Hundreds of bars and restaurants in Mallorca are facing imminent closure following the worst season since Covid and tourists tightening their belts.
The warning has come from the restaurant association, PIMEM-Restauración, which says their members are being strangled by three essential factors – the lack of qualified personnel, the increase in staff and activity costs, and a drop in sales.
Its president, César Amable, says the increase in travel prices and accommodation has hit its sector and other mainstays of the complementary offer such as commerce this summer.
‘The average stay has been shortened and the budget of tourists has been limited, thus penalising the extraordinary expenses of the trip, a situation that has ended up confirming the least profitable season in recent years, a pandemic period aside,’ he said.
A sign of the times, the picturesque Spanish island has been rocked by a wave of anti-tourism protests this year calling for ‘low quality’ visitors to leave in response to a lack of local housing, limited job opportunities and a rising cost of living.
Sinister graffiti appeared on wall in Majorca over the summer
Members of the Mallorca Platja Tour association demonstrate against tourism with a banner that reads ‘Let’s occupy our beaches!’ on Palma de Mallorca beach on August 11
A protester speaks during the demonstration on the beach of Palma de Mallorca in August
A demonstrator holds a sign which reads ‘it’s not tourismphobia, it’s Mallorcicide’ during protest
Demonstrators hold a sign which reads ‘tourism yes, but not like that’ during a march in Palma
Restaurateurs are now demanding the creation of their own hospitality agreement that differentiates their conditions from those of hoteliers, as is already happening in other regions of Spain such as La Rioja, Madrid and Guipúzcoa at the provincial level.
The salary increases, they say, are unaffordable for a sector that this season has seen its turnover fall by around 20 per cent compared to last season.
Thus, they have explained that the collective agreement has increased staff expenses by 25.3 per cent since 2018, while the price of menus has risen by 10 per cent in the same period.
‘There is a huge gap between hotels and restaurants; I think it’s very good that hotels raise prices as much as they want to raise them, but there are many things that differentiate us,’ said Mr Amable.
He warned that the drop in income this season will probably result in an early closure of many businesses located in tourist areas of Mallorca and the rest of the archipelago.
Unless a new agreement was made, he warned: ‘We restaurateurs have a very bad future.’
Mr Matas said they had been pressing for an agreement of their own for the last 15 years but nothing had happened.
‘The situation since then has worsened a lot and restaurants are being strangled,’ he added.
For the six months to the end of June, 42.5 million international visitors travelled into Spain, with June alone recording a 12 per cent rise to 9 million as the busier summer period picks up, according to Spain’s data agency INE.
That means 2024 has been shaping up to be another record year for tourism, already the world’s second most visited country behind France.
It is expected to beat last year’s high of 85 million tourists, when numbers exceeded pre-pandemic levels.
Data shows visitors are increasingly opting to stay in rental apartments, rather than hotels, driving up demand for flats and incentivising landlords to buy up housing at the expense of residents.
The number of visitors to Spain in the first-half of the year staying in that type of accommodation was up 30 per cent, while those staying in hotels was up 11 per cent.
Amid widespread dissatisfaction over pay, housing and opportunities, residents in Majorca took to the streets for major demonstrations against perceived ‘overtourism’.
In July, residents in Barcelona responded in their own way, firing water guns at tourists enjoying dinner on a street popular with foreign visitors.
Under the banner ‘Enough! Let’s put limits on tourism’, some 2,800 people – according to police – marched along a waterfront district of Barcelona to demand a new economic model that would reduce the millions of tourists that visit every year.
Barcelona’s rising cost of housing, up 68 percent in the past decade, is one of the main issues for the movement, along with the effects of tourism on local commerce and working conditions in the city of 1.6 million inhabitants.
Rents rose by 18 per cent in June from a year earlier in tourist cities such as Barcelona and Madrid, according to the property website Idealista.
For years, the city has worn anti-tourist graffiti with messages such as ‘tourists go home’ aimed at visitors some blame for the rising prices and shaping of the economy around tourists.
Barcelona’s local authorities have since responded by saying they would introduce a tourist tax for short-stay cruise passengers in a bid to alleviate the strain.
But local businesses dependent on tourism worry such hasty moves could deter the people they rely on to live.
The activist group said they chose the area because it is infamous for drunkenness and disorder
An anti-tourism placard is seen during a demonstration in Barcelona in July
Anti-tourism demonstrations broke out through the summer with locals seen marching to ‘reclaim the beaches’ and hanging ‘Tourists go home’ banners at holiday hotspots across the country
The Caterva protest group put up red tape and ‘Beach Closed’ signs at several coves in Manacor, eastern Majorca in late August
A protester holds a sign reading ‘Take back your drunks, give back our homes’ during a demonstration in Palma this month
The first major protest in Alicante on the mainland took place in July, as hundreds of locals took to the streets to voice their concerns about overtourism.
Scores of residents met at the central Plaza Toros with banners and flags reading ‘Leave our neighbourhoods’, ‘our home is not the patio of gringos’ and ‘f*** AirBnB’ amid fears locals are being priced out of their homes and trapped in unstable jobs catering to foreign visitors.
Aggrieved locals chanted ‘Alicante is not for sale’, blew whistles and waved flags, closing streets as they rallied on the Calle Calderón de la Barca, finishing their march at the office for tourism to plenty of applause from crowd.
And on July 27 around 250 protestors impeded tourist access to a picture-postcard Menorcan beach in a ‘surprise action’.
Activists boasted of filling a car park by Cala Turqueta, a beautiful cove on the island’s southern coast, with ‘residents’ cars’.
They then used towels and their own bodies to shape the message ‘SOS Menorca’ on the sand by the waterline.
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