Overtaken By The Fear: Holiday lets

Some people are just too helpful in cyberland. Along comes a request, one which asks for advice on renting an apartment as a holiday let, and the help flows in. The help cannot be faulted. It is informative, and the information can be trusted, especially when a respondent displays his or her credentials as an owner of an apartment for rent as a holiday let. Another respondent says that such apartments can be found on a map, and intimates where this map and therefore properties can be located. Great. This is really helpful. Thanks very much. Oh, and by the way, the one who made the request was from the Balearics tourism ministry.

I've made this last bit up. But you never know in cyberland, do you. I read the help being offered with my jaw firmly dropped. Admission as to private apartment being rented out as a holiday let and a map to help find it. Are you kidding!? Would it not be simpler to just put a flashing neon sign outside the apartment in the shape of a finger pointing at the apartment and which says "tourism ministry, we're here"?

The Balearic Government, in case you hadn't noticed, doesn't much care for private apartments being rented out as holiday lets. So little does it care for them that, in strictly legal terms, they don't exist. They haven't been airbrushed out of existence, as they have never been formally identified as existing under tourism law. By not mentioning them, they are therefore excluded from the categories of tourism accommodation which do exist in law.

The government has been saying, as it has said in the past, that it intends to be rigorous in identifying this illegal holiday accommodation. And this rigour is being reserved in particular for the internet and even more particularly for English websites.

But will the government be as rigorous as it has said that it will be? Does it in fact need to be? Create enough publicity about illegal holiday lets and there will be those, including myself, who help to spread this publicity more widely. It's a brilliant strategy: put the fear of God into property owners, and you get rid of the problem of holiday lets without lifting a finger.

Well, possibly. Or possibly the government will in fact be as rigorous as it has suggested it will be but hasn't necessarily been in the past. This said, it takes a fair old amount of resources to keep tabs on all the property that is knocking around which is being rented out without official clearance. Something else you might have noticed is that the government is boracic and that one ministry to have its budget heavily slashed is the tourism ministry which polices accommodation.

It could all be that the government's announcements about rigour are PR aimed at its friends from the hotel sector. It says it's going to do this and that, but in the end it doesn't. The trouble is that there is always the worry that it keeps to its word. Plus there is an additional worry, as also alluded to by government, of other ministries joining in with the rigour, namely the Hacienda which enjoys the benefit of the cunning collection of copies of electricity bills.

There is, despite all the publicity, a widely held view that the government's announcements are all bluster and that there is no possible way that it can check on all the hundreds, thousands of apartments. This may be the case, and it may also be the case that what rigour there is, is confined to parts of Mallorca and not to others. By which I mean? Well, let's consider somewhere like Pollensa. Mayor Cifre has made clear to the government that Pollensa relies heavily on holiday rentals, and not just those that are regulated.

I am willing to wager that, if the government does apply its rigour, Puerto Pollensa will escape its attentions. The damage that just one publicised case of action against an illegal let in the resort would cause would potentially be disastrous. Cifre knows this and the government will know this, as it will know that the mayor is a member of its party. Everyone knows, moreover, that the hotel lobby in Pollensa isn't as strong as elsewhere. There aren't the hotels of other resorts, and the hotels seem quite content to co-exist with the holiday-let market.

I would also be willing to wager that there would be apartments in Mallorca which would escape the rigour because of who owns them. How many apartments, do you imagine, belong to politicians, their families or friends, or those from executive or shareholding ranks of the hotel industry?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.