ARCHIVED - Thousands of German tourists heading for Balearic Islands this Easter

Despite the German government requesting that Germans do not go on holiday, bookings to the Balearics soared after the country took the islands off the high coronavirus risk list earlier this month.

The Spanish airport authority (Aena) has forecast that there will be 532 flights between Germany and Mallorca between 26 March and 5 April as thousands of holidaymakers race to get their towels on sunbeds in the Balearics.

Eurowings, for example, ran 44 flights to Mallorca from nine different German airports on Saturday and Sunday, almost four times as many as the previous weekend. While no exact passenger figures were revealed, an airline spokesperson told the press that a “decent“ number of seats had been sold.

TUI meanwhile has flown almost 2,000 package holiday tourists into Mallorca on 15 flights from five German airports.

Bookings soared earlier this month when the German government removed the Balearics from its high-risk list after the 7-day accumulated coronavirus infection rate fell below 50. While the islands’ 7-day rate is now at just 28.71, in Germany it remains at 129.7 according to statistics from the Robert Koch Institute, meaning that despite the requirement for a negative PCR test to be presented before travelling there are still concerns that the tourists may bring Covid with them.

Although the German authorities have stressed that non-essential travel should be avoided as it is one of the main ways the virus spreads, the warnings appear to have had little effect. The country has now introduced measures that require a negative PCR test result from anyone boarding a flight to Germany as of midnight on 30 March, including German residents on their way back home from their holidays.

Although no exact figures have been given for how many tourists will be heading for the Balearics, some Spanish media have estimated the figure to be as high as 7,000, in just this one week and to just this one destination.