Government rejected 14 alternatives

The first meeting between hoteliers and the Balearic government to analyse all the tourism figures is to be held next week. Yesterday however, the Majorcan Hotel Federation said that over the past two years, the Balearic hotel sector has had 14 alternative suggestions to the tourist tax and how it should be collected rejected by the local government. The hotel sector has suggested that it could have been either collected at airports or added to the cost of flight tickets “but all have been resoundly rejected,” the hotel federation said yesterday. It appears that the sector even proposed that all sectors involved in tourism invest in a special programme to help protect and repair the environment. Many of the ideas put forward were alternatives to imposing the controversial and unpopular tourist tax, such as establishing a “real” tourist tax which was paid only by those “who contaminated” the Balearics - but not tourists. As far as the hotel sector is concerned, Thursday's meeting with the governemnt was far from what they expected and they feel “used and deceived.” The hotel sector was hoping for some concerned decisions to be made by the Balearic President Francesc Antich and his Tourism Minister Celesti Alomar, not spend three hours discussing what can be discussed over the coming weeks.