Show tourists some respect

Dear author, So Majorca has FINALLY decided that it is NOT a freaking theme park where Europeans can come and get wasted and “let their hair down”. The idea of not all, but a HUGE number of tourists of “holidaymaking” is grotesque, despicable, appalling. They catcall you from their hotel windows. They drunkenly yell at night while you’re trying to sleep on a weekday. They will jump on garbage containers, completely drunk, in broad daylight, shirtless, beer in one hand and cigar in the other, and start chanting like apes. They puke on your bus stop seat. They drive drunk. They throw shit into the sea from their party boats. They are rude. They are condescending. By the way these are all first-hand experiences. And they SHOULD NOT FEEL WELCOME to come here and do everything they’re not allowed in their country, just because they’re paying for a low-cost plane ticket and a cheap all-inclusive that some disgraceful money hungry person decided to build 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago. Brits, Germans, I don’t care. Believe me, they come in all colours and we could not care less about their nationality. Key markets are not receiving well the measures the local government is finally taking after years of residents suffering these people’s medieval forms of “holidays”? WELL BOO-EFFING-HOO. Perhaps what we’re looking for is to change the target markets, as the ones we have now are clearly not working for us. Perhaps restriction wouldn’t be necessary if those “well-earned money” spenders were CIVILE. Believe you me when I tell you, people are WELCOME to come here, enjoy the Islands, and spend here (whether their money has been well earned or not - it’s not like we ask many questions eh?). We’re HAPPY to have indeed hard-working people come here, regardless of their nationality, age range, job or wealth, and have a beautiful time. And yes, they can drink as much as they want. They can drink themselves blind for all we care. What they CANNOT DO is drink as much as they want and THEN expect our already exhausted public health system takes care of them when they “fall” off a balcony while intoxicated. They are NOT WELCOME if I’m walking home alone at night in a good neighbourhood of Palma and they decide it will be fun to make me feel extremely uncomfortable by catcalling me. IT IS NOT OKAY that just because you had the sheer bad luck of having a hotel built behind your house, you have to pick up garbage that falls from the hotel windows onto your terrace on a daily basis from June to September. And IT IS NOT FINE TO THROW A TANTRUM because they finally called tourists out on their S H I T after decades of standing it. Dear author, the fact that you find disrespectful towards tourists that alcohol has been restricted in certain areas to certain kinds of public, just speaks volumes of how cynical and entitled the general foreign public still feels towards the Balearics as a holiday destination, or as a year-round residence for that matter. Sincerely, a person who does not believe it is anyone’s universal right to behave like I’ve seen tourists behave here, just because they’re “clients”. NO. Ps: funny thing about respect: IT’S A TWO-WAY STREET PAL. Give it, you earn it back.

Well, you're right. It is only a small contingent of tourists. Although British tourism is stereotypically the consistent trophy winner, and the worst of it is traditionally confined to the handful of British dominant resorts. You probably wouldn't have noticed because your knowledge base is likely limited to the handful of British resorts, but German tourists (and other nationalities) frequent virtually every corner of this island. Sure, there's a couple of German dominant resorts, most of which are rather benign, although the ballermann area around schinkenstrasse, at the arenal end of playa de Palma does indeed get out of control occasionally. It's the young German's Magaluf (on a bit smaller scale) The rest of playa de Palma is actually rather benign. The difference is that Brits tend to stay in places that are dominantly British. British pubs, British food, other Brits, which tends to concentrate the vast majority of British tourism to a handful of resorts, while others tend to be less insular in their choices, and are quietly dominant virtually everywhere else. It's understandable that if your frame of reference is strictly British, you probably wouldn't be aware of that. Certainly, excessive drinking and rowdiness isn't just a British thing, but as a matter of scale, it's consistently the British dominant resorts that exhibit the lion's share of it. Quite famously. I suspect it's simply a cultural difference. The British idea of a holiday abroad is to cut loose and do all the stuff you can't do in normal life. Go wild. While others are more inclined to see a holiday as the chance to chill out and relax. Drinking into a stupor all day and night just isn't part of that. It's a time to enjoy the better things in life. Top grade accommodation, Fine dining, good wines, exploring culture, shopping, sailing, golf... And that may help explain why the luxury hotels and fincas are found mainly outside the resorts, and are heavily dominated by continental Europeans.