How to get the Canary Islands out of the crisis that has affected its European tourism?By making it the centre of an idea and placing it at the forefront of a European movement: Say no to Winter Blues.It is the motto of a rebellion of Canarians who travel to Europe in order to state their opposition to this syndrome that affects millions of Europeans, and show the best way of overcoming the Winter Blues: in the Canaries.A strategy that consists of selecting volunteers who will carry out various missions in Europe, with informative value and easily used by the media, enhancing press releases and paving the way to the mass media campaign.A strategy that in February of 2010, places the Canary Islands as the leader for increased foreign tourists, growing for the 1st time in 3 years above the Spanish average.

We created a network of volunteers in the Canary Islands, willing to fight against Winter Blues. Iceland was their first mission: the European country with days that last 4 hours in the winter. 100 Canarians poured into the streets of Reykiavik and invited Icelanders to join their fight, while news media from all over Europe covered the story.These volunteers became our spokespeople and personally invited 200 Europeans to visit the Canary Islands and join the fight on-line and off-line. They became the best evidence of the study findings that we distributed to the media: the need to build awareness about Winter Blues and the best way to overcome it--in Canary Islands.

Finally, our mass media campaign makes our battle-cry Say no to Winter Blues be heard all over Europe. And more than 90,000 new tourists have come to defeat it.(Souce Frontur, Ministry of Industry, Commerce, and Tourism)

• 15,043,000€ Free Publicity. Tripling the media budget. 750% more than established objective.• 253 million of media impressions in UK, Germany, Nordics and Spain.• 428 TV/Print media references. 728 blog posts.

• Compartetufortuna.com had 20,000 visits and 5,000 recommendations in 10 days. (Spanish website with the most user-generated content).

• The Canary Islands reached Spain’s highest international tourist quota (31.3%) since January 2005.• Positive balance of 2.3%, recovering 16 points from last year. Best evolution since 2006.

The rest of Spain remains immersed in the crisis, with -5.7% (Feb 2010 data)