THE TOURIST TAX - YOUR VIEWS

AS I have booked two weeks in Majorca for this summer, I realised afterwards that the tourist tax was going to put an extra approximately 40 pounds on to the top of the price of my holiday. I visited last September and paid the tax but then could not see any evidence of any environmental or other improvements anywhere. I am not against paying the tax if it genuinely goes towards the environmental upkeep of the islands as I belive that the balance between nature and ourselves should be maintained at all times. However, we Brit tourists need hard evidence that the tax is being managed and used appropriately otherwise drop it. After living in rip–of Britain where taxes are used for anything other than what they were originally designed for, I do not want to holiday in a place which uses my taxes in the same way as this. Majorca is a beautiful island, use the tax to keep it this way or lose it.

Kevin Stuttard
Burnley,

England Dear Sir, I t says a lot for the regard in which tourists are held by the government that they can be seen as a bother or nuisance upon which a disincentive should be charged for them to visit the islands on which they are already spending many hundreds of Euros each. The government, the hoteliers and the bar owners have all pushed up their prices by a large amount, well ahead of inflation, in the last year. Did they think we wouldn't notice? Perhaps these three bodies would like to explain to us, whom they presumably hope will continue to provide the revenue for their wages, why we should continue to visit the islands in preference to the mainland or one of the other Mediterranean destinations where they do not treat their visitors with such contempt.

A. Gilbertson,
Northumberland.