Balearics welcomes cut in airport taxes

What it will mean is that the winter discount will not be as high as ten percent. To the contrary, it will merely reduce the summer increase by nine percent.

Nevertheless, after a meeting between the President of the Balearics, Jose Ramon Bauza and the Director of Spanish Airport Authority, AENA, Jose Manuel Vargas, the Balearics Director General for Ports and Airports, Antonio Duedero, said that the local authorities have welcomed the move.

Traffic is down
So far this year, airport traffic in the Balearics has fallen by eight percent and Vargas admitted that he is well aware of and understands the uncertainty in the Balearic tourist industry about how this summers going to evolve with so many other outside factors to take into account.

But, with bookings to Majorca and Ibiza beginning to pick up and slowly match last year's while Minorca is already four percent ahead of last year, Vargas is confident that the summer will be a good one with European holiday makers merely deciding to book later for various reasons.

That said, Vargas expressed his desire to help the Balearics make much more of the winter season and said that giving the region the option of dropping airport taxes by as much as ten percent, should attract more winter flights. But, the industry as a whole is going to have to rally round because, if the region's hotels continue to close on mass, then the airlines will have no incentive to increase their flight schedules.

Concerns
Vargas said that he intends to work with the Balearics in order to revive the fortunes of the regional tourist industry as much as possible and he has already expressed his concerns to Central Government over its intentions to raise airport taxes by as much as 19 percent over the course of this year.