The Council of Mallorca has detected that almost 40 per cent of tourist accommodation advertised on the main platforms operates outside the official register of establishments. This equates to a monthly average of nearly 8,000 properties and around 42,000 tourist beds operating without control or guarantees and in unfair competition with those who comply with the regulations.
According to the island’s Minister of Tourism, José Marcial Rodríguez, at a press conference, this is a ‘pioneering study’ carried out after 12 months in which nearly 400,000 advertisements were analysed, equivalent to some ten million pieces of data processed using technological and artificial intelligence tools.
This data has been obtained thanks to the hiring of the Talk&Code platform, ‘an expert in detecting and categorising properties within a territory’, to detail the current offer in Mallorca, as well as the participation of the Sustainable Tourism Observatory and companies working for the entity. ‘For the first time, we have been able to distinguish digital noise - that is, advertisements - from physical reality, which is the actual properties behind all this,’ he said.
The island’s minister pointed out that the analysis shows that four out of ten properties advertised do not appear in official records. ‘Today, speculation ends, and with this data, we create and shed light on the real problem of illegal tourist rentals,’ he said. He added that ‘we cannot talk about sustainability, coexistence and protecting the territory while these 42,000 properties operate in complete opacity, putting pressure on the housing market and saturating services.’
In terms of the type of accommodation on offer, the study found that single-family homes (chalets and villas) account for 50.9% of the irregular activity detected, while multi-family homes (apartments) account for 47.2% and 1.5% are substandard housing. Palma has the highest volume of irregular properties, with 1,012, followed by Pollensa (756), Alcudia (687), Santa Margalida (467), Calvia (413), Capdepera (388) and Manacor (374).
The municipalities of Palma, Pollensa and Alcudia account for almost a third of Mallorca’s illegal housing stock. At the regional level, the North Zone emerges as the main focus of unregistered activity, followed by the Central Zone and the East Zone. Rodríguez stressed that this initial assessment constitutes ‘a powerful management tool’ that will enable the Council to plan future actions.
He explained that the analysis is ‘the prelude to future changes and the evolution of the plan initiated at the beginning of the legislative term’, based on fiscal coordination with the Tax Agency, the adaptation of inspection and sanctioning services, urban planning collaboration with local councils and agreements with marketing platforms.
With regard to the relationship with these companies, the island’s minister argued that cooperation ‘has improved significantly’ and cited the agreement with Airbnb as an example, which allowed a significant number of irregular advertisements to be removed. ‘I am increasingly satisfied with how the platforms are collaborating,’ he said, although he pointed out that the administrative process takes time and that many of the properties detected are currently being inspected or analysed so that the corresponding disciplinary proceedings can be initiated.
Rodríguez argued that the defence of legal tourism ‘requires ever-improving the relentless fight against irregular offers’ and insisted that the Council’s objective is not so much to collect revenue as to ‘deter and eradicate this practice in order to improve coexistence’.