On cloudy summer days it is calculated that the number of people in Palma is 100,000 higher than the registered population of 420,000. In addition to tourists already in the city, many come in from the rest of the island*. The town hall, which has given this calculation, believes that this number will fall as a consequence of the Balearic holiday rentals legislation.
The town hall doesn't lay on more staff to deal with exceptionally high numbers. It has already taken additional numbers into account when planning services during the summer. For example, waste bins are emptied in the morning and in the evening. There are "mobile" bins in areas which have a heavy concentration of tourists, such as around the Cathedral. For the "Operation Cloud", the police operation to deal with heavy traffic on cloudy days, officers are diverted from other duties. In tourist information offices, there are no more staff for these cloudy days as they are already operating at full staffing levels.
In Palma there are 46,000 registered tourist accommodation places. These have increased, says the town hall, by ten per cent since the passing of the 2012 tourism law. The holiday rentals association Aptur reckons that there are 25,000 holiday rentals places, a large number of them "illegal".
The Balearic Ports Authority estimates that there will be 1,606,174 cruise ship passengers in Palma this year, a fall of 1.5%. During August there are on average 2.5 ships per day. On Saturday there were six ships, though only five were in port at the same time. This situation will be repeated today.
* There will also be, it should be noted, people who commute to Palma for work.
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If tourists want to leave their resorts on a cloudy day to visit Palma, there is really no need for this traffic congestion being generated by the hire cars. Most of the resorts in Majorca have a very good bus service linking them with Palma.
It is well publicized that our government does not know how many rental cars are on the roads of Mallorca so I find it amusing that they do know that one in five people in Palma on a cloudy day are tourists. I have lived here for three years. I have never been surveyed on the street, in bars, in restaurants or stores. The only figures we really know are those coming in through the airport and the ports. Where they go from there is completely unknown. I would challenge whoever came up with this bogus figure to state how it was determined. The only figure I know is that 100% of the people who came up with this 'figure' do not know what they are talking about. Simply a number plucked out of thin air to try and prove that Palma is not over-saturated with tourists. If this number were true, then there are an awful lot of people playing hooky from work on a cloudy day! If we are going to talk numbers let's talk real numbers......
Let's see what happens next year when the tourists stop going there because of the anti tourist nonsense going on there now.
Drove past the very slow moving queue for the cathedral carpark on the Paseo Maritimo yesterday and noted approximately 80% of the traffic were rental cars! Just a snapshot of the amount of rentals on the island, incredible.
That's great news for tourism!