Booze tourism spoils good vacation season at Ballermann
Published: Friday, Nov 10th 2023, 22:51
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Hotel owners on the Ballermann don't know whether to laugh or cry these days. From an economic perspective, this year's vacation season at Playa de Palma with its famous party mile was definitely a complete success. However, the balance sheet is clouded by the bad behavior of many guests.
The hotels in the area in the southwest of the Spanish Mediterranean island, which is extremely popular with German tourists in particular, had an average occupancy rate of almost 87 percent, the Association of Hoteliers of the Playa (AHPP) announced on Friday.
"This is a very good figure and is similar to that of the years before the coronavirus pandemic," association president Pedro Marín told journalists. According to the AHPP, the 2019 figure was exceeded by around two percentage points, as was the previous year's figure, but by a much smaller amount. The increases are all the more astonishing when you consider that room prices in the Balearic Islands have risen by an average of 10.9 percent compared to the previous year.
But Marín does not feel like celebrating. The increasingly bad behavior of many visitors to the beach tarnishes the good figures. The 47-year-old spoke plainly: in terms of excesses and booze tourism, it was "one of the worst seasons ever".
During the last vacation season, there were fights every week. Drunken holidaymakers stagger around and sober up on the street, often becoming violent. An alleged gang rape in July - four Germans are still in custody as a result - and the murder of a German in October stand out in particular.
Ballermann is the root of the problem, says Marin. This year, 185 holidaymakers were kicked out of their hotels for bad behavior, 90 percent of them in the party mile area. 62 percent of those affected were German, 25 percent Austrian or Swiss.
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