The Council of Mallorca's tourism department is studying options to resolve the problem with allocating 654 holiday rental places (beds) that arose because of repeated system crashes.
These places went on sale on September 1 for a period of two weeks, but the process had to be cancelled because of issues with the system. Among the options now being considered is to have a form of lottery.
The tourism department says that repeating the previous process is not an option. But whatever the solution, it will need to have the agreement of the holiday rentals sector. To this end, there are contacts with the Habtur holiday rentals association in seeking an option that satisfies everyone and avoids further fiasco.
The application period for 416 hotel places has just ended and went ahead without problems. A third set of places - 500 for converted, listed buildings - have also been allocated successfully, although this did require a repeat of the process after it failed first time round.
The issue with the holiday rental places would appear to have been because of the high volume of requests. These led to the system crashing at certain times and therefore made it impossible to guarantee a fair process. The order of applications was a basic criterion; first come, first served. But that could not be guaranteed.
No new timeframe has been proposed. If agreement can be reached with Habtur, the board of the Consortium for Tourist Accommodation Places will still have to give its approval for a revised process.