Your seven days news round-up in Mallorca

With six weeks or so left of the 2024 tourism season, the island can expect to remain busy until the end of October and perhaps into the first fortnight of November. The president of the Aviba association of travel agencies, Pedro Fiol, said earlier this week that he anticipates "very high occupancy in October" and a likely extension of the season until mid-November, which is how it now tends to be.

He was backed up the TravelgateX travel market network and analysts Mabrian. Both pointed to a late-season increase of around two per cent over last year, and they suggested that both the British and the Spanish markets would be up. This forecast followed the release of tourism figures the previous week which showed that these two markets had fallen in July - by 10% and 13% respectively.

Fiol didn't view those falls as problematic. "We are compensating with growth of other markets with higher purchasing power. It's not a tragedy." Given an overall record level of tourist arrivals, such fluctuations can be allowed for.

TUI growing in Turkey

This news came hot on the heels of TUI having indicated that their focus in the Turkish market will be on extending autumn and winter tourism. Couched in terms of competition to Mallorca - Turkey rather than Mallorca being offered - this allowed inevitable conclusions to be drawn regarding prices and protests. This wasn't the case. The report was about the tour operator's strengthening of ties with the Turkish market and, as importantly, its potential for growth. Memories can be very short, as TUI not so long ago said (words to this effect) that Mallorca was maxxed-out; there wasn't capacity for growth. And there are many in Mallorca who believe that not only should there be no more growth, there should in fact be de-growth.

Objection to a Jet2 marketing collaboration

Among them are Més, the party which held the Balearic government's tourism portfolio between 2015 and 2019. In parliament on Tuesday, they responded to an announcement in the Official Bulletin of the Balearic Islands regarding a strategic marketing collaboration with Jet2. An initiative from May 2023 of the previous government, and by when Més were voicing disagreements with their PSOE partners in the coalition government, there are seemingly various collaborations for different tourism markets. Focused, or so it appears, only on the upcoming low season, Més spokesperson Lluis Apesteguia told parliament that the government was taking measures that "increase tourist pressure" while at the same time proposing "dialogue to society as a whole" with regard to tourism sustainability and overtourism.

Increasing the tourist tax? Not for now

Més, who made the introduction of the tourist tax a non-negotiable for forming the government with PSOE in 2015, have also been calling for an increase in the rate. The tax was introduced in July 2016, at which time the top rate was two euros per night per person (under-16s exempted) for five-star and four-star-superior establishments. All the rates were doubled in 2018. Més now want a top rate of eight euros.

Would this be a means of trying to reduce tourist numbers? Possibly, but PSOE have always maintained that the tax isn't dissuasive, and given current tourist numbers it quite clearly isn't. Anyway, with the Partido Popular in power, there isn't about to be an increase.

Calling South Korea

Mallorca and the Balearics have long had their eyes on alternatives to the standard European tourism markets. South Korea falls into this category, and it may just be that this market will be given a boost courtesy of a TV series that the national broadcaster, KBS, is currently in the process of making. All about music in other countries, Mallorca has been chosen to highlight Spain. There was filming in the centre of Palma on Monday that involved a huge K-Pop star, Hwasa. Filming also includes aerial images of the island.

More Uber, even if it's not a solution?

Part of the overtourism debate concerns transport. One of the taxi associations recently observed that the transport model needed serious reconsideration. The solution to a transport shortage in summer was not more taxis or more Uber, as these would just add to traffic jams. The chances are, however, that there may be more Uber because of a court ruling that was announced on Tuesday.

The Constitutional Court in Madrid had been asked to rule on a Balearic decree law that required pre-booking for VTCs (transport vehicles with driver). Uber has VTC licences and the law at present is that there must be advance booking of a minimum of thirty minutes. The court decided that this was neither justified nor appropriate. The taxis have responded by saying: "We have always maintained that VTCs wanted to act as taxis, and they are succeeding."

The so-called taxi law in the Balearics, passed in February this year, included the decree law (this was originally issued in 2018) and measures for limiting the number of VTC licences.

Vandalism and scams - familiar problems

Hire cars are very much part of the debate as well. The two associations in the Balearics have been downplaying acts of vandalism this summer. There have been "isolated cases", but member companies have experienced very few problems.

Stickers placed on hire cars earlier this summer read: "Your rental car is not safe here. Beware of local people, they are angry." Some cars were damaged - scratched with keys, mirrors ripped off, tyres punctured. But the associations are right in saying that incidents have been isolated. Where they have occurred, they have been overstated. The fact is that hire cars have long been targets, and vandalism in the past has owed nothing to any protests. It has been vandalism for the sake of vandalism.

Holiday lets, as we all know, are in the firing line because of the housing crisis. But attention this week has turned to an all too sadly familiar problem - the holiday let scam.

A lawyer in Barcelona, Arantxa Goenaga of law firm AF Legis, says that scams have been increasing. "The more demand there is, the higher the rates of fraud." Mallorca and the Balearics are experiencing more scams precisely because of this demand. An example is a German woman who made an advance payment of 3,000 euros for an apartment in Palmanova. She came to realise this was a scam and so didn't have the bad experience, as many have, of arriving only to find out that they have been victims of a fraud. But the police say there's little chance of her getting the money back.

The modus operandi is much as it has always been - using photos from legitimate ads to promote a non-existent property and also using the likes of Airbnb to divert people to fake websites. Goenaga advises: "The easiest way to avoid a scam is not to make an advance payment."

Subsidised homes and tax incentives

On the housing problem in the Balearics, figures from the College of Registrars show that sales of homes subsidised by governments (VPO - 'vivienda de protección oficial') are lower on the islands than in any other region of Spain. Just 0.13% of all the 13,185 homes sold between June 2023 and June 2024 were VPOs: seventeen in total. The highest percentage, 4.84%, was in Navarre - 331 out of a total of 6,839 sales.

The reason? Well, it could simply be that people are holding onto these properties to a greater extent than everywhere else. Or maybe it's because there are fewer of them. A year ago it was calculated that there were 14,265 VPOs in the Balearics, just over two per cent of the entire housing stock.

The current government hasn't set out plans for VPO building, it at present preferring other ways of addressing the housing shortage. In this regard, it is to offer tax incentives of up to 1,800 euros to owners with empty properties who make these homes available for long-term residential renting. Its Safe Rental programme does come with guarantees for owners, but whether these can entirely eliminate the possibility of 'tenant-squatters' is yet to be seen.