The Balearic Islands ended 2024 with 18.7 million tourist arrivals, around 900,000 more than the previous year. But the official figures don’t tell the whole story. The islands actually host more visitors than those registered as overnight tourists, since day-trippers are not included in the statistics.
Most of these day visitors are cruise passengers who disembark to wander through Palma’s old town before returning to their ships. According to the Balearic Statistics Institute (IBESTAT), 1.5 million cruise passengers came ashore in 2024 without staying the night. Over a million of them were in Mallorca, while around 394,000 visited Ibiza and 67,000 Menorca. The year before, the total was 1.6 million — about 5% higher.
If day-trippers were counted alongside overnight stays, the total number of visits in 2024 would top 20 million, according to data from IBESTAT and Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE).
The Civil Society Forum argues that more transparent and accurate statistics are needed to give a clearer picture of the pressure tourism places on the islands. “Poor-quality statistics mean poor-quality democracy,” said the group’s spokesperson, Margalida Ramis, who described the state of the figures as “a disaster”.
Ramis, of the environmental group GOB, and Palma XXI’s Jaume Garau — two of the Forum’s key voices in talks with the regional government — criticise the omission of cruise visitors from the official counts. They say this undermines the credibility of the data, at a time when the Pact for Sustainability is supposed to be grounded in “reliable data” to justify policy decisions. Without such data, Ramis warned, “we’re left relying on perception surveys.”