Boozy British student 'Saloufest' package tours scrapped for 'lowering the tone'

A FAMOUS student festival on the Costa Daurada which attracts revellers from over 100 British universities every Easter will cease – ostensibly because of insufficient public service capacity, but thought to be more likely to be because 'drunken tourism' is becoming increasingly frowned upon in Spain.

The Saloufest, based in the seaside town of the same name – Salou, in the province of Tarragona – has been running for 16 years non-stop and has brought in around 100,000 visitors and €5 million in that time, says tour operator ILoveTour.

“Pressure from Salou town council and the regional government of Catalunya in the last few years has made it practically impossible to carry on offering packages for youth tourism in the area,” the travel company reveals.

A number of British students have already booked for next year, so up to 10,000 of them will be offered a place at the Sportsfest in Lloret de Mar (Girona province) through the firm Outgoing Ltd instead.

ILoveTour says it has been negotiating with Lloret to try to convince it to become the new venue for the Saloufest, but without success.

“The high number of students in the town all at once would be too much for public services in Lloret to cope with, and would lead to a great deal of media pressure,” the tour operator reveals.

It says as well as Salou's own media pressure, the companies – bars and hotels – which work with them to run the sports and leisure festival have been subject to 'a worrying number of inspections' by authorities purely because they are involved in the Saloufest.

“Pressure suffered by students from more than 100 UK universities is also becoming a problem – they are often treated in an intimidating fashion by police with fines issued for inoffensive actions which are not against current laws.”

In April this year, Catalunya's regional government said it would strip businesses in the holiday industry of their Catalunya Tourism Agency (ACT) quality kitemark if they 'participated in drunken tourism', says the regional minister for the sector, Marián Muro.

“Drunken tourism is not the model Catalunya wants to promote for its holiday industry,” Sra Muro stated.

“This type of tourism lowers the tone and detracts from Catalunya's quality and competitiveness as a destination.”

This year, Local Police in Salou arrested three students for getting involved in fights, and handed out 40 fines just in the first of the series of three Saloufest holiday periods.

Since it started in the Millennium year, Saloufest has seen reports of rape, sexual assault and injuries through the foolhardy practice of 'balconing' – where revellers, usually inebriated, attempt to jump from their terraces into the pool below, and generally miss – together with resident complaints about noise and drunken-and-disorderly.

Every night after the day's sporting events, the British students go out and hit the pubs in fancy dress, singing at the tops of their voices, urinating in public places, wrecking benches and other on-street fixtures, and fighting both with each other and with other tourists.

Although the idea is that the students take part in different sports in the morning, rest in the afternoon and evening and then 'go out on the town' at night, photographs of the young Brits asleep in the sports halls and even in doorways after drinking until daylight painted a very different picture.

The town council in neighbouring Reus refused to allow its sports facilities and hotels to be used by Saloufest organising companies.

But a high number of bars, shops and hotels in Salou itself thought the Saloufest was a great idea.

Aimed at tourists with plenty of money to burn, it was good for business, and traders say the 'noise nuisance' and 'drunken-and-disorderly' is merely typical student high-jinks.