Over the weeks of the state of alarm, Soller town hall has processed eight licences for establishing interior hotels plus two others for agrotourism.
The licence applications had all been presented prior to the state of alarm, and in some instances had been pending for several months. They have now all been granted, the councillor for urban planning, Jaume Bestard, saying that there has been a speeding-up of procedures for permissions for building conversion and renovation. In the past few days, he adds, two more licence requests have been submitted.
Half of these developments, Bestard notes, are by local investors. Most of the new establishments are in Soller's historic centre and are typically large houses for which considerable investment is required in order to adapt them. He accepts, however, that the crisis may delay work or even result in the projects not being undertaken.
Over the past fifteen years, a number of small hotels have opened in Soller. Many are houses that were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and almost all of them have gardens.