Majorca panic as tourism row rocks Spain with Balearic Island holiday bookings slump | Travel News | Travel

Holiday bookings to the top tourist archipelago of the Balearics have fallen by 4.3% over the past week compared to the previous week, new data has revealed. 

The drop comes after the introduction of biometric data collection laws, dubbed “Big Brother” in December, new tourist taxes and ongoing concerns regarding overtourism, which may very well be shaping how tourists approach destinations like the Balearics. 

With these fresh changes, tourists will need to expect higher costs and more paperwork to enter the southern European country, which may push them to find alternative less-visited destinations.

The archipelago came out as the fourth most popular destination in Spain during the period, with 11.9% of total bookings, according to data published by the booking platform, TravelgateX.

This came behind Andalusia (19.7%), Catalonia (16.8%) and the Canary Islands (14.9%). 

While the bookings over the past week have slumped, the period does, however, mark an increase of 19.8% compared to the same period last year. This shows that the concerns shared by anti-mass tourism advocates still remain a prevalent issue.

The majority of bookings (33.6%) were made 90 days in advance, while 10.5% were so-called “last-minute bookings,” made on the same day or the day before travelling. 12.5%, meanwhile, were booked between 31 and 60 days in advance and 11.7% between two and three months before. 

Spanish nationals were the main nationality to make reservations through TravelgateX, followed by British tourists (20.6%), Germans (4%), and North Americans (3.8%).

Of the bookings made over the last seven days in Spain, an impressive 22.9% were for solo travel, while over half (50.9%) were made by couples. 

This news of a slump over the past week comes as a major anti-mass tourism movement which organised several demonstrations against tourist overcrowding in Majorca – the largest and most popular island of the archipelago – vowed to intensify its actions this year.

The Menys Turisme, Més Vida (less tourism, more life) platform is set to regroup and redouble its efforts amid forecasts of continued growth in the upcoming tourist season, with a focus on issues to do with housing, job security and poverty. 

The movement has made the move “after seeing the Balearic government’s new tourist campaign, the announcements of billion-dollar investments, the boom in property speculation and luxury tourism while the housing problem worsens,” it said, according to the Majorca Daily Bulletin. 

The platform was behind a huge protest in Palma at the height of last year’s holiday season, which saw an impressive 111 groups participate. 

The rise in holiday rentals and hotels on the island has been named as one of the major causes of the housing crisis, with mortgages and rents too expensive for locals to afford.