Illegal holiday lets fuel Balearics overload

The Balearic Islands saw tourist arrivals rise by 60% and the resident population grow by 30% over two decades, while hotel capacity increased by just 4.3%. Gabriel Escarrer, president and chief executive of Meliá Hotels International, says unregulated holiday lets helped absorb that growth. Speaking in Madrid on 25 September, he argued that the rentals are a key cause of the islands’ tourist overload.

Europa Press

More than 140,000 regulated holiday-rental places already exist across the archipelago, Escarrer said. He added that thousands more places are unregulated or illegal.

Escarrer rejected calls to cap visitor numbers by decree and said higher tourist taxes would miss the root of the problem. Instead, he wants accommodation platforms to remove all unregulated listings and holiday lets to face the same planning, tax and regulatory rules as hotel chains.

He also called for better planning, investment in public infrastructure and smarter management of tourist flows. Tourism success, he said, should not be judged simply by the number of guests.

Illegal holiday lets fuel Balearics overload, says Meliá