Press release from the Ibiza Tourist Accommodation Association (AVAT).
The Ibiza Tourist Accommodation Association (AVAT) wishes to express its absolute surprise and disappointment at the agreement reached between the Consell d'Eivissa and the Hotel Federation of Ibiza and Formentera (FEHIF), which involves the elimination of the pool of 9,000 tourist accommodation spaces (currently frozen since, according to the existing moratorium, they cannot be used).
AVAT believes this represents a clear and obvious injustice to the regulated holiday accommodation sector. The hotel sector is defending this elimination out of pure selfishness; after more than 50 years, this sector has reached its point of equilibrium, both due to the conversion of establishments to higher categories, requiring fewer rooms and more capacity, and due to the need to hire more staff to cover their services.
In contrast, the regulated single-family vacation home sector is much newer, having experienced significant growth over the past 15 years and still continuing to professionalize. Therefore, in our opinion, based on real data, it is a sector that has not yet reached that point of equilibrium, as there is a clear imbalance between regulated supply and demand.
It is important to remember that AVAT has always been, is, and will always be against all illegal tourist offerings, and even more so, those developed in multi-family buildings. AVAT has demonstrated this through its close collaboration with institutions in the pursuit of illegal offerings, including the Consell's Department against Intrusion, and also by not joining national tourism federations, which have a more sympathetic view of tourist apartments.
Thus, AVAT advocates, like the vast majority of Ibizan society, a decrease that must come from the elimination of all illegal tourist apartment offerings, which are the true cause of the saturation the island experiences during peak periods of the season and which, in turn, contributes, among many other factors, to the shortage of residential housing. The message conveyed by the aforementioned agreement between the Consell and Fehif—the elimination of the pool of 9,000 places (which were actually already doomed to disappear)—is a mistake, as it focuses on the problem of saturation in regulated places, ignoring or failing to emphasize the rise of illegal places in tourist apartments as the main problem.
AVAT is participating in the roundtable discussions convened alongside other employers' associations and sectors of society to develop the Tourism Area Intervention Plan (PIAT), a document that will define the maximum capacity and the tourism model the island needs. In this area, AVAT is committed to a calm, data-driven analysis, and it is at this point that we see an imbalance between supply and demand in our sector. Vacation rentals in single-family homes (the only type allowed on the island) are a product with unique characteristics, giving them a very important role in achieving a more equitable distribution of the benefits provided by the tourism industry and a commitment to family tourism (remember that the decline in family tourism is directly related to the renovations and downsizing of many hotel establishments, which have also led to an increase in staff demand, with the resulting need for accommodation).
In the holiday home sector in Ibiza, there is a clear imbalance between the regulated supply and the demand for our sector. Actual data (Ibestat) makes it clear that there are many tourists whose homes we don't know where they are staying, although it is easy to deduce that the majority are staying in illegal accommodation. We believe that a transfer from unregulated single-family rentals to regulated accommodations should be permitted. These homes currently being rented in the tourist market, seeking different contractual options, represent unfair competition for the rest of the regulated supply. However, at the same time, legalizing them would not mean an increase in vacancies but rather a transfer from illegal or unregulated to regulated accommodations.
AVAT is convinced that it should be possible to achieve a balance between tourists and residents and full environmental and social sustainability, but not by placing this responsibility on the regulated supply, but rather on the unregulated supply that causes so much harm to the island in general.
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