17/08/2013 00:00
TW
0

Palma.—Holiday habits have changed a great deal over the past decade, primarily because of the low cost airline revolution, and reports released over the past week have shown that Majorca has failed to have moved with the times and kept a check on how holiday habits have changed across Europe.

In between reports of hotel occupancy in Majorca currently around eight percent down on last year and package holiday sales to the island up by five percent on last year, it has been revealed that 40 percent of tourists are staying in so-called illegal accommodation.

According to the President of the Majorcan Hotel federation, Inmaculada de Benito, this 40 percent is staying in accommodation which is either not registered with, or fails to meet the standards of, the regional Ministry for Tourism.

Irregular
And, she claims that this “irregular” situation had worsened during the present tourist season on Majorca due to the economic crisis.
But, this problem has been dogging the tourist industry for decades and every Balearic government has failed to have got a grip on the situation. To control what de Benito considers to be unfair competition to tax paying hotels and other registered establishments, it is going to hand over a list of websites to the Ministry before the end of the month containingproperties on Majorca which are being advertised to clients in Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom without a proper licence. However, one thing may be tackling and closing down websites, something which could take years and endless amounts of legal red tape, but there will be no stopping private, word of mouth holiday lets - it happens all over the world - or adverts being placed in newspapers across Europe by Majorcan property owners. One thing the report has made clear is that there clearly is a demand for “alternative” accommodation to the more traditional kind which many people can currently not afford.

The new Tourism Law has been criticised by the tourist industry for being stacked heavily in favour of the hoteliers but it fails to address the industry as a whole and respond to how the European holiday industry has changed along with travel habits.