• Crisis Tourism worsens to 98,753 million its forecast of falls in the worst summer in history
  • Covid.The ERTEs are installed in the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands due to the lock of tourism

The cover of the 'Bild Zeitung ' last Saturday resembled those posters that are placed at the entrance of contaminated or radioactive premises. "Risk zone" , it said. And under "Warning". The German authorities had just advised against non-essential travel to Spain, except the Canary Islands, due to the increase in cases of coronavirus , and the most widely read newspaper in Germany knew which region to write in giant letters: " Mallorca ".

The local press could have copied the idea, and headlined the next day with the word, "Closed", saving the bill for the owners of bars, hotels and restaurants. Of the 10.2 million foreign tourists the island received last year, 4.1 were Germans . It is not comforting to take a look at who were the second with 2.4 million: the United Kingdom.

The German Tourism Association (DRV) assured that at the time of the announcement there were about 30,000 Germans in the Balearic Islands , who had arrived on an organized trip, 90% in Mallorca, which gives an idea of ​​how the season was going. Hotel entrepreneurs cannot be accused of a lack of courage or optimism. Before the quarantine decreed by the United Kingdom, 57% of the hotel plant on the island had opened, yesterday only 47% remained, and with less than half of the beds occupied . Not even the Hotel Federation knows what will remain after the latest decision of the German Government.

"After all the efforts that have been made to adopt security measures, protocols and training for workers to have a minimum of tourist activity, this decision is very bad news that will have immediate consequences," said the president of the Hotel Federation from Mallorca, María Frontera .

The day after the German government's announcement, all tour operators canceled their operations with the islands, or began to divert their flights to other destinations such as the Canary Islands. Of the more than 70 flight departures and arrivals that were between Germany and Palma airport, yesterday 46 departures and 47 arrivals had dropped. The first with the planes almost full, the second with the planes almost empty.

The president of the Business Association of Balearic Travel Agencies (Aviba), Xisco Mulet , believes that "the opportunity" to make a tourist season "half worthy" has been lost.

Mandatory test at the airport

Anyone returning to Germany from the so-called risk areas , some 130 around the world, must take a test, or present a negative test that has been done in the last 48 hours . Germans can take a test for free at the same airport, although depending on the region they return to, they may be required to quarantine for fourteen days.

The little that the island has been able to take advantage of from tourism is due to the fact that Germany has been making an asymmetric escalation of our country , differentiating from the first moment the data by Autonomous Communities, something that until very recently the Government had not been able to execute Spanish.

The Germans are based on the criteria of the Robert Koch Institute , which makes any region in which there are more than 50 weekly cases per 100,000 inhabitants into a risk zone . In the case of Spain, the first to be pointed out were Catalonia, Aragon and Navarra, at the end of July. Madrid and the Basque Country on the 10th . On Friday the Ministry of Health placed the Balearic rate at 77.43 cases, and it does not look to improve. The Balearic Islands yesterday registered 235 new positives in the last 24 hours. In the Community there are currently 1,545 active cases, 36 more than on Friday.

The situation will be reviewed every week, so, as did the tour operators in the United Kingdom, TUI suspends travel for the time being until next Monday. DER, the second largest tour operator in Germany, as of Friday . Within the CDU, Angela Merkel's party, Deputy Christoph Ploss has asked that the recommendation not to travel to Mallorca go directly to ban.

31% unemployment

It cannot be said that the president of the Balearic Government, Francina Armengol, was enraged after learning of the German government's decision. "The incidence is high, it is what it is," he said. Its Executive estimates a fall in GDP of 30% and a rise in unemployment to 31% . Before Germany, the Balearic Islands were already the Community where fewer workers had left the ERTEs, now they hope to return to them or they will be fired. The bar and restaurant employers believe that three out of every ten businesses that close this winter will do so forever. Tourism, finally, will not be the covert rescue that it sends us in northern Europe.

Nightlife is dead. Areas such as Magaluf in Mallorca or San Antonio in Ibiza, which tend to star in scenes of excess young tourism, are so empty that, like Monday, you can even visit the Royal House. "There are fewer people than at Christmas," says a businessman in the area.

Menorca and Ibiza, where the main market is the British, already received the worst news of the season last month. The first only opened 37% of the hotel plant. The second less than half, and also to close July with an occupancy of 37.03%. From the Ibizan Hotel Federation they announce imminent hotel closures in the coming days.

The second worst news of the season in Ibiza did not come from Germany, since his second market is not the German, but the Dutch, but he made the same decision as the Germans last Sunday.

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Know more

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  • Balearics
  • UK
  • Spain
  • Europe
  • Majorca
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