A wet start to a quiet Easter holiday period

To begin with, a wet weekend is forecast for the long bank holiday period over Easter, with temperatures falling and rainfall throughout the country.
Turbulent conditions are likely to bring thunder and lightning, and conditions will be unpredictable between this Wednesday and Saturday, at least.
Rain is expected to be heaviest in the south and east, particularly in coastal areas, and snow could be seen in areas of more than 1'000 metres above sea-level.

From Sunday onwards, the risk of rain is expected to gradually subside.
And, if that was not enough to dampen the local and foreign travel industries, the growing talk of further strike action over the season is worrying the Balearics' main suppliers in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Not long ago, the forecast for some of Majorca's largest and most popular holiday destinations were extremely encouraging with talk of a “record year”, but nerves are starting to creep in to the industry, in particular the hotel federations, which fear that Spain could become the next Greece and tourists will do their best to avoid the Balearics, just in case.

The Greek crisis has already cost the country's travel industry half a million cancellations this year and the Balearics travel industry can not afford any kind of a similar response from consumers. As it stands, because Easter has fallen so early this year, bookings are somewhat down on Easter 2011.

The situation has been described as “satisfactory” because of the attractive offers the hoteliers have agreed to but, once Easter comes to an end in the middle of the month, there is a huge drop off in bookings until early May and, according to leading hoteliers, this will be the crunch period.

President of the Playa de Palma Hotel Federation, Francisco Marin, said over the weekend that the Balearics will find out if the summer is going to be industrial action-proof or not during the last two weeks of this month.