DEAR SIR,
CARE HIRE
I feel I must take issue with Richard Goss (Thurs 11/02) and at the same time support Sandra from Bonaire (Tues 9/02).
We have been coming to the island 2 or 3 times a year for 27 years and we always hire a car from the airport. Over the years we have seen hire prices increase and sometimes decrease but always within reason. Last year we had a Ford Fusion for 3 weeks in August - September and we paid a basic price of 426 euros. I have just searched for the same car, same dates and same company for this year and the price has increased slightly' to 996 euros! I have searched other companies and the prices for roughly the same car show up in a range from 891 euros to 1088 euros, surprisingly one company asking for 1696 euros which surely (I hope) must be a joke.
So, I may be wrong but I also feel that the car hire fees have increased somewhat.
Yours sincerely,
Rob, Sheffield
DEAR SIR,
I would like to thank Monro Bryce for his prompt reply (13 Feb) to my letter only a day earlier about the poor marketing of Real Mallorca.
Would that their sales department was as efficient. Unfortunately his deep knowledge of the club shows the situation to be even worse than I originally thought. Not only do they not know the price of a match just a few days in advance but they are not even sure of the day it will happen!
To expect my Dutch holiday makers to carve out 2 days of a short break, the first to queue for tickets, the second to return to the ground for the football itself is both unreasonable and should be unnecessary.
He points his finger at sloven Spanish TV schedule planning. In the States where the commercialisation of Sport and TV has no equal these problems do not exist. Prior to going on holiday in Texas I booked basket ball tickets on the internet for the Houston Rockets playing at home and two weeks later with them away against the San Antonio Spurs. The power of the stations is even greater in the US as play will be halted (time outs) to fit in with the interminable adverts but they still know when the game will occur, what price the ticket and the ability to book and pay for a precise seat in the stadium. That's marketing not last minute hiking up to raise vital revenue which in my particular case may lead to the Son Moix Tannoy taking up Monro's idea of announcing crowd changes to the players rather than vice versa if Vincent and the van Gogh family decide it's not worth the bother.
Perhaps Monro sums it up best when he says that's just the way it is here!
Mike Lillico, Playa de Palma