No jandals: A tourism group in Mallorca has teamed up to create a dress code to curb tourists' binge-drinking. Photo / Getty Images
No jandals: A tourism group in Mallorca has teamed up to create a dress code to curb tourists' binge-drinking. Photo / Getty Images
Heading to a restaurant on the Playa de Palma? You might want to change your footwear.
With trade on Spanish pleasure beaches recovering from the pandemic, residents of Mallorca say that another plague has returned and is worse than ever before: binge drinking tourists.
The usual migration of rowdy tourists from Northern Europe have arrived in the Balearic Islands. While the custom has been missed by the tourist towns, their behaviour has not.
On the island of Mallorca, Juan Miguel Ferrer has been appointed to referee football hooligans and rowdy beachgoers.
The businessman who heads the Palma Beach Initiative recently landed in hot water for telling newspaper Última Hora the problem was "worse than Coronavirus." But that sentiment is widely shared by many residents who are not benefitting from the tourism.
Last month he helped eleven restaurants on the Playa de Palma introduce a 'dress code' in order to tackle the problem. Banning jandals and swimming costumes has given them a reason to turn away patrons who had been drinking on the beach all day.
A man sleeps on the sand of the Ballermann beach bar in Mallorca. Photo / Getty Images
Among those saying 'nein' to vest tops and toggs is the famous 'Ballermann', a 50-year old German bar which has become synonimous with boozy beach breaks.
"What we are trying to communicate is that guests should please shower and change at the hotel before entering the premises. They should not come directly from the beach or from drinking on the street," said Ferrer.
Almost half (45 per cent) of the Balearic Islands' GDP is generated from tourism, says the Guardian. Almost 200,000 jobs depend on it . However Ferrer says his problem is not with tourism but the type of visitor attracted by la Playa.
Ferrer said young, mostly Northern European visitors tend to spend at most three to four nights on budgets of around 30 euros ($50) a day, most of which goes on booze. The cost of policing the low-rent visitors is often far higher to the communities they visit than what they spend.
"We already consider the season lost in terms of controlling excesses," he told German press agency DPA.
The tourism promoter and the region was in favour of advertising a slower, more sedentary type of holiday. During the last summer they had some success in attracting visitors with food and local crafts.
But, come March, the new type of tourist were forced off the beaches, he says,"as soon as the big party temples were open again."
The idea of a dress code came from a need for a more rules-based system. There was a lack of clarity on what behaviour was expected, he told the Mallorca.
"Germans love rules and they are usually very exemplary when it comes to complying with them."
