The Chief Executive of Jet2 Holidays, Steve Heapy, blamed the anti-tourism marches in Mallorca and elsewhere in Spain on unlicenced holiday properties and slammed governments for being incompetent and impotent when it comes to tackling the issue of illegal holiday accomodation. Local hoteliers have made similar comments.
Mallorca hoteliers have said that the Balearic government should be doing much more to outlaw illegal holiday acccomodation and they have also claimed that it has increased dramatically in the last few years.
Speaking at the operator’s annual conference in Paphos, Cyprus, in a report in Travel Weekly, Steve Heapy said “it is not the case per se” that residents in destinations such as Barcelona and Mallorca are fighting against tourism, as is widely reported by the mainstream media." Instead, he argued: “These protests we’re seeing are against incompetent and impotent governments that have failed to regulate unlicensed tourism." He blames AirbnB for the problems.
He added according to Travel Weekly: “We (Jet2holidays) operate licensed tourism, where we send people to hotels and it’s easy to work out how many people there will be (in resort). The model has worked very well for decades, but since the dawn of Airbnb, it has become more difficult.
“It has caused a massive increase in people going into some destinations and put strain on local communities.”
The Jet2 boss dismissed the common defence given by authorities across the continent that it is too difficult to monitor how many properties are being rented out by unlicensed Airbnb hosts.
“They (authorities) say it’s too hard to regulate, but it isn’t. All they need to do is book a property on Airbnb, find out who owns it, go and knock on the door and say, ‘Hi, I’m from the local government. I’d like to see your tourism licence, your health and safety certificate and your tax return.’
“If they can’t give you those three things, fine them 200,000 euros. The number of properties would drop by 95% overnight. That would mean the protests would stop,” he said in the Travel Weekly report.