This season´s tourist trend hangs in the balance

NINETY-nine percent of hotels on Majorca are now open and occupancy currently stands at just 62 percent.
Pere Cañellas, president of the Majorcan hotel federation confirmed yesterday that these levels of activity are similar to those of a year ago.
In his capacity as the head of the principal hotel management association in the Balearics, Cañellas nevertheless drew attention to the fact that there appears to be a “toning down in the sales trend” which he described as “very worrying” and acknowledged that in some establishments, “contracting of workers for the full length of the summer season is being put on hold”, with staff having their holiday dates brought forward due to the lack of business. Cañellas was appearing at a Press conference alongside regional Tourism minister, Joan Flaquer, to present a website for making hotel reservations. The hotel federation president gave assurances that latest figures for June showed that all the tourist areas of Majorca had all their hotels up and running for the season, except Cala Mayor, where only 88 percent were open; Illetes (94 percent); Playa de Palma (96.7 percent); Cala D'Or (97 percent) and Pollensa (98 percent). Flaquer commented that the situation is not ideal, but emphasised that the fact that nearly all the hotels on Majorca are open with an occupancy level of only 0.7 percent less than figures registered for the same time last year, is not something to cause alarm. Making reference to the Socialist opposition groups in the Balearic government, Flaquer expressed his surprise at the fact that they are now talking about a crisis, which, when they (the Socialists) were in power just over a year ago, they denied completely. “There isn't a crisis in terms of Majorca as a holiday destination, there is a crisis in certain areas of the product” and it is precisely this need for modernisation and revitalisation that is being addressed with key figures in the industry, he explained. Minister Flaquer gave prominence to the current situation “being very different from that of a year ago” because, he claimed, the ruling party in power, the Partido Popular, addressed difficulties in the industry “through dialogue, consensus and collabortaion with all the sectors involved”. On the other hand, purported Flaquer, the Socialist coalition which had been in power prior to last year's regional elections, “practiced a policy of confrontation with the hoteliers” . Furthering the theme, the minister added that the Socialist proposal to set up a Parliamentary commission to analyse the state of Tourism as the region's key industry, seemed to him something that was “neither especially desirable nor undesirable”. He reiterated his surprise, however, that the Socialists were only now thinking in terms of dialogue on the issue. Cañellas declared that “if such an enquiry were carried out, it would be welcomed”. Following the Partido Popular's regional election victory in May last year, they took moves to repeal the Tourist tax, which, they claim, had done much to damage relations with the industry's key client markets.