President wants to set up more air links

At the conference held at the Meliá Palas Atenea hotel on the Paseo Maritimo, Bauzá said that his Partido Popular government team were at the same time as increasing the regularity of winter flights, also looking to improve the image of the Balearic Islands in winter for the tourist market.

Bauzá's comments alluded to the loss that Palma had suffered when in 2009, national airline Spanair had folded its operations at Palma airport and moved its base to Barcelona. Prior to this, Majorca had also lost airline company Aebal (later called Quantum Air) which stopped activity in Palma 2010 in favour of setting up operations in Madrid.

Joint effort
At the conference, President Bauzá recognised that all sectors of the tourist industry were acknowledging the need for change. He said that in order for the Balearics to be far more competitive at a national and international level, it was crucial that the private sector joined the push for improvement.

Bauzá said that it was the private sector that had got the airline industry up and running in the Balearics last century and that it was now its turn again to act to boost its success.

He took the opportunity to make it knownthat companies who chose to nurture business relations with overseas airlines and encourage the setting up of new routes to Balearic airports would have the backing of the regional government. Although tourism promotion was also on the agenda at the conference held yesterday, Bauzá said that it was secondary to the importance of air routes.

To show what importance the government affords the tourist industry, Bauzá said that on 27th September, World Tourism Day, he would speak on the matter on his social network “twitter”@JRBauza.

The President said it would be the first time he would be holding open public debate on the network.