Mallorca is increasingly being positioned as an upmarket holiday destination. The island is no longer affordable for everyone. But despite this, the numbers of tourists keep increasing.
Factors that explain this include a more diverse range of source tourism markets, such as those with a higher-spending profile, and shorter stays than in the past. But there continues to be a low-cost supply as well. While there are fewer hotels with low star ratings, a good deal of recent growth in tourist numbers is attributed to the illegal offer of holiday lets, supported by the availability of low-cost flights from across Europe.
Nevertheless, there are the higher prices, and the president of the Aviba travel agency association in the Balearics, Pedro Fiol, has calculated some prices which indicate that Mallorca is more expensive than destinations further afield for European holidaymakers. His calculations are for Spanish travellers. An example is for August 12-19. A week at a five-star all-inclusive hotel in Playa de Muro, plus flight from Madrid and transfer will cost €3,780.
By comparison, a week in the Maldives will cost €2,586. A Thailand holiday will cost €2,400; Punta Cana (Dominican Republic), €2,100. The price difference, he says, is due to several reasons, one being destinations that are served by charter flights that are cheaper than those with scheduled airlines. Fiol has also considered a week in Playa de Palma. At €2,070 per person it is less expensive than Playa de Muro but still on a par with Punta Cana.
Prices clearly vary from resort to resort and from hotel to hotel. A Playa de Muro five-star all-inclusive is only one example, but there is no doubting that prices in general have gone up and quite significantly so. But hotels in Mallorca continue to fill up. "The island's hotels are of high quality, and the destination is very attractive and well-connected," says Fiol.
Spanish tourism, he maintains, is down 20%, and this can be attributed to prices. It may be that there will be such a decrease in the summer, but for the whole of 2024, Spanish tourism (according to official figures) was up almost four per cent. It was the case, though, that it dropped quite sharply in July and August, but not by as much as 20%.
UK tourism, which has been decreasing, did only register a fall of just over one per cent in Mallorca for the whole of last year. For July and August combined it was down around six per cent.
The decline in Spanish and British tourists has been offset, he says, mainly by Germans, but also by Italians, Belgians, Scandinavians, and Swiss. But Italian tourism, to take one example, can be all over the place. Last summer it was down sharply one month and then up sharply the next month. The one constant has been the growth of German tourism.
For the last couple of years concerns about the German economy have led to worries about a fall in German tourism. But the final figures for tourist arrivals, rather than forecasts of arrivals or experience in one resort, are what tell the full story, and just at the moment there is no sign of a German decline.