YOUR VIEWS

REGARDING Jason Moore's “Closing Down” in today's Majorca Daily Bulletin”. While not that familiar with Pollença, as a bike rider, I like cruising the coastal areas of the island, and have had the same feelings when passing through the off season “ghost towns”.

Modeled on my village I might have a solution for this problem. Porreres has a weekly cycle when it comes to bars. While most are closed on Mondays, the people are served by other bars that are closed on one day, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I think there is sort of a gentleman's agreement in operation, not only as the day of rest for bar staff, but also when it comes to closing time.

In this case, while I have not figured the pattern, I have discovered that when my local is closed between 22:00 and 24:00, there is always another bar opened. There is a similar pattern when it comes to our festa, fira, and holidays, when the week afterwards, various bars go on vacation.

So back to Pollença. and here I am just guessing because hotels and tourism are not my thing. Lets pretend that down time is November, January February March April, figure 20 weeks after subtracting for Holy Week, and that there are currently 5 hotels that have been shutting down.

So the hotels get together and establish an agreement, where each hotel stays open 4 weeks when it would normally be closed, in rotation so that each has an equal share in the good and bad times over a 5 year period. Granted if the off period had an occupancy factor of 20%, this would produce a 80% occupancy for the hotel whose turn it would be to stay open, more then enough to justify the expense.

Of course there would be a financial spin off since other businesses, could do the same to serve the additional off season tourists who otherwise might not come to that area.

Richard Goss
Porreres