According to Prohens, "regulated holiday rentals represent a great opportunity to share the wealth generated by tourism, but the illegal offer is unfair competition both for hotels and for owners who rent legally. In these islands the illegal tourist rental offers have spread threatening us as a destination and it is necessary to work at community level to provide tools against illegal offer".
Prohens pointed to climate change as the main challenge facing the Balearics. "We are a limited, small and fragile territory, with just over one million inhabitants which receives more than 15 million tourists throughout the year. We want to minimise the negative externalities of tourism and be sustainable from an environmental, economic and social point of view, because if one of the three legs fails, we will not be sustainable," said the president.
The mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez, stated: "Spain will receive 80 million tourists, more than 90% are European, and half of them will travel to the Canary Islands and the Balearics. Seventy-five percent of the tourists entering the Balearics do so via Palma, either by air or sea, and of these, 25% will stay in Palma. For the areas with this high pressure, we are asking for compensation and funding for reindustrialisation and improvement of mature areas".
The acting Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Héctor Gómez, considers that tourism "must be a core policy of the European Union" and advocates that Spain should reinforce its leadership in Europe thanks to "public-private collaboration, coordination between administrations and an ambitious vision of the present and the future. We are going to allocate one billion European funds to tourism projects for digitisation and green transition".
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Unbelievable! The Balearics is a top tourist destination and has the wealth to prove it. Surely they should cough up themselves to solve the problem. Not going begging, again, to the EU. Maybe if it was their own money being spent they might actually use it carefully and sensibly rather than frit it away or pocket it themselves!
15M tourists at an average 10 days, double occupancy over say 200 days of the year is 375,000 rooms needed. Hotels provide just 175,000, so there is plenty of scope for other supply. Strikes me of lobby groups wanting all of the cake.