Maria Frontera, recently re-elected as president of the Mallorca Hoteliers Federation, says that the island's hoteliers had anticipated that summer 2022 would not be easy before the latest wave of uncertainty caused by rising infection rates and the Omicron variant.
Competitor destinations, she notes, will be operational from the start of the season. There will be a "commercial battle, but we won't be competing on price". "We are playing in another league and the rules of the game have changed."
Frontera believes that advance bookings will not return, and so Mallorca's hoteliers will have to work with short-term information and be very agile in responding to what may happen in tourist supplier markets.
Decisions already taken in the UK and in the European Union "have slowed down the entire sales period". "This is why we advocate harmonised measures at a European level in respect of the validity of the Covid certificate and vaccines. We have to avoid roller coasters."
The hoteliers' president has been clear in insisting that changes to the tourism model need to be thought through carefully. "In this transition of the tourism model we must all work with the same objectives. Tourism is the economic engine of the Balearics; this is a proven fact. What we have to do is improve the model and do so positively. Tourism specialisation makes us strong and we must give this more value in order to be more competitive."