YOUR VIEWS

MY earlier letter on the question of quality tourism has resulted in a spate of letters on the subject that shows the interest there is in this. Mr Green chooses to downplay golf visitors “few hundreds” when in fact thousands play on the existing 17 courses, with more in the pipeline. He conveniently ignores the 20.000 yachts moored here, and the thousands of millions of euros, that not only represent hundreds of millions of initial investment in the island, but continue to give to the island all year in large, high expenditure.

Ms Coates letter raised a more interesting point, that of self catering holidays. This has been an “old chestnut” for virtually the 40 years I have lived here. People would naturally like to rent out their holiday homes to obtain income to offset costs, but official regulations make it impossible for many to meet these rules and requirements. Many do rent “illegally” but would prefer to not do this, looking over their shoulder, afraid of being denounced by a “nasty neighbour”, etc and pay tax on their rentals, but the system does not allow this. What a ridiculous situation, where if the authorities were only a little more flexible, legal rentals, would in turn bring to the government millions in tax revenue. Another case of bureaucracy gone mad!

The last letter from Ms Cotton and her comments on cruise ships visiting, whilst there may be a number of people wandering around Palma, I am afraid the vast majority will fall into the “day tripper” category, and some vists are quite short, my own sister's ship called and her time here was from 9am to 1pm - it did not help it was a Sunday with most closed! I am sure there are official figures on their spending when here, but considering the volume of people, the numbers will be disappointing.

Yours sincerely,

Graham Phillips