A Very Peculiar Summer

It has indeed been a peculiar summer. Following a booming April, there was a May for which all manner of concerns were raised about the level of tourism but which were largely not realised, mainly it would seem because of bookings for private holiday accommodation. Then there was June - pretty good - but further worries about July, and in particular the first two weeks of July. Those worries appear to have been well founded, but they were all the more strange because only two years ago July had registered the highest levels of hotel occupancy in Mallorca since the turn of the century. It might yet be that July hits the heights of occupancy because suddenly things changed during the week. Was it all down to the World Cup after all?

To give an indication, my "manor" is the tourism centre of Alcúdia. One has become used over the years to complaints about the number of tourists and the consequent lack of business and so one has become used to treating these complaints with a touch of scepticism. This early July, however, has given no grounds for scepticism. The area around the Mile has indeed been dead. However, tour operators had suggested that there would be a pick-up from the middle of the month, and they seem to have been spot-on. Bellevue, the bellwether of tourist activity in the zone, has suddenly gone from being under 50% full to being all but full. This turnaround will be attributed to a surge in the British market, which is indeed part of the explanation, but Bellevue, as with the whole of Alcúdia, is by no means British alone.

There have been dark mutterings about a sharp fall in British bookings to Mallorca this summer, but until we know how the season shakes out - and we won't for some while yet - it will be difficult to know for sure. If the second half of July and August rescues the summer, then all well and good, but it is not all well and good if we are really talking about a season of feverish activity which lasts a mere six weeks or so.

The Spanish Confederation of Hotels and Tourist Accommodation (CEHAT) has, for its part, announced that this summer will be the best since the pre-crisis summer of 2007. Overbookings for August are said to be on the cards; or at least occupancy of above 90% in most Spanish tourist resorts, representing an overall increase in activity of around 11%. But CEHAT has reminded governments of different sorts of the need for major investment in tourism promotion, pointing to the significant rises in bookings to competitor destinations - Turkey up 17%; Greece, a rise of 22%.