The tourism industry in Mallorca is in crisis. There were mass protests in the summer, and now restaurateurs are raising the alarm. Many restaurants will probably have to close.
Palma – Crisis on Mallorca: Hundreds of bars and restaurants on the Spanish holiday island are facing imminent closure after the worst season since Covid. This was reported by the restaurant association PME-Restauración. Three main factors are said to make things difficult for restaurateurs: the lack of qualified staff, rising personnel and activity costs and a decline in sales.
Mallorca tourists are no longer so easy to spend money
But money is no longer so easy to find, wrote the Mallorca MagazineThe savings from the Corona pandemic were spent in the last super year, and higher flight and hotel prices are putting a strain on holiday budgets. Taxis, car rental companies, restaurants, shops and tour operators are suffering as a result, the newspaper wrote. These sectors have spoken of 15 to 20 percent less sales.
According to association president César Amable, the rise in travel and accommodation prices has hit his sector and other pillars of the complementary offer, such as trade, this summer. “The average length of stay has been reduced and tourists’ budgets have been limited, penalizing the extraordinary expenses of the trip, a situation that has ultimately confirmed the least profitable season in recent years, apart from a pandemic,” he said.
Visitor numbers are rising rapidly again since Corona
The number of visitors in Spain had been rising rapidly for many years before the corona pandemic brought a pause. Since 2022, however, one record has been chasing the next. There have been major protests against mass tourism, during which tourists have been insulted and “shot” with water pistols, among other things, but this development has not been affected.
There have been demonstrations in recent weeks and months in holiday hotspots such as Mallorca, Barcelona, Málaga and the Canary Islands, but also in smaller towns. The rapidly growing housing shortage, which is also attributed to the increase in holiday homes, is angering locals in particular – but so are traffic jams, noise and dirt.
Mallorca restaurateurs demand collective agreement for restaurants
Restaurant owners are now demanding the creation of a separate collective agreement for restaurants that distinguishes their conditions from those of hoteliers, as is already happening at provincial level in other regions of Spain such as La Rioja, Madrid and Guipúzcoa.
But hoteliers say salary increases are unaffordable in a sector whose turnover has fallen by around 20 percent this season compared to last season. They explained that the collective agreement has increased personnel costs by 25.3 percent since 2018, while menu prices have risen by 10 percent over the same period.
“There is a big gap between hotels and restaurants; I think it’s very good that hotels can raise prices as much as they want, but there are many things that differentiate us,” said Amable. The drop in income will probably lead to the premature closure of many businesses in the tourist areas of Mallorca and the rest of the archipelago. Without a new agreement, he sees a “very bad future” for restaurateurs. The restaurants are being “strangled” and the situation has “worsened considerably.” A restaurant collapsed in Mallorca this year, burying a young mother from Germany.
Tourism remains vital for Mallorca
Almost 1.2 million people live on the Balearic Islands. According to figures from the Spanish statistics office INE, last year they were visited by 18 million holidaymakers, of whom 4.6 million were from Germany and 3.4 million from Great Britain. Tourism is vital for Mallorca: the industry accounts for 45 percent of the island’s economic output.
Despite the increasing protests against mass tourism, Spain is being visited by more people from abroad this year than ever before. By July 31, the number of these visitors had risen by around twelve percent compared to the same period last year, to a record of almost 53.4 million, according to the national statistics office INE in Madrid. Spending by tourists and business travelers had even increased by almost 19 percent to around 71.1 billion euros. (cgsc with dpa)
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