A major pressure group fighting tourism saturation in the Balearic Islands is calling on the government to immediately cut visitor numbers.
The Civil Society Forum says decreasing “is the only alternative” but it should be done on a phased basis to protect jobs.
They maintain that limiting arrivals to current figures is not enough: “Right now it is no longer sustainable,” the group insists.
The forum wants to see the arrival of mega cruise liners substantially reduced in favour of smaller ships, setting a capacity figure for the number of visitors who arrive either by air or sea, cutting back on the number of rental cars available on the islands, limiting and charging the arrival of private boats and jets, restricting night-time arrivals at the ports and airport and increasing the Sustainable Tourism Tax paid by cruise operators.
The group is also calling on the Balearic government to transform obsolete hotels into private housing and stop attending tourism fairs.
The Civil Society Forum presented its conclusions following the 1st Congress of Tourism of Civil Society. Their document includes more than 200 proposals to combat saturation and reformulate the tourism model of the Balearic Islands which include Mallorca, Ibiza and Menorca.
Most of the proposals are concentrated on one idea: degrowth.
“The public and business sectors are simply talking about limiting arrivals to current figures but that would not be sustainable because it is no longer sustainable,” says one of the Forum spokespersons, Jaume Garau. “There is only one alternative: degrowth.”
However, they propose doing so “little by little” and “without leaving anyone behind” so that it does not affect employment and translate into a loss of employment.
The group stressed that measures such as those proposed in their document will have to be adopted sooner or later in other territories of the world that suffer from the same problems, many of them in the European environment closest to the Balearic Islands.
“The problem we have is also the same for other European destinations: Europe will have to say these same things one day.”
As regards the concern expressed by some in the tourism sector regarding the latest citizen demonstrations and their effects on the issuing markets, the Forum believes that “it remains to be seen” whether these demonstrations will translate into a retraction of tourist demand as predicted.
“We do not believe so,” said Mr.Garau, stressing that these demonstrations “denote a significant level of awareness” in Majorcan society.
The Civil Society Forum for the Transformation of the Balearic Islands is an association
currently made up of 27 non-profit organisations referring to various areas such as culture, the economy, environmentalism, work or in the defence of rights of citizenship.
