The main German and British tour operators offer Mallorca as an alternative to tourists who had scheduled trips to the Greek islands affected by the fires. The big companies that offer holiday packages in Germany and the United Kingdom, such as Jet 2 Holidays or TUI, are giving the option of diverting the holiday packages to the Balearic island instead of canceling the holidays.
A spokesman for the Mallorca Hotel Federation assures that the diversion of tourists has not yet been noticed, but announces that in Mallorca there is plenty of hotel capacity to receive a rebound in travelers when the diversion of tourists begins. The areas where there are more tourists affected by the fires are the Greek islands of Rhodes and Corfu, as well as the Antalya area in Turkey.
These are destinations that have traditionally been Mallorc’s competitors, and which are now being evacuated due to the virulence of the fires. For now there is no forecast that the fires will be controlled in these areas, where the field has been burning for ten days, so it is expected that there will be diversions for at least the next two weeks, although it could last throughout the month of August.
In the Hotel Federation of Mallorca they point out that the occupancy forecasts in Mallorca for this month of August are around 90% in figures similar to those of last year. This 10% margin allows those tourists who had to travel to the areas affected by the fires to be diverted. The Balearic Islands have more than 300,000 hotel beds, for which this 10% margin, some 30,000 beds, allows the 20,000 tourists who are estimated to be able to travel in the coming days to arrive.
Hoteliers indicate that they are prepared to receive this contingent since, in addition, there are more and more last-minute reservations, which would be the equivalent of this unexpected arrival of tourists. From the Federation they indicate, for example, that these last-minute reservations are increasing progressively and it has been especially noticeable when there have been heat waves, as happened this July. “If a German can bathe in a lake at 30 degrees, he will not come to Mallorca if it is at 40 degrees,” they point out.
This extraordinary movement of tourists will also have consequences at Palma airport, where flights to the islands have increased. Son Sant Joan airport has the capacity to channel the increase in flights to the island, which in summer has between 900 and 1,000 movements depending on whether it is a holiday or weekend. That means there is a flight in or out of the airport almost every minute.
