Mallorca hoteliers have said that the Balearic government should be doing much more to outlaw illegal holiday acccomodation and they have also claimed that it has increased dramatically in the last few years.
Speaking at the operator’s annual conference in Paphos, Cyprus, in a report in Travel Weekly, Steve Heapy said “it is not the case per se” that residents in destinations such as Barcelona and Mallorca are fighting against tourism, as is widely reported by the mainstream media." Instead, he argued: “These protests we’re seeing are against incompetent and impotent governments that have failed to regulate unlicensed tourism." He blames AirbnB for the problems.
He added according to Travel Weekly: “We (Jet2holidays) operate licensed tourism, where we send people to hotels and it’s easy to work out how many people there will be (in resort). The model has worked very well for decades, but since the dawn of Airbnb, it has become more difficult.
“It has caused a massive increase in people going into some destinations and put strain on local communities.”
The Jet2 boss dismissed the common defence given by authorities across the continent that it is too difficult to monitor how many properties are being rented out by unlicensed Airbnb hosts.
“They (authorities) say it’s too hard to regulate, but it isn’t. All they need to do is book a property on Airbnb, find out who owns it, go and knock on the door and say, ‘Hi, I’m from the local government. I’d like to see your tourism licence, your health and safety certificate and your tax return.’
“If they can’t give you those three things, fine them 200,000 euros. The number of properties would drop by 95% overnight. That would mean the protests would stop,” he said in the Travel Weekly report.
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Don’t agree with folks pointing the finger back at the airline. Now THAT is dumb. Airlines take people wherever there is demand and yield. Simple. It’s a business duh. No half educated person can blame them for that. It is indeed those in charge of regulation, monitoring and enforcement. Get your infrastructure in order. Stop local corruption. Unlicensed rentals obviously have something to do with it and the government does NOT enforce it and not smart enough.
Not sure what he is he complaining about? He only fly them in and out. Thought his business is happy, the more using his airline, the more profit. To me it sounds he is a bit of hypocrite.
Ulla JacksonYou are correct. Thank you. However, TD (previously posting as "loadsamoney") is a rather contradictory and blatantly hypocritical common troll, so it's best to just ignore him, which is what he hates most (and he hates a lot of things - including Mallorquins).
TDAs far as I know Williams has a correct licence to do letting. So what is your problem? This article was about illegal lettings.
Ah Morgan Williams agreeing with him as he is another one with self interests who doesn't give a stuff about Mallorcans. Just cares about his eco Swede clients.and his bank balance whilst adding no value to the locals.
Obviously he has motivation to divert "blame" elsewhere. But he makes a good point. Assuming that many thousands of holiday lets are operating illegally (though nobody seems to be able to accurately quantify how many, how they're getting millions of bookings, and the anti-tourism movement has every motivation to exaggerate those unquantifiable numbers), then enforcement would certainly make a difference. It's a valid point. And it should be enforced. But even then, as evidenced by other jurisdictions that have banned them, it hasn't had any impact on housing prices at all. It seems that holiday letting isn't the real problem. Especially in Mallorca. The root is simply that other economies have produced higher earning citizens who find that rent and property prices here are much cheaper than in their own patch. And the weather is better. What's not to like? Going to have to find a way to make it work better. Over tourism? I doubt that's going to end anytime soon without causing major damage. Voters may not like the crowds, but they also don't like economic decline. So, get used to it. It's not going away anytime soon.
So he appears to be saying 95% of holiday rentals are illegal? And this man is a CEO? , if only I was that dumb with numbers, I might be running an airline too!
Yeah it's absolutely nothing to do with the millions of tourists that Jet 2 brings to Mallorca every year, they're all invisible and don't contribute to the over crowding
What a self interested buffoon this man is. I will never use Jet2 again.
Well he would say that with his charter planes bringing in shed loads of all inclusive low spending locally tourists. His passengers are not the tourists that Majorca needs and so he attacks the higher spending tourists who would never use his cattle truck flights in a million years. It’s his all inclusive tourists that should pay a high tourist tax.