A report issued on Tuesday points to Mallorca's tourism sector having ended 2021 in recovery mode and to an anticipated "normalisation" of tourism activity in 2022.
The Pimem federation of small to medium-sized business associations and Palma-based tourism technology company Dingus show that reservations in 2021 were 62% of those in 2019 but that cancellations were 39% compared to 22% in 2019.
Currently, reservations for 2022 equate to 25% of 2021, while the level of cancellations, 23%, is 16 points lower than last year and is close to that of 2019. Activity for the first quarter is clearly higher than in 2021, while there is an upward trend for April to October.
Two factors give rise to the feeling that there will be normalisation in 2022. One is that there is a higher percentage of bookings for five or more days, with the number of short-stay reservations ten per cent lower than last year. There is also a more balanced distribution between the different sales channels. For example, bed banks, badly affected over two years of the pandemic, are showing signs of recovery.
While both Pimem and Dingus recognise that it may be too early to be making predictions, the current data suggest a "clear intention" on behalf of tourists to get their holidays back to normal. Mallorca, with just over 20 per cent of the total reservations in Spain to date, continues to be the most requested destination.