Editorial: See you next year...

LAST Friday morning, I flew back from Dusseldorf to land at a packed and bustling Palma airport - sadly that will probably be the last time I see the airport as busy until next Easter.
Majorca is now in the process of closing up for the winter and this winter, more hotels than ever are going to be closed.
Lack of demand is one of the three reasons given for the mass  shut down - but there quite simply can not be any demand if the hotels are not open and, if the hotels are not open, airlines are not going to fork out vast amounts of money to put planes in the skies. If the island is not open, no one will come here, planes or not, it is as simple as that.
At least it will be business as usual in the capital and Palma can push ahead with its campaign to establish itself as a serious and competitive city/short break destination, but for the rest of the island, forget it.
Resorts are going to become ghost towns and businesses are also forced to suffer for the best part of five months because the hoteliers have decided to close. Hoteliers switching to all inclusive resorts have already caused enough damage to resort trade and now they are going to force local business people to struggle through a bleak winter - many may close and never open again!
One solution could be that the government sets a limit on the number of hotels which are allowed to close every winter and prevent the hoteliers from calling the shots.