Just a month from now, on November 5, the World Travel Market (WTM) will start in London. The British fair will be the first major professional event in the sector in which the Balearic Islands will be presented to tour operators as a destination that, to combat saturation, chooses to increase the sustainable tourism tax (ITS). Yeah Hoteliers do not like the ecotax, although they have already assumed it, the same happens with tour operators. They immediately begin to calculate how much the tourist package is more expensive for a family.
Both the Government and businessmen will have to clarify how the new system that increases the tax in high season, from June to August, and reduces it in winter, the months of December, January and February, will work. The amount to be raised will be taken to the Table of the Social and Political Pact for Sustainability, there is no date yet as to when it will have been defined.
«We will have to bite the bullet»says a hotelier, who recognizes the surprise in the sector at the PP’s plans to increase the ITS. However, he considers that “The Balearic Islands are a destination that is above the ecotax.” As industry sources explain, Since the tax was reintroduced in the autonomous community in 2016, “it has not deterred demand”. That is to say, these years tourists have not stopped coming to the islands because they had to pay for it. Hence there is doubt that raising it in summer will discourage visitors from coming during those months; This is the objective set by the Government, that the increase in the ecotax helps regulate tourist flows.
«We will have to bite the bullet»
Another thing is that paying the tax somewhat reduces spending at the destination.
“We have fought in worse places, after Thomas Cook, the pandemic…”, is said in the sector, which does not diminish the discomfort with the president’s announcement.
«It is not good news. If it will affect demand, we will see in the coming months,” they consider from the tour operation, a sector that has also been surprised by this PP plan. “The Government has more issues to organize or fix before getting involved with the ecotax,” the sources warn, such as “explaining well where the collected funds go.” As the hotel employers reiterated on Wednesday, the tax must be final and it must be agreed on what it is used for. «We don’t see how they are going to understand [los visitantes]For example, in the next tourist events, we should welcome them to the islands by charging them even more and without any noticeable improvements,” the Hotel Federation warned.
“The Government has more issues to organize or fix before getting involved with the ecotax”
“We will have to see what the rest of the destinations do,” they add from a wholesaler. Remember that in Spain only Catalonia and the Balearic Islands have a tourist tax. And also the strong competition from Türkiye, for example with its star destination Antalya. In the German market it competes on equal terms with the archipelago.
Predictably, the person who will not agree at all that tourists pay more ecotax will be Steve Heapy, the CEO of Jet2, and he will proclaim it at WTM.
Almost 9 million tourists
This high season, from June to August, the Balearic Islands have received 8.7 million tourists. That is the volume of international visitors and the national market that will notice the tax increase.
If, indeed, as the Government proposes, it will serve to regulate flows, It will be in June where it can have the greatest effect, when 2.6 million tourists arrived on the islands, 6% more than the same month last year. In the saturated July and August, in which there are more than 3 million travelers per month, the growth was minimal, 1% in each period.
