At a recent conference in Ibiza, the president of the Fevitur national federation of holiday rentals associations stated that the number of rental properties in the Balearics fell by 27% between 2016 and 2018.
Tolo Gomila observed that legislative changes and lower profitability because of a fall in the number of tourists had led to a decrease in the number of holiday rentals.
The worst time for amending tourism legislation, he noted, was “ when we had 4.5 million additional tourists that weren’t ours”. That was a time when almost the “only safe tourism destination in the Mediterranean was ours.”
The conference coordinator, University of the Balearic Islands professor of commercial law Juan French, pleaded for there to be an end to the “demonising of a sector that is good for society”.
Gomila stressed that only 6.8% of properties in the Balearics were for holiday rental purpose, while some 16% - approximately 85,000 - were empty.
He and those attending the conference, some 150 people, considered the complexity of regulations and the disparity between national and regional laws.
In some regions, authorities do not have sufficient means to control “irregular” activity in the sector. Gomila therefore reiterated a Fevitur call for there to be a national register of holiday rentals and a single definition of what constitutes a holiday rental.
One of the biggest problems is that bureaucracy is hindering the registration process.
Some owners have reportedly been waiting for their paperwork since 2015.