PALMA
SIGNS of life are beginning to show in the island's holiday resorts as Majorca begins getting ready for Easter.
Hotels are starting to reopen and along with them, the local bars and restaurants and this week, the Spanish Secretary of State for Tourism, the Majorcan, Joan Mesquida, confirmed the message which has been coming out of the UK over the past months by proclaiming in Palma that this season will be better.
RECESSION
But, he did stress that there is still plenty of work to be done to combat the consequences of the recession.
Mesquida said that the latest market reports coming out of the region's two main client countries, the United Kingdom and Germany, point to an increase in demand for Balearic holidays.
In fact, according to Mesquida, the British market is performing better than last year across the whole of Spain.
However, just how well the UK market is performing is difficult to gauge because, as the Bulletin has been reporting, it is going to be a late-booking and very price sensitive market this year.
Nevertheless, most of the tour operators are posting better results for February holiday sales than during the same period last year and the Majorcan Hotel federation claims that all of the island's hotels are going to be open for Easter which is just a few weeks away.
This winter a record number of hotels have been closed, only 15 percent of Majorca hotels remained open, but it would appear that, in response to the positive reports emerging from the United Kingdom and Germany, hoteliers are anxious to open and try to recuperate some of the money lost last year.
The Balearic tourism authorities are also working hard on attracting more visitors from new and emerging markets such as Eastern Europe and also the mainland - a market which suffered greatly last summer.