The hoteliers have long had their disagreements with Palma town hall, which has been criticised for neglecting Playa de Palma in various respects - maintenance of infrastructure, cleanliness and security. A new mayor in position, Marín will be telling Jaime Martínez that the principal concerns among the hotel and business community are an increase in antisocial tourism and the drinking of alcohol on the streets and on the beach.
"We are going to advise the mayor to apply the same municipal regulations that exist in Amsterdam, where heavy fines are imposed on those who consume alcohol on the streets. That city has managed to eradicate the problem. We believe that this can be done here, but there has been a lack of political will. There is a lot of permissiveness on the streets and this has to end.
"The only language that antisocial tourists understand is fines. It is the legal way to eradicate a type of tourism that nobody wants. The town hall must amend municipal ordinance so that it can act forcefully. If the fines are applied and collected immediately, this will have a direct impact on the German and British press, and the type of tourism that nobody wants will no longer come in order to get drunk and create a bad image. In two years this problem could be eliminated."
In terms of security, Marín would like the Palma police to have a permanent police station in Playa de Palma. More police are needed. On cleanliness, he wants the Emaya municipal services agency to do more.
With regard to the new administration at the town hall, Marín hopes that everything will change for the better. A meeting with Martínez has been scheduled. "We have high hopes because he knows our problems. For the past 25 years, we have invested in improvements in order to be more competitive. It is logical that the town hall takes a qualitative leap to complement this business commitment to quality and to improving the image of the main mature tourist area in Mallorca. We want to be a first-class resort."
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By the way, fines, police presence and other methods were used by Franco in his day, But we can’t go back to those bad old days, can we ?
Cheap ? Have you seen the prices being charged for most Turkish resorts ? The same behaviour occurs in our sister island Ibiza, one of the most expensive summer beach holiday destinations in the world, let alone Europe. Maybe the only answer is to make everywhere boring (and small business owners bankrupt)
Charles Dalrymple-ChumleyIt's not a simple matter of raising prices. You have to deliver the quality you're pricing for. You can't charge 5 star prices for 3 star product. That will last about 5 minutes. So, it requires investment. Most of those catering to the feral set don't have the money for such investments, nor would they have the vision, nor believe it would make any difference, because all they know is that cheap means more customers. It's how they've always operated. So, the management has to change too. But as the rest of the island continues to evolve, perhaps that mindset may change. Nobody likes being left behind.
Pedro Marín, the new president of the Playa de Palma hoteliers association, says "we want to be a first-class resort." Well, the only way to achieve that admirable objective is for the resort to considerably raise its prices and consequently to be unaffordable to groups of holidaymakers who are hell bent on a cheap holiday where they can afford to drink themselves to oblivion. If room rates are increased, alcohol prices raised and generally the resort goes more "up market" those on tight budgets will have to look elsewhere . Fines and increased police presence are measures akin to shutting the gate after the horse has bolted (ie, the feral tourists are already on the island). Stop them arriving in the first place and you have, at a stroke, eliminated the problem.