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The Jewish Chronicle

Spain: The smart money goes to Mallorca

Six-star hotels, spas and smart bars are what this Spanish resort is all about.

June 4, 2009 11:32
Mallorca harbour

ByJan Shure, Jan Shure

5 min read

If you were looking for empirical evidence that Mallorca has totally reinvented itself, Palma Airport is the place to look. Of the 200 people who were disgorged from an early-morning easyJet flight from Stansted to the island’s airport, a majority were either men on golfing weekends, Boden-catalogue families heading for a pre-half-term sunshine break, or the kind of linen-clad travellers who have Tania Plage kaftans and Vilebrequin trunks stashed in their suitcases and deem the sun-drenched Balearic island one of the Med’s smartest.

A few, however, were the tattoo’ed denizens and skimpy T-shirt wearing hen-party members who have failed to notice that the island’s zeitgeist has changed dramatically.

It is hugely to the credit of those running Mallorcan tourism that the chavvy visitors make up such a small percentage of the total, and then seem to be confined to a tiny handful of resorts. (And please note the now ubiquitous spelling of Mallorca, with that pair of elegant “Ls”, indicative of the smart breed of tourist the island now pulls in, as opposed to the old middle “J” which had such potential for coarsening by estuary English speakers.)

For the most part, the island attracts the first three categories — golfers, middle-class families and well-off couples, glamorously led by the Grazia set such as Michael Douglas, Claudia Schiffer, Boris Becker, Michael Schumacher and King Juan Carlos of Spain — all of whom have homes on the island (and some of whom have yachts moored there, too).