The most important challenge that Habtur is making has to do with the limit on the number of accommodation places. PIAT is the legislative device for establishing limits, and at present this means 430,000 in Majorca, of which 315,000 are hotel places. There is, however, no mechanism for recovering rentals places for properties that had been licensed prior to legislation coming into effect.
Habtur puts a figure of 90,000 on these places, these all being legal places in stand-alone properties such as villas. The point about these properties is that if an owner decides at some point to withdraw a property from the holiday rentals market and de-registers the places, these places cannot then be made available to any other owner. They are therefore not added to the "stock" that legislation has created and which consists in total of 43,000 new places, 28,000 of which are for holiday rentals. The result will be that over the long term they will disappear from the market completely.
The association is more positive about policies such as energy efficiency for holiday rentals properties, but it is concerned that some requirements contained in PIAT will mean owners who already have licences having to give them up.
Habtur has received political backing from the Partido Popular, whose leader Biel Company said last week "ideological pressure" on the part of PSOE's partners in government (Més and Podemos) had led to "prohibitions and limitations". Company held talks about holiday rentals with Habtur and business associations.
