With the Covid-19 crisis keeping hotels and beaches deserted for much of the tourist season, many island business owners are struggling to survive.
Hit by economical consequences
The silence is uncanny. No clattering coffee cups, no voices chattering in different languages on the innumerable terraces. Without them, Mallorca’s capital is an entirely different place.
The alleys and squares of Palma’s old town are deserted. No tourists have set foot here since Spain declared a state of emergency, imposing a strict curfew to stem the spread of coronavirus.
And, as nobody knows when they will return, the virus has shown that the island’s biggest strength, tourism, can also be its greatest weakness.
“A large part of our economy depends directly or indirectly on tourism — which is why the Balearic Islands have been one of the regions in Spain hardest hit by the economical consequences of the coronavirus crisis,” economist Antoni Riera explains.
After all hotels across Spain were shuttered, Riera calculated the total projected losses across the four Balearic islands, based on figures for the three months of March, April and May 2019.
He predicts a total loss of 1.53 billion dollars for hotels, transport companies and restaurants combined.
“Unlike in industrial regions, it will take much longer here until the economy picks up again: first, we need demand,” Riera tells dpa.
And he doubts demand will return fast. He fears that tourists will avoid travelling by plane for some time and will generally be trying to save money, cutting into budgets for non-essential expenditure on travel.
But many Mallorcans depend on these travel budgets for their incomes. The regional government estimates 200,000 workers have had their hours cut, and trade union UGT expects 400,000 people, or 80 per cent of the Balearic Islands’ workforce, to depend on financial aid.
Seasonal workers whose contracts are now at stake, self-employed people
whose contracts are being cancelled, domestic helpers whose salaries families will no longer be able to afford — UGT spokesperson Ana Koehler’s list goes on and on.
At Playa de Palma, a popular tourist destination, a group of 13 hotel owners made a virtue out of their misery by donating three tons of perishable food to charity.
The donations also included sanitary products like toilet paper, a commodity in great demand these days.
The Mallorcan hotel association FEHM also donated gloves, face masks, rubbing alcohol and shower caps to hospitals.
Only one hotel in Palma remains open. The “Palma Bay” at the congress centre has been converted into an overflow hospital for up to 250 patients.
Mallorcans hope their island’s remote location could help them quickly get a grip on the outbreak. Ferry and air services were reduced to an absolute minimum.
At Palma’s airport, where in normal times planes land every minute during the high season, connections to the mainland and to the rest of Europe were cut to a minimum.
And yet the island remains reliant on airlines to bring in the tourists, says Andreu Serra, head of the tourism department of the Mallorca Island Council.
However, he believes there will be no changes in Mallorca’s advertising strategy, which in recent years has only promoted the off-season due to overcrowded summers.
“Perhaps this year we will have to re-adjust a little,” he says. “But we still want to position ourselves as a year-round destination that attracts visitors with sports, gastronomy and culture.”
Serra doesn’t share economist Antoni Riera’s concerns.
“We survived the crisis after 9/11, we will survive this crisis too,” he says, adding that the desire to travel will soon return once the pandemic is over.
He points to the Island Council’s latest online campaign: “Mallorca will be waiting for you as soon as all this is over.” But even the optimistic Serra doesn’t dare predict exactly when that might be. – dpa
