Staff Reporter
A TOURISM chief in Cadiz has put the province’s hugely successful summer season down to one factor: Brits don’t go there.
Fresh off welcoming 600,000 visitors from within Spain and abroad in July and August alone – numbers that dwarf last year’s figures – the tourism boss favourably compared Cadiz to other tourism-saturated destinations.
The Balearics have produced a steady stream of news stories involving tourists and murders, rapes, fights and deaths this summer.
Meanwhile, Cadiz has remained remarkably harmonious with hardly an incident of note.
And German Beardo, who sits on the regional tourism board and is also Mayor of El Puerto de Santa María, lauded the lack of ‘co-existence problems’ in the province.
He then laid the blame for these issues, which have plagued hotspots from Ibiza to Marbella and Barcelona, squarely at the door of British tourists.
“You won’t find rowdy British tourists landing here like in Magaluf, nor are there any instances of ‘balconing’,” he said.
And he put the success of Cadiz’s summer season down to the fact that ‘tourism is primarily domestic, which doesn’t create any issues.’
Reports indicate that five people have died in Spain this year while ‘balconing’, or attempting to jump from one balcony to another, or into a swimming pool.
John McKenna, 22, from Carlisle, died jumping from the third floor of his San Antonio hotel room in Spain’s Ibiza in June.
Another Brit, 35, died in the same resort in similar circumstances just a month later.
Just days before, yet another Brit, 25, suffered serious injuries after plunging four metres to the ground from his hotel balcony in Can Picafort, Mallorca.
Meanwhile, five young British tourists were tracked down and fined €36,000 each for ‘balconing’ at Magaluf hotels on separate occasions across the summer.
Instead, Beardo lauded Cadiz’s ability to provide high-quality and sustainable tourism thanks to the more peaceful nature of the tourists it receives.
“While this influx is welcome,” he continued, “it must be aligned with a commitment to excellent and sustainable tourism; those who visit should spend more and contribute more revenue to the municipality.
“But local governments should also be compensated for maintaining essential public services at the same high level of quality.”
He also called for coastal towns that receive domestic tourism to receive greater state funding, ensuring that their permanent residents receive compensation for footing the bill for maintaining the tourism facilities.
“Ninety-thousand people pay, in the case of El Puerto de Santa María, to have clean, safe, well-lit, and paved streets, and when 150,000 people arrive during those months, they indeed contribute to the local economy, to consumption, to bars, to hotels… but the revenues for municipalities remain unchanged,” he concluded.
READ MORE:
- Five young men imprisoned after allegedly raping a woman in Barcelona
- British tourist arrested for raping son’s female friend at Magaluf hotel on Spain’s Mallorca
- Life-threatening ‘balconing’ foreign tourists fined €36,000 each and thrown out of Magaluf hotels on Spain’s Mallorca
- British tourist, 25, seriously injured after falling from hotel balcony in Spain’s Mallorca
