Majorca is a holiday island and relies heavily on tourism for its well being. Accommodation is an important consideration to be taken into account when booking a holiday and this facility should be available to potential clients when booking a holiday on Majorca.
Another point which requires attention is that of owners of properties who have purchased their property primarily for their own use, but undertaken some holiday lettings to help with their over heads. I do believe that provision of properties for holiday lettings does require some sort of controls to ensure that minimum standards are maintained and properties rented do live up to the acceptable standards required by the clients.
I am a lover of Majorca and taking into account all the pros and cons believe it is arguably one of the premier holiday destinations in the world. We have the pleasure of owning a home on the island for many years and enjoy our frequent visits. Our property is our second home and whilst we did let the property for some years, it is now only for our own use. When we first purchased the apartment we did let it out to assist us with our cash flow.
From this one apartment we expanded the facility through a comprehensive colour brochure to a wide variety of self catering properties both luxury villas and well appointed apartments. In addition we listed a selection of boutique small hotels and one or two larger luxury hotels. Half our business was with these hotels and half with self catering properties. The relationship we had with both the hotels and property owners was excellent and we soon learned that the clients requiring hotels rarely were interested in self catering properties and conversely clients in self catering properties only rarely changed to hotels. Our complaint level was so low it was hardly worthy of consideration and our main source of business soon became to be repeat business and recommendation. Our contracts with property owners was very stringent and covered all items to ensure customer satisfaction The contracts also made it quite clear that all owners were responsible to declare income to the authorities and to pay any tax require Our contracts were produced in Spanish (a sizable number of our owners were Majorcan) and English. All properties had local accessible management who had to speak Spanish and English and indeed some cases Majorcan. Our hotels were essentially privately owned and our relationship with the owners was without exception one of friendly cooperation and mutual respect.
We provided whatever the clients requested from one item only to the whole package, flights, travel insurance, transfers, accommodation and car hire etc. We were full members of ABTA and we were civil aviation bonded.
It was a pleasure to run this small business and increased our love of the island. The relationships we formed were excellent and made it a pleasure to come to the island. I would like to think that the Majorcan authorities would appreciate the several and complex issues regarding this situation and arrive at a satisfactory conclusion which would benefit this wonderful island of Majorca to their satisfaction and that of property owners and hoteliers.
Yours sincerely,
Name withheld by request
2 comments
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It fills me with dismay that Mallorca has now decided they have had enough of Tourism. Theres something for everyone on this wonderful island from cheap & cheerful which some actually people want to upmarket exclusive resorts which entice many high profile guests each year, which is why many people return year after year. Whilst Mallorca is positively booming people should be happy to sit back & enjoy the lucrative rewards rather than trying to drive away the very hand that feeds them. What does Mallorca want a trip back to relative poverty reliant on farming or the income from tourism which is keeping the majority of the population in jobs? Am sure the likes of Tunisia would love to be in our shoes.... I understand the bad name that resorts such as magaluf have, but everywhere has somewhere similar, try visiting Aiya Nappa, Malia or Faliraki to name a few and I think you will find they are exactly the same. For those of you who holidayed in the 80's to the likes of Benidorm etc, the behaviour displayed then was pretty much the same, however nobody recorded this on mobile phones & social media did not exist. The likes of Deia, Soller and Valdemossa still remains the paradise that people refer to but dont forget who created the lively resorts....NOT the tourist themselves but those who market it to the crowd who enjoys it. I empathise with those who now find it expensive to purchase a home here, however many local Mallorquians became extremely wealthy by eagerly selling off their land at highly inflated prices to any nationality who wanted to buy and quite rightly these purchasers should be allowed to do what they wish with their homes and if they choose to rent it to tourists rather than leave it vacant then why not? Many who want to utilise the holiday rental market for their Villa still want the ability to be able to enjoy their home in the sun themselves when it it is vacant. The only region this island is extremely wealthy is solely down to tourism and whilst the export of te fabulous quality wine, olive oil and potatoes etc brings a healthy profit it is not enough to sustain the economy. In short you cant have it all....you will have to take the good with the bad from tourists but has anyone actually really thought of the economic affect of losing even 25% of the tourist industry?
Don't count on it,they are living in cloud cuckoo land.