Palma.Since Friday, Son San Joan airport has handled over 400'000 passengers with all the airport's services being stretched to their limits, including retailers as the airport copes with its busiest weekend yet since the holiday season started.
The busiest day was yesterday when 153'815 passengers passed through the airport which handled 860 flight movements. The passenger figures outstripped last year's significantly and, combined with the hotel occupancy figures, which are also up on last year, point towards another busy Summer season.
And, since Friday, the airport has handled 2'297 flights, 768 of those will be today.
Welcomed
The figures have been welcomed by the tourist sector which come on the back of a record breaking May.
Last month, Palma airport broke its previous May passenger figures and the forecasts for July and August point to a further increase in passenger figures. As the Bulletin reported this week, growth in the British package holiday sales has continued into the summer late-booking period, defying predictions that dynamic sales would pick up at the expense of packages.
GfK put the market share of packages at 83%.
Sarah Sloman, consumer choices global client director at GfK Retail, said: The market has been driven by packages at the expense of accommodation-only and flight-only.
Package sales boomed in the first quarter of the year, with GfK reporting bookings up 8% year on year in February and the latest UK package holiday market figures for the end of last week show that the overall market is still up by five percent on last year while Majorca has enjoyed a sudden leap in popularity.
Majorca surge
Having posted a month-on-month increase in package holiday sales of four percent since the start of the year, that has suddenly jumped two percent to six percent.
One UK industry source told the Bulletin yesterday that tour operators were braced for another surge in demand yesterday because it was the final Saturday of the month and pay day.