Month: February 2020

Something is happening in San Antonio. You can feel it as you walk around. There’s a growing confidence in the air.

This is a town that after many years seems to be comfortable in its own skin with a young new Mayor who’s everywhere with unlimited energy and the town is reciprocating in kind.

Where the previous council seemed to encourage bitterness and division while hiding away behind closed doors, Mayor Marcos Serra with his boyband good looks and pleasant demeanour shows no fear by putting himself into the firing line on a daily basis, getting down to business and the town is responding.

New hotels are being built, older hotels are being reformed, property prices are rising steadily, the infrastructure is being improved. It’s full steam ahead for summer 2020 with confidence and guile.

The ‘Stic Urban’ is a good example of what is happening. A new boutique hotel and spa currently being built in the Plaza España, right in the centre of San Antonio. Formerly known as the Comfort Plaza Aparthotel, it was home to youth holiday companies for many years due to it’s proximity to the West End but now it’s having a major renovation and will become a 4 star lifestyle complex offering luxury living space and wellness holidays close to sunset strip.

This subtle refocusing is happening all over the town. The Wiki-Woo has just unveiled its Elyx suite which has been specially designed for special moments in a special place. OKU Ibiza, a Japanese themed spa hotel, has risen from the ashes of Casa Cook and is San Antonio’s first ever 5 star hotel, Amare’s smart rooftop bar in the bay with 270 degree views, a new family friendly beach club currently being constructed, the new Hotel Portmany, the list goes on and on. Build it and they will come.

The focus is shifting from how drunk you can get to special experiences that San Antonio and Ibiza can offer you. The world has changed and so have holidays, people work hard and want special moments and San Antonio is providing them in bucketloads.

The new Taylor Wimpey apartments being built near Cala Gracio have sold out the 1st phase at eye watering prices that could only be dreamed of only a few ago but still offering relative value for money compared to other places on the island. This shows you that there’s still plenty of growth. San An has got legs and is stretching them nicely.

When you look at the overall package, San An and the Bay now has an abundance of quality hotels, the busiest beach club on the island, the incomparable sunset strip with world class names every night, Ibiza’s only Michelin starred restaurant, a town hall that wants to do business but also isn’t afraid to come down hard on the persistent law-breakers, exciting plans in the pipeline for a new promenade to finally link the town and bay plus many other improvements that will only send the area in one direction.

This isn’t a major surprise for the many San An lovers out there who have watched incredulously as certain areas hogged the negative press headlines whilst all the other good work went unchecked, not getting the credit it deserved but that has now changed. The haters will still hate but people are finally sitting up and noticing the massive investment coming into the area.

San Antonio has always had something of an identity crisis but it looks like 2020 is the year that it finally comes of age and becomes a major force to be reckoned with. Remember where you read it first.

The much reported case of Chloe Haines has brought behaviour on flights into the spotlight again. 26 year old Miss Haines was on a Jet2 flight to Turkey when she became aggressive yelling “I’m going to kill you all” as she tried to open the plane door midway through the flight. The threat was so serious that 2 fighter jets were scrambled to accompany the plane back home.

Although Miss Haines claimed she blacked out after mixing medication and alcohol she was jailed for 2 years at Chelmsford Crown Court this week following the incident on board a flight from Stansted Airport on 22 June last year.

It’s an all too familiar scene in airports up and down the UK especially in the summer as predominantly young holidaymakers gather at airside pubs and start drinking from 6am in the morning, it’s almost become a tradition to post on social media that first drink of the holiday from the airport.

Sometimes the ‘party’ goes onto the plane but all of a sudden a large open area becomes a small confined space. Large boisterous groups shouting expletives to their friends across the aisle. More drink is served by the airline staff who earn commission from sales and the 2 hour flight becomes a nightmare for those wanting a quiet trip over especially if young kids are also onboard.

Ibiza is one of those hotspot destinations where nightmare flights are all too commonplace. Many of us have seen it with our own eyes and been left shaken by events that are beyond our control where young airline staff are expected to control large rowdy groups who go past the point of no return and common decency goes out the window. No pun intended.

What will it take for this behaviour to become socially unacceptable where airports and some airlines seem to put profits before safety and leave the resort destination to pick up the drunken pieces? Will it take 1 catastrophic incident to change the way we approach travelling to a place where alcohol is abundantly available the second we step off the plane?

There’s been much debate whether the 2 year sentence was overly harsh or too lenient but it puts the question right back into the public forum yet again.

Miss Haines will be out of prison in less than 12 months but those poor people who thought they were not going to make it off that plane will have to live with their nightmares for many years to come.

I don’t know Miss Haines and I’m sorry that she had a ‘troubled upbringing’ however I would have liked to have seen her handed a much stronger sentence as a clear deterrent to others. Maybe during that extra time she could reflect on her actions and find ways to teach others that an aeroplane is a mode of transport and not a mobile disco.

There’s no 2nd chances up in the sky so Miss Haines may have done us a favour by putting the debate back front and centre because the sooner the authorities get to grips with this problem the better. The clock is ticking.