Public holiday was a ‘wash out' for restaurants

Pilar Carbonell, the head of CAEB's restaurant section of the Balearic Business Federation and her counterpart in Pimem, Alfonso Robledo, said that because for many the holiday had lasted the whole week, the majority of Spaniards had taken to their cars to visit nearby towns. Majorca therefore, Carbonell said, hadn't benefited from a great influx of tourists from the mainland.

Alfonso Robledo claimed that Majorcans who had been able to had opted to holiday away from the island whilst very few people had come to Majorca.

Pimem estimated that their members had earned barely a quarter of takings registered during the same holiday period last year.
Nevertheless, from CAEB, Pilar Carbonell explained that it is “difficult” make a comparison of activity this year with last because as last week's holiday dates fell on a Tuesday and Thursday, it meant that people had spread the holiday out over the whole week and had not “concentrated” holiday spending on the two public holiday dates on the calendar.

In any case, Carbonell had also said that the majority of Spaniards had gone to other areas of the mainland, while people in the islands hadn't taken advantage of the public holiday dates to stretch to a full week's break.

She said that on Majorca, a great majority of the hotels and restaurants in tourist areas of the islands were closed last week.
She said that the restaurant section of the island had been particularly affected because the residents who had been able to afford to leave the island did so, but those who had remained “had spent little.”