Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Weather / Palma Airport

Without wishing to sound like a broken record, the odd weather continues; thunder rumbling around lunchtime today, and some more rain - never heavy*, but enough to drive the hordes from the beaches. Fact is that weather is about the most important subject for most people at this time of the year, so no apologies for drawing attention to the current unpredictability.

* Just update that. It has chucked it down, absolutely chucked it down today.

And so some more record numbers. Palma Airport has seen over 3 million passengers passing through it for only the second time. The figures are for July this year. The reasons are low-cost flights, Spanish tourism and new offers. Hotel occupation is benefiting, the current season being better than expected. Well, fine, except this latter fact doesn’t chime with all that stuff we were being told about a record year back earlier this year. We had, after all, been led to believe that we could expect such a season. So, why the apparent surprise? Was it that those figures quoted earlier in the year were a load of cock?

The trouble with the airport figures is that they register those “passing through”. They do not differentiate between those who stay and those who go on elsewhere, or between those who stay for a short while and for longer. The figures may be good but there is an absence of nuance when it comes to presenting or discussing such figures.

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