The national tourism minister, Reyes Maroto, has announced in London that there is to be funding for so-called mature tourist resorts and for improvements to these resorts' competitiveness.
Speaking at the World Travel Market, Maroto said that mature resorts, such as ones in the Balearics, had not received public investment in recent years. The private sector, meantime, has made great efforts in improving hotels. There will, therefore, be agreements between the state and regional governments with regard to investment and where it should go. Maroto explained that an amount has been allocated in the state budget, but that the budget has as yet to be firmed up.
President Armengol, who had dinner with Maroto and the secretary of state for tourism, Bel Oliver, said that this sort of investment is vital for the Balearics' principal industry and the economy in general. She accepted that business associations have been complaining about the lack of public investment to complement that made by the private sector. Investment that will be forthcoming, she observed, "will provide benefits to both residents and tourists".
Maria Frontera, the president of the Majorca Hoteliers Federation, took her opportunity to talk to Maroto about investment. "The hotel sector in Majorca has invested 1,500 million euros in under ten years. Now is the time for town halls, the regional government and the state to do the same, especially as the competition in the eastern Mediterranean has recovered and has started to eat into our quota of the market."
