Requests for hotel building permissions in Calvia fell last year by around 50% compared with 2017. This drop followed several years of intense activity which had begun with the Meliá transformation plan for Magalluf in 2011 and which was facilitated by provisions in the Partido Popular's 2012 tourism law.
In 2018, the town hall's planning department received seventeen requests for work to be carried out at eleven hotels. The year before, there were 31 requests on behalf of 26 hotel companies. These corresponded to fourteen renovation works, fifteen for expansion and two for new hotels, one of them having been for Zafiro in Palmanova. By contrast, the 2018 requests were for twelve renovations, three expansions and two demolitions.
As far as the actual granting of licences was concerned, however, there were 36 in 2018 and 32 the year before. The town hall points out that the two sets of figures are not the same because building permissions granted generally relate to requests in previous years. Delays in giving permission are normally because of queries to do with the building project specifications. Furthermore, hotel managements often ask for more than one licence in respect of specific projects.
Since 2012, only 13% of the hotel stock in Palmanova and Magalluf (around 4,000 out of a total 30,000 beds) has not been subject to some form of renovation and redevelopment. Some of the projects are still ongoing and will take a further couple of years.
A consequence of the work will be that some 70% of hotel stock will be either four or five-star, a percentage well above the national average. In Palmanova and Magalluf, the updating has involved total investment of some 380 million euros.
