Mallorca has developed its own way of helping the economy in by introducing an Eco tax. The tourist pays one Euro per day and it generates 15 million euros per year, the money is mainly being spent on improving transport, Mallorca is building a new rail system with the money from the Eco tax (Mallorca has taken up the idea of taxes in the form of the Eco tax.
) and other plans include buying up large tracts of land as nature reserves.
In Mallorca the generation of employment is relatively high due to resorts like Magaluf and Palma Nova. Many people are employed by bars and restaurants also due to the high number of tourist’s jobs all over the island are increased.
Economic benefits may be induced from tourism spending which directly benefits the tourism environment. Tourist expenditure also has a cascading effect throughout the host economy in this case Mallorca. It starts with tourist’s spending money in ‘front-line’ tourist establishments, such as hotels, restaurants and taxis, and then permits throughout the rest of the economy.
Although tourism may look pretty positive here, but there are also lots of negative problems. The seasonal character of the tourism industry in Mallorca creates economic problems as they are heavily dependant on the tourism industry. Problems that the seasonal workers face include job security, usually with no guarantee of employment from one season to the next, difficulties in getting training, employment – related medical benefits, and recognition of their experience and unsatisfactory housing and working conditions. This could defiantly be said for the seasonal workers who work in Magaluf and Palma Nova as there jobs depend on great tourism revenue. If people stop going to Magaluf and Palma Nova then the whole island would suffer.
Calvia’s problems as a tourist destination with over 1,200,000 visitors a year are not exclusive. They reflect the crisis of the tourist model in our country since the sixties. In the short-term this has been an economic success. However, from the start it was based on uncontrolled tourist development of the coastline and unsustainable exploitation of its extraordinarily valuable natural and scenic resources. This model will soon be unable to fulfil the emerging demands of a tourist sector that is maturing and becoming more demanding. Faced with need to overcome the dangers of continuous degradation and the foreseeable collapse, Calvia, with its Tourist Excellence Plan, began to reshape itself at the beginning of the nineties.
Tourism is a major global industry that provides huge opportunity for economic growth, but uncontrolled tourism industry is no good at all and does damages to the environment. Yet for tourism to reach its full potential in Mallorca, developing a tourism product and visitor industry based on the ability of the local economy and environment to support tourism-related growth needs careful planning and management and in this respect, the economic aspects of tourism in Mallorca cannot be seen in isolation from the wider economic growth and development of the whole country, regions and places since they need to be carefully integrated into the economic structures and existing social and cultural structures.
