Scottish holidaymakers are facing "chaos" in Spain with tourism leaders blaming the problem on Brexit. Local holiday organisers have blasted the situation at Tenerife Sur airport as "nonsense" after months of tailbacks at passport control.

Huge numbers of Scots fly to the island every year, with more Tenerife tourists coming from the UK than anywhere else. But passport control is taking hours to clear for holidaymakers due to Brexit rules, affecting hundreds of thousands of Brits.

One Scot Tweeted a picture of the queues, captioned: "Tenerife airport earlier this evening. A bl***y line of people waiting to go through UK passport control while the EU line was empty.

"The wee airport fella was wandering up and down the line laughing and saying this is what Brexit got you!" Another tourist said in a separate post: "Tenerife airport, the UK passport queues mile long to get through.

"Thankfully we both have Irish passports and the only ones in the EU passport queue, sailed through. We are still waiting at the gate to get on the flight back to Gatwick though."

The Mirror reports photos from the airport show the queue for EU citizens is often very small or non-existent, while the line for those with British passports only often stretches back many metres.

The same phenomenon has occurred at other airports popular with Brits, such as Malaga. Hoteliers warn the waiting times are just as bad at the taxi ranks at the airport where new arrivals also have to queue at peak times.

The concerns have been raised by Ashotel, the hospitality association of Tenerife and the other Canary islands of La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro.

Ashotel says it has been chaos at the Tenerife South airport for months following the UK's departure from the EU, which led to stricter passport controls set up for citizens coming from the UK.

The airport now has a modern second terminal, but tourism bosses have complained that the queues at passport controls and for taxis does not correspond to the otherwise first-class infrastructure.

Vice president of Ashotel, Victoria López said it was “nonsense” that this blockage occurs in the control for passengers who come from non-EU territory, as is the case for those from the UK.

“This collapse in control is not an extraordinary one-off situation, when the flights are scheduled and it is known well in advance when they will arrive. This information would allow for reinforcements of personnel if necessary," he said.

In the coming years the process of travelling from the UK to EU countries is due to change again, having already been altered following Brexit.

Soon tourists returning from Europe will no longer have their travel documents stamped, as British passport holders have had to since the UK left the EU.

The new process - which is designed to measure and control how long people from third countries, such as the UK, are allowed to stay in the Schengen Zone - is a move towards check-point digitisation, and has been dubbed Entry/Exit System (EES).

Passport-reading machines will be installed at external points of the Schengen Area that will replace manual passport stamping. Travellers will need to scan their passports or other travel documents at an automated self-service kiosk prior to crossing the border.

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European Commission’s department for Migration and Home Affairs said: "EES will replace the current system of manual stamping of passports, which is time consuming, does not provide reliable data on border crossings and does not allow a systematic detection of overstayers."

The system will log the following information for every traveller:

• Facial image
• Surname or family name
• First name or given names
• Date and place of birth
• Nationality or nationalities
• Gender
• Passport number, date and country of issuance as well as the expiry date
• Valid ETIAS or Schengen visa along with its duration and/or validity
• Travel information including the visitor’s points and dates of entries and exits, as well as overstays within the Schengen Zone
• Fingerprints

The 27 Schengen countries where the new rules apply include Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.