Battle against tourist tax hike in Balearics gains momentum

The acting president of the federation, Ana Gordillo, said that the “discontent is general” in all the hotel federations of the Balearics, because the increase is “absurd” and do not understand its “justification”. “The federation has been asked to make more noise and really make the government see that we are not in favour,” said Gordillo, for whom this measure will not change the flow of tourists: “There will not be more tourists in winter and fewer tourists in summer.”

At the meeting, a “positive” evaluation of the tourist season was made, given that hoteliers are “satisfied with the results obtained”. In this line, although the records of 2023 have not been broken, the hoteliers would sign up “to have a season like this one next year”.

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Among other issues, the assembly addressed the “discourse of saturation and overcrowding” this summer, a “sensation” that the island’s hoteliers have not experienced “as in other years. The same repeat customers each year even said they saw the island emptier. We don’t know if the Euro Cup or the Olympics may have had an effect, but the hotels have not been at one hundred percent every day in high season as they were in other years,” Gordillo said.

For the president, this “sensation” of saturation may be caused “because there are certain infrastructures that need to be improved” such as parking and public transport, “issues that we talk about year after year and they are not improved”, she added.

Gordillo pointed out that the most important problems to “eradicate” are the illegal supply and lack of housing, for which she called for “more forceful action. Those who rent out their homes illegally must have a real fear of being caught and of being fined heavily,” she concluded.