The Balearic archipelago is on its way to tourist reinvention. Various laws passed in recent years and changes in the private sector are paving the way towards a model focused on achieving the same profitability with fewer tourists. The reduction of hotel places in the archipelago is at the apex of the objective and, although the authorities of the islands do not say it openly, what is intended in the background is that there are fewer tourists on the four islands, but that it is a higher quality tourism.
Last year, 16 million tourists arrived in Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera. They have a population of 1.2 million inhabitants, but in August more than two million people visit the Islands on the same day. For years, there has been an area of ​​the Serra de Tramuntana where access by private car is not allowed and in Formentera a limit has been set on the number of cars that can arrive on the island daily during the summer months, something that also claims Ibiza.
The Balearics was already a pioneer more than 20 years ago in the implementation of the first tourist tax, and two decades later it is the first tourist territory that has frozen tourist places and will not issue any more licences. The objective: to reduce the 450,000 places that currently exist by reducing those of the lowest category.
“The sector can no longer grow in quantity; you need to set limits and everyone understands that”, says the councilor for Economic Model and Tourism, Iago Negueruela. In this offensive to limit supply, a Balearic delegation has met with representatives of the European Union to approve a European regulation that allows platforms that advertise rentals without a license to be fined. They want to remove from the market all the illegal supply that exists and that is not even accounted for.
Along with these limitations, there is the agreement that there will be only three cruise calls each day at the port of Palma, a measure that is only implemented in Dubrovnik, in addition to the announcement that the Government will buy outdated hotels in mature areas to convert them into homes, as well as measures to limit excess tourism in some areas of the islands.
But this tourist reinvention is accompanied by actions to promote that, in addition to being an environmentally sustainable destination, the Balearic Islands are also socially sustainable. The new approved rules incorporate measures to improve the quality of work of housekeepers, with the obligation for hotels to replace the 300,000 beds with liftable ones to improve working conditions. In addition, all hotels will be required to set a maximum number of rooms that will have to be cleaned by kellys. A few days ago, the methodology that will have to be followed to determine how many rooms can be made based on various parameters, such as the size of the room, the characteristics and the category of the establishment, was approved.
The third big leg of this paradigm shift is centered on environmental circularity. All hotels will have the obligation to make circularity plans so that they are sustainable. The executive vice-president of the Hotel Federation of Mallorca, MarÃa José Aguiló, assures that the demands of the Administration are good, but points out that the sector itself had already made progress and that the large hotel chains have made an essential commitment to the elimination of diesel boilers, the use of water and the installation of clean energies.
“This requirement that is made in the hotel sector should be made in the entire tourism value chain, not only in hotels”, he opines. He points out that a decade ago the sector was also a pioneer in the transformation of hotels and in the renovation of the entire plant. Thanks to that bet, two-thirds of those associated with the federation are four- and five-star hotels.
