Meeting to seek solution to crowds at Ses Salines Natural Park

The Formentera Island Council's offices of the Environment and of Tourism and Transport met yesterday morning with local travel agencies, tour organisers and boat and bus transport companies to discuss the issue of organised boat trips that arrive at the Port of La Savina and continue on to the Ses Salines Natural Park, causing access problems and crowding within the park.

The encounter was intended as an initial point of contact with the sector toward the end of avoiding the problems of past summer seasons and finding a satisfactory solution for all those affected looking ahead to the coming summer.

The meeting – called by the Formentera Island Council – was led by councilor of Tourism Alejandra Ferrer and councilor of the Environment Sílvia Tur. Together, the two councilors explained that the crowding that occurs at the Ses Illetes entrance negatively affects tourists' image of Formentera.

Ses Salines Natural Park is a natural, protected environment that for several years now has been governed by a transport directive (pla de mobilitat) conceived to monitor vehicle access to the site and guarantee its sustainability.

The meeting was organised such that a more adequate method be found to rethink and restructure the arrival of tourists on the park's beaches, as well as attempt to effect a change so that the number of visitors disembarking in La Savina be distributed more evenly across the entire island. Thus, the two Council representatives requested that sector businesses provide information about the services, frequency, schedules of their companies, in so doing providing the Council with indispensable information for the planned reorganisation.

The island's Office of Tourism will oversee campaigns of dissuasive publicity in an attempt to assure tourists visit and discover other parts of the island, not just Illetes. Likewise, the Office of Transport will work with the island's concession-holder for public transport to create new bus routes to other special interest sites and departing from La Savina. In related work, the Council is also working to develop a new information point that would serve to inform visitors about the new routes. Park management services will be asked to oversee the placement of park officials at the arrival points of these water-based excursions, within the Ses Illetes park itself, in a direct effort to raise awareness about preservation.

To assist in the project's development, the Office of the Environment will provide data on entry and exit into the park and bus timetables. Meetings will also be held with the contract-holding company that manages access at Ses Salines in order to request that they be given additional assistance for these new tasks.

Once the relevant information is collected, a study will be conducted to determine a proposal for reorganisation, thus attempting to improve the situation in the coming season. The objective being to reach consensus on the measures to follow, a new reunion will be called when the study is completed.

The Formentera Council considers that preservation at the Ses Salines Park is fundamental, both from an ecological perspective and in consideration of how crowds and traffic could affect the image that is held of our island as a tourist destination.