More than 5 million tourists have snubbed Balearic hotels

Joan Collins
ALMOST 44 percent of tourists coming to the Balearics stay in private homes which do not have the necessary permits from the local authorities, according to a study produced by the Chamber of Commerce for Majorca, Ibiza and Formentera based on figures for 2004. During 2004 5'097 million of the 11'473 million tourists who visited the Balearics chose to stay in residential places which were not so-called regulated accommodation. The Chamber of Commerce calculates the daily average of the number of tourists staying in these places as 144'000.
This is calculated by taking the resident population of 955'000 from the estimated population in summer (1.28 million), leaving a temporary population of 325'000. From this is taken the number of tourists staying in regulated accommodation (hotels licenced apartments), which is 181'000 according to the Balearic Ministry of Tourism leaving 144'000 staying in non regulated accommodation. The breakdown by islands shows that residential tourism is similar on all of them, Majorca has 45 percent, Minorca 44 percent and Ibiza and Formentera 43 percent. The Chamber of Commerce's study calculates, on the basis of the National Institute of Statistics' Population Census, that 288'000 residential places for potential tourist use exist in the Balearics, adding to the 422'897 regulated places registered with the Balearic Ministry of Tourism. According to these calculations, the Balearics has more than 711'000 beds for potential tourist use.
The President of the Tourism Commission within the Chamber of Commerce, the hotelier Antonio Horrach, confirmed that the tourist sector does not feel threatened by the big increase in residential tourism, as both accommodation segments should “live together”, something he considered to be workable given the current good season. In any case, the Chamber of Commerce said that the amount of tourists received by this segment, which started to expand greatly from the year 2000, is less on the Balearics than in other destinations in Spain. The study presented by the Chamber of Commerce indicates that the Calvia area is the main area for residential tourism in the Balearics with more than 1.2 million tourists per year, followed by Alcudia (395'000 tourists), Santa Eulalia del Riu (285'000 tourists) and Sant Josep de Sa Talaia (282'000 residential tourists per year). The Chamber of Commerce also says that 60 percent of residential tourism is concentrated into nine percent of the islands' towns, which means that 2.9 million residential tourists go to seven of the 67 towns on the Balearics.