AVAT makes a positive assessment of the 2024 season, although the sign has not been fully posted and there are vacation homes that are not even marketed. PHOTO: Diario de Ibiza.
SOURCE: DIARIO DE IBIZA (subscription), 4 NOVEMBER 2024
Toni Escandell Tur
Of the total number of legalized holiday rental places in Ibiza, around 18,500, not all are being marketed, according to José Antonio Llano, president of the Association of Holiday Tourist Homes (AVAT) of Ibiza and Formentera. «Before the pandemic there were approximately 21,000 places granted. Later, many left the tourist market and returned to residential areas, and many others lost their licenses, reaching the current 18,500. But even within these we estimate that there is a percentage of 15% that are not operating, that at the time requested the license but have never been commercialized," says Llano, who emphasizes, therefore, the need to fight against illegal tourist rental of apartments.
«In legal positions, of course there has been no growth. What may have increased is the illegal supply, many times motivated by those apartments and in others by homes that have not been able to move to the regulated market and whose owners would like to be able to do so," he noted in April in statements to Diario de Ibiza, charging, Therefore, the responsibility for homelessness in vacation rentals in multi-family homes, which are illegal. He then defended that his "houses, due to their characteristics, dimensions and prices, are not intended for residential rental."
Thus, he states that, although it is difficult to know exactly how many places are being exploited, this season "of course the legal ones have not been at 100% occupancy." However, the balance of the season is positive, in line with the employers' associations of most economic sectors on the island. «It has been different, we come from 2022 and 2023, which were exceptional, and the data is lower than those of these previous years, but it is logical. We have had a good year, conditioned by intrusion," referring, again, to the apartments, because Llano advocates legalizing the tourist use of vacation homes that currently do not have a license due to the moratorium, but that "due to their characteristics , they could become part of the regulated offer.
«Gap of 5,000 places»
«There is a demand for this type of accommodation, and what we ask is that instead of operating illegally or illegally, these homes enter the regulated supply. Many people want to enter and cannot (...) We believe that there is a gap of about 5,000 places between demand and legal supply. I'm not talking about growth, but about removing them from illegality and having them located, supervised, controlled," he says.
Juan Miguel Costa, insular director of Tourism, said, in statements to the media during a break in the 10th Ibiza Holiday Homes Congress held this week, that this request would have to be studied between all parties: moratorium, which is not used, and we have to know, among all civil society, not just AVAT, what we want to do with those 5,000 places: if we want to continue growing in places tourism, if we believe that we have already reached the limit, be they hotels or vacation homes, and if we somehow make them disappear or look for some intermediate solution. This will have to be talked about, it is a melon that will surely have to be opened in the coming months, and from here we will look for a consensual solution and apply it.
Of those 21,000 vacation rental places, some went to the residential market and others lost their license. As Mariano Juan, first vice president of the Consell and Minister of Fight against Intrusion, recently told this newspaper, in the last two years the island institution has canceled 500 places in single-family homes due to "various non-compliance" by the owners of the license.
"Everyone against intrusion"
Hotel beds, on the other hand, are around 80,000. Llano defends that hoteliers and vacation home owners have to go together in the fight against tourist apartments. «Hotels and tourist single-family homes do not compete because each product has a specific demand. "They can coexist, as they are doing, as long as there is no illegal offer of apartments, which harms us both."
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