Friday, August 25, 2006

Tourism economics / Palma Airport / Rental accommodation

Well here we go, some more “cheering” news. September is going to be a “bumper” month, with many hotels fully-booked, so says “Euro Weekly”. But, it would seem that much of this September frenzy is down to “young partygoers”. Maybe so, but I find it hard to believe that’s the whole story. On an Alcúdia-Pollensa note though, it would appear that the majority of these party animals are going to the south of the island. But this late-season surge is hardly unusual; indeed on 9 November on this blog I noted (thanks also to Euro Weekly) that the final two months of the season in Alcúdia were “surprisingly busy and successful for tourism”.


More on the traffic through the airport. Palma has seen the highest proportion of “low-cost” airline passengers of all Spanish airports during July - nearly 450,000 apparently, and up 12 per cent on 12 months earlier. Air Berlin is the biggest contributor. Now, this is all very well,. but in the Bulletin’s report of this, it then goes on to say that the numbers of passengers who arrived on traditional airlines in July was close to 800,000. Eh!? Those of you are paying attention will note that on 8 August I reported that Palma had “seen over 3 million passengers passing through it for only the second time. The figures are for July this year.” 800,000 + 450,000 = 1,250,000. Hmm. Frankly I give up on much of this statistics stuff, which is a shame as one of the key aims of this blog is to give an overview of economic activity.

But not to be put off, hotel occupancy in the whole of Mallorca during July was 89.8%. Jolly good. Maybe.


Back in December I reported also on the greater regulation of tourist rental accommodation. Seemingly 85% of tourist flats* have - as yet - failed to register properly as holiday accommodation. The deadline runs out on 26 September. Alcúdia and Pollensa are especially affected by all of this. If the proper certification is not in place, the accommodation will be deemed residential, and there cannot be dual purpose (residential and holiday; it must be one or the other). I say again what I said then - to regulate quality (and proper fiscal controls, and let’s face it there’s a strong sense of stopping tax evasion here- quite rightly) is good. No problem at all. Just that the hotel industry is big on complaining about this accommodation.

*I should point out that these flats are private rentals.


And finally for today, seems that Muro police have been busying themselves with removing sunbeds from the beach at Playa de Muro. The reason: more sunbeds than are allowed. There you go.


(Sources: Euro Weekly and Majorca Daily Bulletin)

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