The Incredible Shrinking Season

The number of visitors that came to Majorca over the winter was up, or so we are led to believe. Cheap flights may well be bringing in some more wintertime tourists, but they are certainly not coming in great numbers, and, moreover, they are of little value to most of the coastal resorts away from Palma. Even the capital's near neighbours like Magaluf do not exactly benefit enormously. Away from the south, and the resorts such as Alcúdia, Cala D'Or and the rest are, if not ghost towns, then mere spectres of their summer apparitions.

That the early Easter may have helped to boost the winter numbers should fool no one. The phoney season after Easter has not been all bad news; there have at least seemed to be a fair number of people around. But appearances can be deceptive. A lot of the increased numbers are in fact those people returning to or arriving on the island for the summer's work.

The authorities love to issue seemingly reassuring statistics and information with which they can pat themselves on the back. The upcoming season, we are told, will be ok; potentially even better than last year. But these statistics and this information are not necessarily representative of the true picture, which is the level of spend. It is like stats in football - any number of shots on goal but no goals to show for them.

The press is full of such information, much of it taken with a pinch of salt, a pepper-pot and a full cruet set. But while the statistics may not always stack up, at least the summer tourism is holding up and at least it is maintaining its vital place in the island's economy. Yet the season, or so many traders will tell you, is shrinking, making that desolation of winter all the more difficult to survive. Majorca is not a diverse economy. Tourism and construction are the big players, with agriculture coming in behind them. There has been talk, at political level, of innovation and development, but one fears that it will remain talk. Recently, there was a gathering of European islands whose representatives met for a talking-shop. The press picked up on this, notably the views of the Isle of Man people. Here is an island that has long lost its formerly strong tourism industry. It has held its own through diversification, especially into the finance sector. But the Isle of Man has its own peculiar circumstances. Majorca could not become a Mediterranean Cayman Islands or style itself as the Manx in the Med. Lots of talk and, one fancies, very little else.

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