Love Island lands on Tenerife and targets a younger audience
RTL2 films a special season on the island from 8 March, with the last remaining couple competing for 50,000 euros. Behind the drama, the scenery reaches a market Tenerife has long struggled to win. A comment.
Johannes Bornewasser is an author, journalist and editor-in-chief of Teneriffa News. He is regarded as a recognised expert on the Canary Islands. Bornewasser is also responsible for the editorial content of the website.
3 min read
Foto: RTLZWEI / Niklas NiessnerJana Ina Zarrella führt auch durch die fünfte Staffel von "Love Island". Gedreht wird sie auf Teneriffa.
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Perhaps the best TV advert for Tenerife can be found on ‚trash TV‘. However beautiful a lavishly produced nature documentary about the Canary Islands may be, it barely reaches the young target audience. That is why ‚Love Island‘ on RTL2 is a promotional godsend for the ‚Island of Eternal Spring‘.
The niche channel’s ‚Kuppel‘ show, which focuses on garishly colourful entertainment, appeals precisely to the target audience that Tenerife has so far tended to miss out on. Young people with a penchant for taking unusual photos for their own Instagram accounts tend to view Tenerife with a touch of pity. The image of Tenerife as a ‚retirement paradise‘ – whilst misplaced, is nonetheless widespread – deters many young people from booking a holiday there.
For the period following the lockdown, this is therefore the best publicity Tenerife could have hoped for. And every photo that one of these aspiring C-list celebrities posts to their followers via their social media channels is pure promotional gold. Because on Instagram and the like, no image is left to chance. To make a photo look like a casual snapshot, they sometimes spend hours posing and retouching it.
Even if the island ‚merely‘ serves as a backdrop, it will cut a fine figure on *Love Island*. In return, it will have to put up with several weeks of squabbling, heartbreak and terribly superficial conversations. But if this ultimately results in a few extra bookings for the Canary Islands – which have been hit hard by the pandemic – the islands‘ tourism officials will gladly accept it.
Incidentally, the show’s concept is simple: several singles, somewhere between party age and childbearing age, are put in a villa for several weeks. Cut off from the outside world, they have to find a partner of the opposite sex. It matters only to a limited extent whether the couples – known as ‚couples‘ – come together out of true love or pure self-interest.
This is precisely what the flatmates comment on with predictable regularity, whilst under constant surveillance by dozens of cameras and microphones. The programme exploits the audience’s curiosity and latent voyeurism so insidiously that the show has even inserted a special series featuring Tenerife. The programme is actually broadcast from Mallorca in late summer. However, the show’s success and Tenerife’s mild climate all year round make this stopover in the Canary Islands possible.
Filming begins on 8 March. RTL2 will then broadcast the programme at 8.15 pm from Monday to Friday, and at 10.15 pm on Sundays. After three weeks, only one couple will remain, giving them the chance to win 50,000 euros.
More important than the immediate profit, however, is the total number of new followers gained on Instagram. Tenerife will – albeit indirectly – be the talk of the town there for some time to come. And, in the best-case scenario, even longer than the show’s participants.
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