SUNDAY'S Viewpoint highlighted the effects of Easter's bad weather in restricting our tourists' good times. How this cold snap can be due to global warming escapes me but I do agree that the existing indoor alternatives need to be promoted more. I had my teenage grandson with me for almost a year and was pleasantly amazed how many weekend events there were to interest him but I had to search them out.
Keeping our dreamed for hundreds of rich winter tourists is one thing. Keeping many thousands of sodden third rate summer visitors (fast forward to the last sentence) happy is of a different magnitude.
Back in the early 70's the owner of the then famous Batley Variety Club, James Corrigan, went back to his roots and developed a large Fair Ground just outside Can Pastilla aptly named the Carousel de Majorca catering for thousands. Many Northerners, some with fun fair experience, bought into the project. It survived just 3 years. Although there were reputedly problems of finance and a lack of adequate promotion the main reason it was thought to have collapsed was the lack of bad weather. I repeat a lack of bad weather. The arriving tourists promised themselves a visit but as the sun continued to blister down they rescheduled the trip for a rainy day something guaranteed in Blackpool abnormal here in high season. It certainly wasn't due to location, location. location. On the same Fontanelles site the year round Palma Aquarium is doing very well but it is a much smaller attraction.
Even if advertising were jacked up and aquarium type developments peppered around every resort there is still the insurmountable problem of the number of tourists inconvenienced. Building to this scale would not be economic for the occasional wet weekend. As Andrew Ede's Blog has astutely observed All Inclusive have every interest in getting their guests out of their hotel as they have already extracted every euro they have coming. The more their guests stay in the more they consume (free) and the more profits drop. Outside these hotels our pubs quite like rain but only if it starts when their punters are on the beach. They will then high tail it to the nearest bar and feed and drink until the weather changes. The longer it rains the better. Add in Karaoke then our multitude of bars, cafes and restaurants do have the capacity to handle these numbers at super short notice. Unfortunately these same holiday makers are all the third rate kind that Pedro Iriondo (Tourist Board President) would like EasyJet or Ryan Air to leave back on the runways in the UK.
Mike Lillico
Playa de Palma
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