Americans are flocking to Europe on holiday like never before and one of the most popular destinations is Palma and Mallorca in general.
According to travel booking platform Hopper 80 per cent of Americans heading to Europe plan to spend at least seven days on vacation and Portugal tops the charts as the most booked European country, with its capital Lisbon being the number one city for leisure travel this summer.
Porto, the second-largest city in Portugal, also made the top ten.
And Spain comes in second place, with Barcelona, Palma and Madrid ranking among the top ten European cities for leisure travellers.
One big plus for Mallorca are the United Airlines direct flights to Palma during the summer.
The United Airlines service between Newark Liberty International Airport and Palma restarted on May 26 and will continue until September 27.
The schedule is slightly longer than in 2022, the inaugural year for the route, when flights started in the first week of June and ended in mid-September.
For the director of the Palma 365 Tourism Foundation, Pedro Homar, the increase in frequencies is evidence of the success of a service that was used by almost 10,000 travellers from the US in 2022. Homar says that the service has had a significant impact in economic terms, suggesting that these travellers spend an average of some 1,000 euros per day.
“American tourists don’t come for the sun and the beach - for that they have the the Caribbean, which is much closer. They are interested in the gastronomy, the history, the culture, the traditions... .” The flight to Palma, he adds, “puts the island on the map, with a potential market of 350 million people.”
Assessment of the service, where the Balearic tourism ministry is concerned, is positive. “This is an emerging and high-quality market, and the flights make it possible to attract tourists with high purchasing power who benefit the entire tourism value chain.” The ministry, the Council of Mallorca and Palma 365 are all seeking to establish routes from the US that are not just for the summer months.