TW
0

The tourist boom in Minorca could backfire, according to the local branch of the Balearic environmental group GOB, which has expressed its concern about more tourists in Minorca creating more problems. Over the past week the director of Minorca airport, Nemesio Suarez, has been discussing expansion plans for the airport in the future, in order to deal with an annual increase in tourists, which is being fuelled by the British and German markets. But GOB is worried that the island's tourist industry will reach saturation point during the summer and that Minorca will then be faced with the same problems the government is trying to resolve in Majorca, such as the lack of water, too many cars and waste treatment. Declarations by the airport director, that just over three million people will pass through the terminal this year and that there are plans to turn the flying club into a sports centre and golf course have made GOB nervous. The environmental group believes that continual growth in the tourist industry will have a negative effect on the island's image. The general co-ordinator of GOB Minorca, Miguel Camps, says that an increase in the number of Germans visiting the island and an increase in money means more water consumption and more waste production, more hire cars on the roads and therefore more traffic porblems. GOB fears that mass tourism in Minorca is not what the island is about and is not how the island is promoted.