Rip It Up And Start Again

Something that is overlooked in the whole debate about winter tourism is the level of building that occurs in the off-season. For most of the summer season there is a moratorium on much building work in tourist areas, for which read much of the island. This building - be it of dwellings, offices, public places etc. - occurs mainly in the off-season months, i.e. through the winter. This is building to meet the demand of a growing economy. And then there is other construction and civil engineering that has to take place out of season to upgrade an infrastructure that is still lacking in some respects. Over recent years, the centres of Can Picafort, Puerto Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa have all been ripped up - in the case of Puerto Pollensa every year, it would seem. The work has been vital in improving the likes of drainage and sewage. More is needed if the money is ever forthcoming to facilitate it - like tackling the shambolic state of some of Puerto Pollensa’s roads.

Were there to be a far greater level of winter tourism, this work would either not go ahead or, more likely, co-exist alongside a tourist influx that would have to lump the fact of building work, something hardly conducive to a positive tourist experience.

Hotels also use the off-season for building. Whilst by no means all hotels are worked on over the winter, there is a good deal that does go on. One might legitimately argue why there needs to be so much work, and I confess it is something that baffles me, unless that is some hotels were not up to standard in the first place. There again, some hotels are quite old, and some must take a hell of a pummelling in summer - just one indication, I have remarked before on the piles of old and new mattresses that are a common sight outside hotels as part of their refurb. I have also remarked on how the likes of Iberostar seem to be engaged in a process of continuous improvement - the guts of the hotels being ripped out and renewed. Moreover, there is a drive to upgrade the general hotel stock. TUI Germany is wanting 4-star facilities as a norm. For TUI Germany, read also TUI UK, in other words Thomson and now also First Choice. TUI is also keen that hotels can boast eco-friendliness as part of its marketing, whatever that means, though presumably it would require at least some alteration work. Add to this, there is the fact that some hotels may well face the need to do some reconstruction under the coast-regeneration initiative; some terraces and pools would have to be demolished and re-sited.

One hears talk of how things used to be, of glory days when apparently the streets of Mallorca were thronged with winter tourists. Yes, there was a time when there more, a time before the competition of other destinations got in the way. Again it might be argued though that these greater numbers were catered for adequately enough. But perhaps that was a time when the tourist was a less discerning consumer, a time also when tour operators and indeed politicians were less discerning. For the time being, tectonics and tarmac dominate winter, and not the tourist.


QUIZ
Yesterday - The Beatles, “Back In The USSR”. Today’s title - song by a Scottish group.

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