The president of the Majorca Hoteliers Federation, Maria Frontera, recognises that there has been a slowdown in bookings for reasons that "everyone already knows", most obviously the competition from other destinations, in particular Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia, where the governments are heavily subsiding the tourism industries.
Of Majorca's two main tourism markets - the British and the German - Frontera says that the British is holding up better than the German. There are, nevertheless, falls with both markets - four to six per cent with the British and up to 15% with the German.
As was noted last week by Juan Molas, the president of the Cehat national confederation of hotels, the domestic Spanish market is stepping in and filling some gaps left by the British and Germans. He also anticipates there being a burst of late bookings, a view shared by certain tour operators, such as Germany's Alltours.
