A report from Barcelona-based data analysts Delectatech, who specialise in the hospitality sector, shows that restaurants in the Balearics registered the greatest relative loss of occupancy in Spain in 2025. In other words, the loss of customers, in relative terms, was the highest.
Delectatech had already presented a report specific to the summer season that placed the Balearics in the same position and which directly linked the drop in customers to price increases. The analysis for the whole year is much the same.
According to the report, there was a three per cent decrease in customer numbers in 2025. This loss in the Balearics was higher than elsewhere, e.g. one per cent in both the Basque Country and Catalonia. It explains that regions with the lowest average spend (the average value of each customer's spending at a restaurant) registered the largest increases in customers; Castile-La Mancha and Extremadura are examples. "This behaviour suggests that consumers have reached a price ceiling, which limits price increases in the most expensive areas and reinforces the idea of a restraint in real spending, even in areas traditionally less price-sensitive."
The report's conclusions coincide with the analysis by the CAEB Restaurants Association, whose forecasts for 2026 are not particularly optimistic. President Juanmi Ferrer says 2026 will in all likelihood be "like last year, or at most a little worse". He adds that the year has started with "a disastrous January".
Despite ongoing increases in the prices of products, Ferrer insists that prices to customers were kept down last year and that he expects this will be the case again in 2026. "The last thing a restaurant owner wants is to raise prices, because that means fewer customers. This year we'll try to absorb those extra three to four percentage points of inflation as much as we can."
Ferrer has meanwhile welcomed a Balearic Government plan to help the restaurant sector through a discount voucher system along similar lines as ones that have been adopted to boost the retail sector. The idea has come from the business minister, Alejandro Sáenz de San Pedro, who is due to meet restaurant representatives this month in moving forward with the campaign.
The discounts for shops are for local, traditional retailers; they are not for multiple retailers such as supermarkets. For restaurants, the scheme would be during the off-season and so target restaurants which remain open all year.