The Association of Tourist Rental Housing of the Balearic Islands (Habtur) has assured this Monday that the decree amending the Tourism Law will mean the disappearance, “in the medium and long term”, of some 90,000 vacation rental places, 75% of those existing in Mallorca, reports EFE.

“All the decrease falls on the vacation rental”, the president of the employers’ association, Toni Barceló, has complained at a press conference in which he has accused the Government of acting “totally in secret” to approve the new regulation.

Barceló has demanded for his sector, made up mainly of small owners, a balanced treatment with respect to the large hotel chains, the main beneficiaries of the decree law ratified last Friday.

Habtur considers that, just like hotel rooms, that when an establishment is deregistered they go to a pool from which they can be acquired, it is necessary to establish “rotation of rooms” for tourist rental. He would even admit, the president of the employers’ association has pointed out, that part of the places be reduced when they become inactive and go to the stock market, but he understands that it is unfair that the 90,000 places prior to the modification of the 2017 law may be lost. Barceló believes that this will happen because these tourist homes will change their use and owners in the coming years and thus remain without a license.

“We are going to a scenario in the medium and long term of total disappearance of the sector”, has affected the businessman, who considers that his activity has allowed the maintenance in Majorcan hands of a real estate heritage that, with the reform, will be acquired by foreign. The Habtur leader has been accompanied by several representatives of other employers’ associations who consider that the decrease in tourist rental places will harm their sectors.

The president of the Restoration Association, Eugenia Cusí, has lamented that “once again a sector of SMEs is harmed to the benefit of large hotel companies”. Biel Rosales, from the group of tour guides, has stressed that the average vacation rental customer is the quality tourist that the Government is supposedly seeking to attract with its reforms.

Holiday rental in Palma. Photo: MG.