Huge hotel strike set to hit Brits' favourite holiday islands over peak summer season
Tourists heading to Mallorca, Ibiza and Menorca could see their holidays disrupted by waves of strikes this summer.
Hotel workers across the Balearic islands are set to down tools in protests over pay and conditions during June and July - saying they're keen to cause as much upheaval as possible for tourists to cause maximum impact.
The decision to strike - which is likely to affect thousands of holidaymakers - comes after the workers' union, Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), said they were dissatisfied with progress during ongoing talks.
A summer of discontent looks likely across Spain with more anti-tourism protests - which have already occurred in cities across Spain as well as the Canary Islands - in the pipeline.
On Monday, Spain's Ministry of Consumer Affairs ordered Airbnb to remove more than 65,000 holiday homes from its platform as part of a crackdown on illegal listings, saying that they violated 'various regulations on tourist-use housing'.
The country is currently facing a housing crisis as construction has failed to keep up with demand - and less tourists is being seen as one way to solve it.
The islands have already experienced a similar strike on May 1st and travellers with holidays already booked will be hoping that an eleventh hour deal will be struck to avert the mass walk-out.
Currently, a strike is planned for June 6th - with a rally outside the Mallorcan Hotel Federation planed - with further action likely to follow over several days on alternate weeks in July.
A UGT official said: 'If we don't see the possibility of an agreement in principle, we will call a strike lasting several days.'
Properties affected include hotels in some of Mallorca's most popular resorts, Platja de Palma and Palmanova-Magaluf - with hotel workers, including bar and restaurant staff, set to stay at home.
Those at the table for the UGT, the largest union for the hospitality sector, are campaigning for better pay and conditions, via a renegotiation of the Collective Agreement of the Balearic hotel industry.
General secretary of UGT-Services on the islands, José García Relucio, said while he was hopeful of a last-minute resolution, nothing had been agreed so far - with plans made to formalise the strikes yesterday.
The UGT is looking for a 19 per cent rise in wages over the next three years - but employers are refusing to budge beyond 8.5 per cent.
News of the latest strikes are likely to be a bitter pill for British tourists to swallow; the nation's love affair with Spain spans back decades and, according to YouGov data published earlier this year, it's the place we're most likely to go to for a summer holiday in 2025.
Data collected in the last three months of 2024 showed that Spain remains Britain's favourite destination, with 15.9% of Brits saying it's the country they're most likely to visit next, with the UK (14.3%) and Italy (9.3%), in second and third place.
Thousands of anti-tourism protesters took to the streets of the Canary Islands this week as part of an ongoing backlash against holidaymakers in Spain - the country has ordered Airbnb to remove more than 65,000 holiday homes from its platform as part of a crackdown on illegal listings
The interactive map published in Spanish newspaper El Diario this week showed exactly which resorts and cities in the country have the highest numbers of tourist lets.
The map, which used data from the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE), reveals where the 397,000 holiday rentals that were listed in August last year on Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo are.
Surprisingly, Spanish cities have the highest proportion of tourist lets compared with beach resorts, with 85% of apartments in Malaga's historic central district linked to holiday rentals.
Meanwhile in Barcelona, one in ten flats in the popular tourist districts of Plaça Catalunya and Passeig de Gràcia are rented out to tourists according to the data, while in Madrid's Puerta del Sol more than 20 per cent of flats host tourists in the Spanish capital.
This week, holidaymakers were reportedly cowering in hotels as anti-tourism protesters stormed the streets of the Canary Islands, as fed up locals disrupted sunshine bliss for tourists.
Thousands of fed-up residents kicked off demonstrations across the archipelago, including in Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Ela Hierro, La Palma, La Gomera, and Lanzarote.
Dozens of armed officers from the National Police were seen on patrol, as protesters were heard blowing through enormous shells to make a loud horn-like noise, while banging on drums.
They marched with the slogan 'Canarias tiene un limite' (The Canaries has a limit, while slogan were chanted such as: 'El dinero del turismo, donde está?', meaning 'The money from tourism, where is it?'
Demonstrators have also taken to the streets in Barcelona, Valencia as well as Madrid, as tensions towards tourists have continued to rise over the last year.
set to be banned - because officials say they don't include a licence number and some do not specify whether they're run by an individual or corporation, is likely to further inflame tensions.
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