The latest figures from Abta in the 2017 Travel Habits Report show that city breaks have become the most popular form of holiday in the United Kingdom. This year, city breaks have accounted for 53 per cent of the market followed by beach holidays which commanded a 41 per cent share of sales.
And this mirrors what has been happening in Palma which the local authorities, in particular Palma town hall and Palma 365, have been working on for the past few years.
The latest local figures indicate that during the 2016/2017 low season, Palma registered an 8.4% increase in the number of room nights in the tourist centre of Palma compared to the same period the previous year, reflecting a growing appetite for cultural city breaks rather than fly and flop and contributing to the tourism ministry’s objective of growing the number of out-of-season travellers.
Boasting a vast tourist offering outside of the high season, Palma acts as a driving force to encourage low-season travel to the island, with many visitors opting to use Palma as a base to explore other destinations in Majorca. Palma 365 also revealed that 51% of those travelling to Palma visit with the main objective of discovery the city, 44% to relax and 22% to indulge in the city’s varied shopping offering.
Under the slogan "Passion for Palma" and now "Better in Winter", the tourist campaign focuses on four key themes including gastronomy, sport, shopping and culture, with the aim of strengthening Palma’s position as an attractive, year-round city-break destination.
The new tourism strategy will target frequent travellers between the age of 35 and 65, interested in short cultural city breaks and four and five-star hotels. This demographic, coined by Palma 365 as 'cosmopolitans', would typically come from urban centres and would spend on average €104 per day throughout their holiday.
Palma’s tourism strategy will also focus on cementing Palma’s status as a leading short-haul destination for food-lovers, raising awareness of the variety and diversity of gastro offerings in the city from fine-dining experiences to traditional tapas bars.
This strategy will be bolstered by Palma’s new gastro tourism ambassadors to strengthen Palma’s image as a European culinary hub and to promote some of the lesser-known culinary concepts in the city.
In 2016, UK travellers accounted for in excess of 593,000 room nights in Palma, making the UK the second biggest international visitor market (after Germany), but in light of promotional campaigns at the World Travel Market in London earlier this month and new joint ventures with a number of leading UK tour operators and airlines, the number of Britons coming to Palma for a city break for a long weekend is expected to increase significantly over the course of this winter.