The Council of Mallorca has a plan for intervention in tourist areas. The acronym is PIAT. This plan forms the basis of decisions to be made on the allocation of zones for additional tourist places under the recent holiday rentals' legislation.
Included in this plan is a map of what is described as the "non-regulated offer" of places for tourist stays. There are certain hotspots, varying shades of orange and red showing areas with the highest number of non-regulated (aka illegal) places per square kilometre. The centre of Palma is the hottest. The red becomes purple: plus 1,000 per square kilometre. Playa de Palma and parts of Calvia have orange or red. Apart from these, the greatest concentrations of darker oranges turning red are on the bays of Alcudia and Pollensa. Most of Alcudia is covered with red or orange. Can Picafort has a red area. Puerto Pollensa is red. This denotes between 250 and 500 illegal places per square kilometre.
The Council says that the two northern bay areas, Palma and Playa de Palma are the island's leaders when it comes to illegal offer. The Council and the government's tourism ministry have them all in their sights. But neither Puerto Alcudia nor Puerto Pollensa (Playa de Muro and Can Picafort for that matter) has been categorised as a so-called mature resort. The ones which are include Playa de Palma, Magalluf and Cala Millor. In these resorts there can be no increase in the overall number of tourist places (hotels, rentals, anything). While this doesn't exclude there being new holiday rentals' places, it makes the creation of new ones very complicated. In order for there to be new ones, the equivalent number have to be removed from the market.
So this situation doesn't obtain in the bay areas. Nor does a further categorisation - that of being "saturated". The mature resorts are all said to be saturated, i.e. they have enough tourist places as it is. In theory, therefore, and subject to the principle of zoning, there can be additional tourist places, e.g. rentals, once the twelve-month hiatus with registration for licences ends.
This may sound like good news, but not necessarily. Resorts such as Magalluf and Cala Millor already know (more or less) where they stand. The bay areas do not. Reading between the lines, one feels that the Council and the tourism ministry have something up their sleeves, and that is because of the high level of illegal offer.
There are marked differences between the bays in terms of accommodation. In Alcudia, the percentage of legal holiday rentals' places is around 20% of the number of hotel places. Alcudia has more than three times the number of hotel places in Pollensa, where, uniquely, the number of legal rentals' places is higher than hotel places.
The Council and the tourism ministry may just take the view that the roughly 9,000 legal places in Pollensa are sufficient. Puerto Pollensa could simply be excluded from the zones. This wouldn't mean the loss of existing legal places but it would mean that there can't be any more.
There is of course a determination to get to grips with the so-called illegal offer. Underlying this is a political necessity to not be seen to be giving a form of amnesty to what has been illegal. The legislation, again in theory, offers the opportunity of legalising apartments that have been marketed "outside the law". The practice, one feels, will be somewhat different. The councillor for land, Mercedes Garrido, who is responsible for defining the zones, has pretty much said that currently illegal accommodation will remain so. In other words, there won't be the chance of making it legal.
The Council hasn't defined exactly how many illegal places there are in Pollensa or Alcudia. It has only given the range per square kilometre. One can, though, make an estimation. The municipality of Pollensa has a land area of almost 152 square kilometres. Not all of Puerto Pollensa or indeed Pollensa and Cala San Vicente are in the 250-500 bracket. Allowing for this and taking a lower average of, say, 150, the total of illegal places would be more than 22,000, a figure which is almost certainly inaccurate. But would around half this number, the majority in Puerto Pollensa, be unrealistic? At an average of four places per property, if these are added to the existing legal supply, one begins to understand why there is something of a housing shortage in a municipality with some 11,500 actual dwellings.
Over the years, and especially once the 1999 tourism law was passed which prohibited apartment rentals, it has constantly been said of successive governments getting tough on the illegal offer that this would have a serious impact on Pollensa's economy. This impact is drawing closer.
The illegal supply in Pollensa has in a sense filled the void of the comparatively low number of hotels. With all the various provisions in the legislation at their disposal, such as overcoming the tenancy act loophole (which admittedly is a nonsense), the Council and the tourism ministry could eliminate a significant chunk of accommodation. And there would be little prospect of a new government of the right - the PP - reversing this, given its previous track record on apartment rentals. The impact is about to be felt.
Showing posts with label Tourist places. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tourist places. Show all posts
Saturday, August 05, 2017
Saturday, September 10, 2016
How Do You Set A Ceiling On Tourist Places?
The battle for Balearic holiday rentals has been well and truly engaged, tourism minister Biel Barceló of Més surrounded by all sides. The hoteliers we have known about for years. Right out in the open now have emerged Podemos and Aptur, the holiday rentals' association. Nothing that either of these have said is fundamentally new, but both are stepping up the pressure on Barceló.
To take Podemos, the parties of government, of which it is one, met this week to consider their "agreements" for government. Tourism was top of the agenda. At least there were some conciliatory noises from Podemos. Having accused the actual government (PSOE and Més) and so therefore Barceló in particular of policy "improvisation" (a euphemism for saying that the government has failed to get on top of tourist "saturation"), there was an acceptance that holiday rentals' legislation is not straightforward. Hallelujah, the penny had dropped. Podemos, seemingly always in a hurry to legislate, would have pressurised Barceló into total improvisation, had holiday rentals' draft legislation been rushed in by the end of August (which had been the original intention).
Fundamental to whatever legislation is enacted is the principle of a ceiling on tourist places. Podemos wants a lowering of numbers; Més, Barceló and PSOE don't see that as plausible. But through legislation they believe they can create a limit to the total number of tourist places. It's going to be fascinating to see how they intend to set this and what the limit might be. Determining it is pretty much anyone's guess.
There are, however, individuals who can assist in removing the guesswork, which is why the government has commissioned two studies. One of these, for indicators of the sustainability of tourism in the Balearics, has lost its chief expert. Dr. Ivan Murray of the University of the Balearic Islands, says that other commitments will not allow him the time to undertake the study. Perhaps so, or maybe he prefers not to be caught in any political crossfire. Whatever the reasons, the government can ill afford to lose good thinkers. There needs to be objectivity rather than political dogma.
Where Aptur is concerned, it has been banging the drum for liberalisation for ages and regularly producing its own studies to back this up. It came out this week with what appeared to be a startling statistic: that the "illegal" supply of holiday accommodation in the Balearics represents over 11% of GDP. It is possible to calculate GDP in different ways and, in the case of tourism, to assign to it a GDP impact that is highly indirect as well as direct, but this was an astonishing claim nonetheless. What was the basis for it? National statistics, funnily enough.
There is confusion regarding the number of properties and of places that represent holiday rentals - legal and illegal - in the Balearics. Aptur did attempt to clear this up. There are almost 46,000 properties, of which under a third are regulated (i.e. registered as legal holiday accommodation). The illegal remainder - 31,500 - provide 126,000 places. The conclusion one draws, therefore, is that there are around 180,000 places - legal and illegal - in the private accommodation sector.
Notwithstanding any more property and places to be added courtesy of Airbnb and others, might this 180,000 be taken as the "ceiling", assuming that they were all legalisable (a big assumption)? It is here that being certain of the statistics becomes tricky. For example, what is the total number of hotel places?
According to the regional government's figures for August 2015, when occupancy is at is highest and so "saturation" is at its greatest, there were 344,445 places in the Balearics: 250,000 of them were in Majorca. On 10 August last year, the total population of the Balearics topped the two million mark for the first time, a figure that will have been repeated this year. However, the regular Balearic population is 1.1 million. Add some 530,000 from Aptur and hotel numbers, and how does one account for the remaining approximately 400,000? They can't all be itinerant workers. One can add numbers for "extra-hotel" accommodation, such as camping in Ibiza, and also numbers for relatives and friends, but the discrepancy still requires some explaining. Therefore, before any ceiling is set, there has to be rigorous certainty that the numbers are accurate and beyond question. At present, there isn't this certainty, and perversely the tourist tax may add to it. Does the system of hotelier self-assessment for making tax returns not carry with it an inherent tendency to under-estimate the number of places? Podemos, for one, thinks that it does.
Aptur's economic argument is on the face of it compelling. The association may also be correct in arguing that private accommodation supply is not the cause of "saturation", and the uncertainty of the statistics as outlined above might reinforce this. However, it is being extremely naive (and simplistic) in brushing off any potential for saturation by saying there need to be improvements to road infrastructure, public transport and water supplies.
The battle for holiday rentals' legislation is fully engaged. Like the battle for the tourist tax and the arguments over "purposes" (remember the old folks' homes?) and distribution of revenue by island, respectively raised by Més and Podemos, it is one that will have many a skirmish along the way.
To take Podemos, the parties of government, of which it is one, met this week to consider their "agreements" for government. Tourism was top of the agenda. At least there were some conciliatory noises from Podemos. Having accused the actual government (PSOE and Més) and so therefore Barceló in particular of policy "improvisation" (a euphemism for saying that the government has failed to get on top of tourist "saturation"), there was an acceptance that holiday rentals' legislation is not straightforward. Hallelujah, the penny had dropped. Podemos, seemingly always in a hurry to legislate, would have pressurised Barceló into total improvisation, had holiday rentals' draft legislation been rushed in by the end of August (which had been the original intention).
Fundamental to whatever legislation is enacted is the principle of a ceiling on tourist places. Podemos wants a lowering of numbers; Més, Barceló and PSOE don't see that as plausible. But through legislation they believe they can create a limit to the total number of tourist places. It's going to be fascinating to see how they intend to set this and what the limit might be. Determining it is pretty much anyone's guess.
There are, however, individuals who can assist in removing the guesswork, which is why the government has commissioned two studies. One of these, for indicators of the sustainability of tourism in the Balearics, has lost its chief expert. Dr. Ivan Murray of the University of the Balearic Islands, says that other commitments will not allow him the time to undertake the study. Perhaps so, or maybe he prefers not to be caught in any political crossfire. Whatever the reasons, the government can ill afford to lose good thinkers. There needs to be objectivity rather than political dogma.
Where Aptur is concerned, it has been banging the drum for liberalisation for ages and regularly producing its own studies to back this up. It came out this week with what appeared to be a startling statistic: that the "illegal" supply of holiday accommodation in the Balearics represents over 11% of GDP. It is possible to calculate GDP in different ways and, in the case of tourism, to assign to it a GDP impact that is highly indirect as well as direct, but this was an astonishing claim nonetheless. What was the basis for it? National statistics, funnily enough.
There is confusion regarding the number of properties and of places that represent holiday rentals - legal and illegal - in the Balearics. Aptur did attempt to clear this up. There are almost 46,000 properties, of which under a third are regulated (i.e. registered as legal holiday accommodation). The illegal remainder - 31,500 - provide 126,000 places. The conclusion one draws, therefore, is that there are around 180,000 places - legal and illegal - in the private accommodation sector.
Notwithstanding any more property and places to be added courtesy of Airbnb and others, might this 180,000 be taken as the "ceiling", assuming that they were all legalisable (a big assumption)? It is here that being certain of the statistics becomes tricky. For example, what is the total number of hotel places?
According to the regional government's figures for August 2015, when occupancy is at is highest and so "saturation" is at its greatest, there were 344,445 places in the Balearics: 250,000 of them were in Majorca. On 10 August last year, the total population of the Balearics topped the two million mark for the first time, a figure that will have been repeated this year. However, the regular Balearic population is 1.1 million. Add some 530,000 from Aptur and hotel numbers, and how does one account for the remaining approximately 400,000? They can't all be itinerant workers. One can add numbers for "extra-hotel" accommodation, such as camping in Ibiza, and also numbers for relatives and friends, but the discrepancy still requires some explaining. Therefore, before any ceiling is set, there has to be rigorous certainty that the numbers are accurate and beyond question. At present, there isn't this certainty, and perversely the tourist tax may add to it. Does the system of hotelier self-assessment for making tax returns not carry with it an inherent tendency to under-estimate the number of places? Podemos, for one, thinks that it does.
Aptur's economic argument is on the face of it compelling. The association may also be correct in arguing that private accommodation supply is not the cause of "saturation", and the uncertainty of the statistics as outlined above might reinforce this. However, it is being extremely naive (and simplistic) in brushing off any potential for saturation by saying there need to be improvements to road infrastructure, public transport and water supplies.
The battle for holiday rentals' legislation is fully engaged. Like the battle for the tourist tax and the arguments over "purposes" (remember the old folks' homes?) and distribution of revenue by island, respectively raised by Més and Podemos, it is one that will have many a skirmish along the way.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
