José Marcial Rodríguez, the Council of Mallorca's tourism councillor, says he is determined to tackle what he describes as "a legacy of 25 years of disorder." His department has commissioned a technical study to redesign the coding system for Mallorca's legal holiday rentals. The project, currently out to tender for €78,770, aims to create a unique, geolocated code for organising the registration of establishments and to track illegal offers: "It will be their ID card."
"The goal is to clearly identify legal properties, map them and monitor them with a new code that will also allow us to establish a direct relationship through reliable, technologically advanced data." The current administrative structure makes it nearly impossible to manage the number of legal holiday rental units. The coding will require amendment to regional tourism law, which Rodríguez hopes will be the case before the end of the current period of office in 2027.
The geolocation of all establishments will provide town halls with a precise map of legal rentals. "They will be able to verify if property tax is paid, if there is a licence, or if there are any discrepancies." The Council of Mallorca will be able to assign specific codes to properties where illegal activity is detected. "If it happens again, we'll have already identified it and can trace it. That doesn't exist today."
Rodríguez distinguishes this system from the Single Registry of Tourist Rentals system managed by the Spanish Government's housing ministry. While in principle he considers that system to be a "brilliant idea", there are drawbacks.
"The problem is that they're mixing tourism, housing, and registration without understanding regional responsibilities." In the Balearics, holiday rentals are defined as being of less than one month and there is a clear distinction between tourist accommodation and short-term rentals. "Holiday rentals are being blamed here for the housing problem, and that's a grave mistake."
The Spanish system removes perfectly legal owners from accommodation websites because they aren't registered, while granting an 'NT' (non-tourist) code to unlicensed properties that are then used as disguised holiday rentals. “They’re expelling legitimate businesses from the websites and opening the door to illegal ones. They’ve created a huge pool of potential fraud."
Rodríguez argues that the Council's system will strengthen Mallorca’s ability to control holiday rentals, something he considers essential. "We need one that works, because without technology there’s no data, and without data there’s no control."