I own 30 hotels on beautiful island with 'too many tourists' - this is the real problem

The founder of a hotel chain in Majorca has said that the hotel sector is "demonised" and the real problem in the area is another type of accommodation - holiday rentals. 

Since being founded in 2011, the Fergus Group, founded by Pep Cañellas who is now its president, has grown to have thirty hotels in popular hotspots including Majorca and Ibiza in the Balearic Islands as well as Tenerife and Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands. 

"We knew how to adapt to what the demand was looking for. It was a blank canvas. There were many hotels that were simply being renovated with a coat of white paint and that didn't make any sense,” Cañellas told the Majorca Daily Bulletin. 

Closely associated with the regeneration of Magaluf - a five year £9 million plan to clean up and transform the Spanish resort into a more family friendly destination - Cañellas said the company saw a gap in the market. 

“There was a lot of all-inclusive product in hotels with no space and vice versa. At the beginning we didn't have money to buy the best hotels, so we had to buy the ones we could and then reposition them.

"Changing quantity for quality is good business for anything nowadays."

He acknowledged that people disapprove of his methods of opening new hotels where there were none previously: “I have to explain to them that that is not the case. We only invest in improving the facilities of existing hotels. There has been a moratorium for almost 25 years and it is not possible to grow”. 

Cañellas also accepted that the hotel sector is often “demonised”, adding that this has been the case for many years, coming from different sources with very different interests. 

“Anyone who denies this has not lived in Mallorca. But when you explain clearly what you are doing, people end up understanding. We got our hands on products that were in a very difficult condition - staff who were owed money, etc. 

“With the tourism debate on the table more than ever, it is an ideal time to explain this to people."

Degrowth is a word that is frequently raised in the debate about tourism. The rapid and uneven expansion of tourism in recent decades has grown in parallel with the rise of social discontent concerning overtourism. Degrowth aims at reducing the environmental impact of tourism and promoting a more equitable and sustainable tourism industry. 

On this, Cañellas said that it is important to determine where the growth has come from and how Majorca has reached the situation of over-tourism it now finds itself in. 

“The answer is obvious: holiday rentals - legal and illegal - [such as Airbnbs] and second homes. We have to decide what we want to do and it is a debate that society must face: do we prefer to have tourists in hotels or in the apartment opposite?”

“I'm in favour of degrowth applied to the part that we are least interested in preserving. We have to decide where to start cutting and if that is what suits us best. We aren't as overcrowded as we might be. 

“There will be more saturation if we all rent out granny's house to a tourist without any kind of control. That is the real problem.”

This summer, Majorca was one of the holiday destinations in Spain that was affected by protests over mass tourism. The “Less tourism, more life” platform was the organiser of a huge demonstration in Majorca in July, which saw around 20,000 people rally to raise awareness about uncontrolled tourist numbers causing drops in wages, a loss of quality of life, noise and increases in housing prices for residents.