By the end of the year, Palma - excluding Playa de Palma - will have some seventy hotels with 10,300 places (5,350 rooms). Of these, 31 are in the old centre (806 rooms) - the boutique hotels.
The two most recent projects are the building of a city hotel with thirty rooms by the Plaça Madrid and the development of the site of the old Firestone building by HM Hotels, which will have 180 rooms. When these two hotels open, they will increase the radius for hotels away from the centre of the city and provide an economic boost to their respective areas.
The president of the Palma and Cala Mayor Hoteliers Association, Javier Vich, says that Palma has been "vacationalised" thanks to investment over recent years. The opening of the Palacio de Congresos, he adds, has helped to reinforce the hotel market in the city. Events at the Palacio attract the so-called bleisure (business leisure) tourism market, something which has revolutionised tourism in major European cities.
The increase in the number of hotels has been significant. In 2003 there were just thirty.