The Playa de Palma Hoteliers’ Association has lowered its expectations for the start of the tourist season.
They say they expect a “good” season but they are not that convinced that it will be “spectacular” in terms of tourist occupancy: “At most it will match the figures of 2023”, said its president, Pedro Marín, at the ITB travel fair in Berlin.
He added that the market, at the moment, is not living up to the forecasts.
For this reason, they believe that “it will not be an extraordinary year, as all the forecasts had predicted.
“The fact that Easter falls so early seemed to benefit the hotel sector, but once the festivities are over, in the first two weeks of April, when bookings drop, it will have to stay open with very aggressive offers until the start of the season,” explained Marín.
As for last-minute bookings, which make it difficult to predict occupancy, the association said it has not observed any significant differences to the trend of the past two years.
“The forecasts said that bookings for these dates would be seven or eight points higher than in 2023, but now the reality is that we are two points below the forecasts,” said the president.
In fact, “in March, 35 percent of the hotel accommodation in Playa de Palma was expected to open”, and of these, this week “there are five hotels that will not open due to last-minute cancellations, so they are postponing their opening until April”.
The association has highlighted the increase in the cost of flights, particularly from Germany, the main source market for the resort.
Marín expressed concern about the 10 percent increase in ticket prices, “especially from cities such as Berlin, Cologne and Düsseldorf, which have become almost 50 percent more expensive compared to last year”.
Nevertheless, the hoteliers are confident that the trend will be reversed due to the lack of airline sales.
The association pointed out that the main tour operator in the German market, TUI, is expecting a 10 percent increase in German visitors this season.