The Hotel Business Federation of Ibiza and Formentera (Fehif) is “optimistic” for the tourist season with hotel accommodation bookings “at the level of pre-pandemic years”. According to its president, Ana Gordillo, “we will have to wait for these reservations to materialize”, since there are always last minute cancellations.
Although, with the data collected from Easter, days in which cancellations have been minimal, “the season looks good, as long as no extraordinary event happens”, said Gordillo.
At the moment, the available hotel accommodation vacancies are close to 10,000, which represents 10% of the total number of hotel rooms on the island. “They are those that opened for the Easter vacations and that counting, in part, on the openings of the nightclubs”, explains the president. “The forecasts for this weekend are good in terms of occupancy and it is noticeable that legal leisure has been closed for two years, so I think we will see a considerable influx of tourists,” she stresses.
Hotel accommodation occupancy
Just a week and a half ago, the open hotel accommodation establishments had an occupancy rate of between 70 and 80%, “reaching one hundred percent in some cases,” says Gordillo. As for the nationalities of those who visit Ibiza, he says that the national tourist prevails, followed by Dutch, British and French. “As more hotels open, we will see that people from other places are arriving,” he adds.
In this sense, she maintains that, by the middle of next month or perhaps by the end, “one hundred percent of the hotel sector will be open”. She speaks of around 1,800 tourist establishments totaling some 100,000 beds. Prices, which dropped during the pandemic, have recovered to those of 2019.
The problem encountered, once again and as in other sectors, is the difficulty to complete staffing requirements. “It has always been difficult to have staff, even more so during the pandemic because no one was compensated to come from outside for a couple of months and then we could not even comply because we had to close, as happened in August 2020 due to health restrictions, “recalls the president of the hoteliers.
This year they have had to resort to techniques “of yesteryear” to be able to guarantee the openings. “In many places they offer you the job with the possibility of housing in order to facilitate the arrival of workers as much as possible,” she says: “We depend, for the most part, on those who come from outside and now on the peninsula there is also a lot of work”.
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