Tenerife

A winter destination first

Tenerife's best season is the one most of Europe spends indoors. From November to March the south of the island sits at roughly 20-24 C by day, the sun is dependable, and you can eat outside in January without a coat. That is the whole proposition, because the summer version of Tenerife is unremarkable: July and August run around 28 C, and anyone can find 30 C in the Mediterranean on a shorter flight for less money.

Two qualifications. The winter sea is around 19-20 C — swimmable, and people swim daily, but noticeably cool on entry and nothing like the Aegean in August, so a genuinely heated hotel pool matters here. And 20-24 C is a coastal daytime figure; evenings settle nearer 16-17 C and you will want a light jacket after dark.

The north and the south are two different holidays

The trade winds arrive from the north-east and hit the north coast first. They carry moisture, the moisture meets the mountains, and it settles as a lid of low cloud that Canarians call the panza de burro, the donkey's belly. It can sit over the north for days while the south, in the rain shadow of the central massif, stays clear.

Costa Adeje, Los Cristianos and Playa de las Américas in the south are reliably sunny in winter. Puerto de la Cruz, La Orotava, Santa Cruz and La Laguna in the north are greener, cooler, more Spanish and frequently grey.

Neither side is wrong, but the north gets booked by accident, because the photographs are prettier and the prices are lower. The rule: if the trip is about winter sun, book the south. If it is about landscape, food and a real Spanish town, book the north and accept that some days will be overcast.

Where to stay in the south

Costa Adeje is the newest and smartest resort stock on the island — four and five star, wide promenade, groomed beaches, and the best of the polished family all-inclusives. It is also the most expensive part of the south, roughly 20-25 minutes from the airport.

Los Cristianos is older, flatter and much more of a real town: a working harbour, the ferry to La Gomera, supermarkets and clinics rather than only hotels. It suits older visitors and long winter stays of a month or more, and it is genuinely good on accessibility. Around 15-20 minutes from the airport.

Playa de las Américas is the cheap package and nightlife end. The Veronicas strip in particular is loud until dawn; other parts are quiet. Good value if you know which street you are booking, so ask.

El Médano is windy by definition: the windsurf and kitesurf town, low-rise, young, natural dark sand, fifteen minutes from the airport. The wind is the point, and it is not a sunbathing beach.

Los Gigantes sits beneath cliffs dropping several hundred metres into the sea. Small pebble beach, quiet, steep streets, and the departure point for whale and dolphin boats — a resident pilot whale population lives in the channel towards La Gomera, so sightings are routine rather than lucky.

Where to stay in the north

Puerto de la Cruz is the north's resort and the oldest tourist town on the island, developed for Victorian visitors long before charter flights. Banana plantations reach the edge of town, the Lago Martiánez sea-water pools substitute for the beach on rough days, and the botanical garden is one of the oldest in Spain. Food is good and cheap. Expect cloud.

Santa Cruz and La Laguna are not resorts: the working capital, and a UNESCO-listed university town with a preserved colonial grid. Carnival in Santa Cruz each February is one of the largest in the world and fills every bed on the island.

About the beaches: black, grey and imported

Tenerife is volcanic and most of its natural sand is black or dark grey: Playa Jardín in Puerto de la Cruz, Playa de la Arena on the west coast, the wild cove of El Bollullo.

The pale golden beaches of the south are a different story. Playa de las Teresitas near Santa Cruz, much of Playa de las Américas and the groomed stretches of Costa Adeje including El Duque are engineered — imported or dredged sand held in place by breakwaters. Not a scandal, but worth knowing before you arrive expecting Caribbean white.

Black sand becomes too hot for bare feet by midday, and the unprotected natural coves can have a strong shore break that the sheltered resort beaches do not. Read the flags, not the photographs.

Teide, and the permit people forget

Teide is 3,715 metres, the highest point in Spain. The cable car reaches roughly 3,555 metres, and from there most people walk the short viewpoint trails.

Standing on the actual crater rim requires a separate permit — free, booked online through the national park in advance. Numbers per day are capped and in high season it goes weeks ahead. Visitors discover this at the cable car station, which is too late.

The summit runs 10-15 C colder than the coast, so a 22 C day in Costa Adeje can be 7 C at the top, and in winter it can be below freezing with snow on the road. The drive up from the south takes around 90 minutes on switchbacks, and altitude affects some people. The other reason to go is after dark: the park has some of the clearest night skies in Europe.

What the hotel stock actually is

All-inclusive, half board, and what a budget buys

All-inclusive is genuinely common here in a way it is not in mainland Spain, and in Costa Adeje it works: large family resorts with several restaurants, heated pools and enough on site to justify staying put. Half board suits Los Cristianos better, where the town food is good. In Puerto de la Cruz all-inclusive is usually a waste — cheap Canarian cooking, guachinches and fish restaurants are the reason to be in the north at all.

Around 68 EUR per person per night is the realistic winter anchor for a solid three or four star in Los Cristianos or Playa de las Américas on half board. Around 110 EUR buys a good four star in Costa Adeje with a heated pool and a proper kids club. 200 EUR and above buys the five-star Costa Adeje seafront, adults-only wings and ocean-view suites. Christmas, New Year and carnival week sit well above all of these.

Getting there: two airports, and the one that costs you 90 minutes

Tenerife has two airports, and choosing wrong is the most expensive mistake on this page.

TFS, Tenerife South (Reina Sofía) takes almost all holiday traffic: 15-20 minutes from Los Cristianos, 20-25 from Costa Adeje, about 15 from El Médano — and 75-90 minutes from Puerto de la Cruz.

TFN, Tenerife North (Los Rodeos) is mostly domestic and inter-island, above La Laguna, roughly 40 minutes from Puerto de la Cruz.

Stay in the north, fly into TFS, and you pay an hour and a half each way. If a northern hotel is the plan, check whether a routing through TFN exists for your dates.

To be plain about what we do: we quote accommodation through partner agencies. Our own vehicles and drivers operate airport transfers in Turkey, and have done since 2016. Tenerife is not Turkey, so any transfer here is arranged locally and we will say so rather than let you assume our cars are involved.

When to go, month by month

November to March is the season: 20-24 C in the south, sea at 19-20 C, the island at its greenest after the autumn rain. December is busy over the holidays and prices spike; January and early February are the quietest and the best value.

February brings carnival to Santa Cruz, which fills the island.

April and May are pleasant and quiet. June to September is warm, dry and reliable but not special. October brings most of the year's rain, mainly to the north.

Calima, the Saharan dust haze, can arrive in any month: orange sky, a sharp jump in temperature, poor visibility and occasionally disrupted flights. It usually passes in two or three days.

Do you need a car?

For a week, probably yes. The island is bigger than it looks — about 80 km end to end — and mountain roads are slow. The TF-1 motorway runs the south, the TF-5 the north, and crossing between them takes over an hour.

On all-inclusive in Costa Adeje with small children, skip the car and take excursions. For Teide, Masca, Anaga and the north coast, hire one for two or three days. Tap water is desalinated and safe but tastes of the process, so most people buy bottled.

Who should skip Tenerife

If you want July heat and warm sea, the Mediterranean does it better and cheaper. If you want white sand and calm shallow water, the Caribbean or the Red Sea are the honest answer. If you are booking the north for winter sun, you have booked the wrong side.

Getting a real price

Tenerife inverts the usual pattern: winter is high season, and the quiet, cheap weeks are in May and October. Christmas, New Year and carnival are the peaks.

Send us your dates, the number of adults and children, which side you are leaning towards, and whether you want all-inclusive or half board. A consultant comes back within one working day with two or three properties, an honest note on the weather risk of that area, and the transfer time from the airport you are actually flying into. The quote is free, it commits you to nothing, no payment is taken on this site, and the partner agency named in the offer issues the booking and the voucher.