In an interview with the German paper Bild am Sonntag, the CEO of TUI, Sebastian Ebel, said he could understand protests against mass tourism in Mallorca.
Ebel stressed that the protests should be taken seriously, "because we would feel the same way". He observed that the protests are against "excessive" issues such as the increase in rents, the increase in housing prices and the volume of traffic.
He added: "It is important to analyse what motivates people, how much tourism they want and how much they don't. Ultimately, it is the people who live there who should decide how much tourism they want." (He made much the same point as this at the start of March this year before the protests.)
Ebel called for "a global strategy" to mitigate the negative effects of tourism, something that "has a lot to do with living space". "It is difficult there (in Mallorca) if foreign tourists buy practically all the houses because they have 10,000 euros more. I always like to refer to the Danish model; a German cannot buy a house for private use in Denmark."
He defended the package holiday model, as tourists stay in hotels and therefore do not take away houses from the resident population. Ebel also said that TUI strive to keep water consumption “very low”.