Spain: Ecologists for environmental organisation Terraferida have reported a 37 per cent increase in tourist accommodation places in the Balearics compared to four years ago.
The figures, based on information from the tourism ministry, reveal that there are 158,000 more tourist accommodation places in the Balearics than there were in 2015.
The number of places has risen to 582,281 this year, of which there are 397,000 in Majorca. According to Terraferida, more and more of these accommodations, including holiday rentals, are being moved away from coastal locations due to the extension of the tourism season to all year round.
Terraferida spokesperson Jaume Adrover said that Majorca alone now has almost the same number of tourist accommodations as there were in the entire Balearic Islands four years ago.
Adrover has since called for limits to be placed on the maximum numbers of legal accommodation places, which in Majorca will shortly rise to 430,000. Just under a quarter of these are expected to be vacation rentals, rising from 32,000 in 2015 to 96,000 this year.
Terraferida claims to be an advocate of “sustainable growth and a limitation to the number of places”, as it wants to freeze the number of holiday rentals in Majorca and the other islands in the Balearics. In addition, the organisation is calling for a reform of tourism legislation and the establishment of the two-for-one principle, whereby for each new accommodation place, two more should be removed.
