 2024.
