The Balearic President, Marga Prohens, has called on the European Union to regulate short-term holiday lets and to provide territories such as the Balearics with tools to combat illegal supply. Prohens expressed her request at the opening ceremony of the European Tourism Forum being held today in Palma, organised by the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
According to Prohens, "regulated holiday rentals represent a great opportunity to share the wealth generated by tourism, but the illegal offer is unfair competition both for hotels and for owners who rent legally. In these islands the illegal tourist rental offers have spread threatening us as a destination and it is necessary to work at community level to provide tools against illegal offer".
Prohens pointed to climate change as the main challenge facing the Balearics. "We are a limited, small and fragile territory, with just over one million inhabitants which receives more than 15 million tourists throughout the year. We want to minimise the negative externalities of tourism and be sustainable from an environmental, economic and social point of view, because if one of the three legs fails, we will not be sustainable," said the president.
The mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez, stated: "Spain will receive 80 million tourists, more than 90% are European, and half of them will travel to the Canary Islands and the Balearics. Seventy-five percent of the tourists entering the Balearics do so via Palma, either by air or sea, and of these, 25% will stay in Palma. For the areas with this high pressure, we are asking for compensation and funding for reindustrialisation and improvement of mature areas".
The acting Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Héctor Gómez, considers that tourism "must be a core policy of the European Union" and advocates that Spain should reinforce its leadership in Europe thanks to "public-private collaboration, coordination between administrations and an ambitious vision of the present and the future. We are going to allocate one billion European funds to tourism projects for digitisation and green transition".