It has been some time since I have posted anything on this blog. I can make all the usual excuses and apart from laziness the truth is that the business has been exceptionally busy and I have been running backwards and forwards to the UK to tend to my father who has had a stroke and is now in a nursing home.
The fact that we have been so busy throughout the summer months is encouraging. Read the rest of this entry »
So it seems that all the panic with respect to closing the A7 though San Pedro seems to have been misplaced. Although the road has already bee closed….. Read the rest of this entry »
For the last week or so I have had the son of one of my best friends here for some work experience. Like most youung people these days he is making the most of his summer holidays and having had some time with his parents in Marbella, then staying on with me for a while he has today headed off to Almeria to join some friends for another two weeks holiday.
I am not a great one for going to the beach but every now again I take myself to Tarifa to get away from it all.
It is encouraging to see that despite the economic crisis that the infrastructure on the Costa del Sol is continuing to improve.
Whilst the road works in San Pedro continue to cause a measure of frustration the end result will, I am sure, be worth all the inconvenience of the last, and future months.
One of the reasons I have written little on this blog during the last few days is that we have spent some time helping a Belgian TV company who area making a programme about the property market on the Costa del Sol
Summer 2009 and the the Costa del Sol car hire companies seem to have been caught out by the demand for car hire!
Despite all the gloomy predictions from my friends who write the newspapers it would seem that more people than anticipated are deciding to take a holiday on the Costa del Sol! Unfortunately the car hire companies seem to have based their fleets on the predicted volumes and we now have the ludicrous solutions that tourists coming to the coast are unable to find cars available for hire. Even worse when there are cars available the prices seem to around treble the rate that would have been charged in previous years.
I have some friends coming over later today who (stupidly) forgot to book their car hire and were amazed to find that they were being quoted in the region of 750 Euros for a basic car for 11 days. They eventually found something for around 500 Euros but this is nearly 2.5 times as much as they have paid in previous years. Seems crazy to me when the car makers have fields of unsold cars and we are all doing everything we can to encourage tourism to the area.
I think it is another reminder that in these difficult times that we cannot afford to go into total hibernation. There is business out there and we need to be prepared and ready to provide the services when they are demanded. One would hope that with this experience people will book earlier next year although my big concern is that, next year, the tourists will go elsewhere on the basis that the Costa del Sol has become too expensive.
Until next time
Michael
Tomorrow the Davis Cup tennis quarter finals between Spain and Germany start at the Bull Ring in Nueva Andalucia.
This is great news for Marbella not only because of extra tourism it will generate but also for the positive publicity that it will almost certainly bring to the Town. Read the rest of this entry »
Did anyone realise that the tolls on the AP7 between San Pedro had been waived last weekend to try and reduce the traffic congestion on the A7 (N340) in San Pedro?
I certainly didn’t until I read about it in the Sur in English, after the event! It would appear that this move only increased traffic flow on the toll road by 13% which isn´t surprising if, like me, nobody knew about it.
I just about managed to watch the second part of Spain : Paradise Lost without switching off the TV. In this episode we were shown a couple who, with no previous experience in restaurants or bars and no knowledge of Spanish, had bought a café in Benidorm and couldn’t make a go of it. Not only was the presentation of the café basic and dull but I caught sight of the price list and saw that they were selling tea or coffee a 2€ a cup. That seemed very expensive to me and may well explain why they were not getting any customers.