After a few months of May and June that have exceeded expectations as far as tourism is concerned, the debate that arises now is whether Ibiza can support this volume of visitors until the end of the summer. A controversy that, in the words of the insular director of Tourism for the Consell, Juan Miguel Costa, will always be present. “We have had complaints during the two years of pandemic because the first year no one came and in the second, only half of those who should have come. Now the season is starting and there are complaints of overcrowding,” he explains.
In this sense, his position is clear: “After two terrible years, we need tourism to return and the tourists to come”. But, is it necessary to place a ceiling? “I don’t know what the ideal number of people on the island should be,” he says. And therein lies the debate. In his opinion, in May and June there have been people, but “we can’t talk about overcrowding either”. What does happen, he recognizes, is that there are “structural problems” to improve, such as transport, the price of housing rental and the lack of staff. “It is not a problem exclusive to Ibiza, the rest of the islands are also like this, perhaps worse”, he adds.
“After two terrible years, we need tourism to return and the tourists to come”
Costa assures that this season “is necessary to be able to bill, both for the workers and for the businessowners”. However, he is aware that changes must be considered in the medium term. “There is talk of changing the tourism model, but I’m not certain we should remove the current economic model we have. That is a sterile debate, but I am in favor of carrying out improvements”, emphasizes the insular director of Tourism. He refers, among other issues, to the limitation of the entry of vehicles proposed by the Consell as of 2025, “at least to avoid saturation in the central summer months”.
He also speaks again of the deseasonalization that, although it has been proposed for years, it is not being carried out, or at least not as it should. “You have to deseasonalize because that makes people come who have a different profile, who are more respectful and enjoy other faces of the island, and in the end that is the way,” he says. Even so, this season, which began in April and almost three weeks earlier than usual, has done so with services at half throttle, despite the fact that there had been talk of its start since late 2021.
“We have to deseasonalize because that makes people come who have a different profile, who are more respectful and enjoy other faces of the island, and in the end that is the way”
“We also have to see what powers we have to deal with what changes depend on us because, we can not fool ourselves, there are things that do not depend on us. We already warned the city councils that this season was going to start earlier and they have not taken the step, for example with the issue of taxi licenses”, regrets Costa.
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