At a conference in Palma on Wednesday, the CEO of Meliá Hotels International, Gabriel Escarrer, spoke about changes of government in the Balearics and elsewhere.
Majorca tourism
Meliá boss concern about new Balearic government and tourism
Control needed of holiday rentals "chaos"
Also in Holiday
- Spain wants Britons to show they have 113.40 euros, £97, per day for their holidays
- Over two hours for Britons to get through Palma airport queues
- Palma Airport passport control "collapse" put down to unscheduled flights
- Living in a motorhome in Palma: "It'll only get worse"
- Watch those prices in Mallorca
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What a horrible self interested fat cat bigot this guy is. Unbelievable.
The Escarrer family aren’t stupid, their main motivation is profit, whether it entails ruining the island’s coastline during the 70’s and 80’s or doing deals with communist Cuba during the 90’s and 2000’s. They were not in favour of the “eco” tax, both times approved by the socialists, but decided to grin and bare it, so as not to upset the lady in charge. In other words, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. On the other hand, Benidorm hasn’t done too badly with a right wing government ever since it’s inception as a tourist resort.
It's clear that sensibility and forward thinking aren't very popular with some, but I suspect he's more interested in sustaining the millions invested in upgrading the product and improve the character of the resorts they reside in, to attract a more desirable tourist demographic, which until now, has been increasingly successful. A return to a race to the bottom won't provide much security in that investment, nor help anyone. And frankly, his views are largely shared amongst the entire tourism industry here (including private lets). Except of course, for the bottom feeders.
Perhaps he has everything stitched up with the old government and is scared he will be found out by the new.
Interesting to see his interest and as is totally only viewed from his perspective which is to control the apartment rentals so that everyone has to go to a Hotel all this BS about affordable housing he could give a Hooot about people sleeping on the street ,we just keep going through this again and again .
And obviously protect his enterprise. Similar arguments from taxi drivers about Uber. The internet revolution can’t be stopped and is difficult to regulate as it has no territory. Just buyers and sellers. And a generation of users that are global consumers. Internal market controls will be difficult to enforce with such a entity.
Yes. I don't really care which side of the political spectrum any current government comes from, but I do expect some sanity. Some of the noise so far suggests they will repeal some well thought through regulations simply in the interest of spitting in the face of the previous tribe. That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in their sanity.