A bad joke

T HE much billed Sunday opening by shops in Palma is a bit of a joke. It is rather a bad joke because Palma was packed with tourists on Sunday but only a handful of shops were opened. The big stores open, the small stores don´t. Now, yesterday they were all open but you could count tourists around Palma yesterday on a single hand! An opportunity missed but they will be the first to moan about a drop in takings. You can´t expect to make a profit if you are closed on the key days of the week; Saturday and Sunday. There are some shops in Palma´s key shopping areas which even close on a Saturday afternoon. Even restaurants in the centre of Palma close at the weekend. If you speak to shopkeepers they will tell you that the majority of Majorcans leave the city at weekends and head in-land or the coast. Now, the key word here is Majorcans. This may be true but the last time I looked this was a major international holiday destination which attracts in excess of ten million tourists a year. Shopkeepers need to change their attitude. They are not catering exclusively for the domestic market, especially during the summer months. They should be catering for tourists. In these hard times, when shops are suffering, it is quite amazing that these outdated trading practices are still in place. Open seven days a week during the summer months and then you can rest during the winter. Afterall it is how the successful hotels function.