Promoting tourism in a Mallorca region with only a few hotels

Algaida.—The Pla (Plain) region of Mallorca comprises fourteen of the island’s 53 municipalities. Representing 21.5% of the island’s land area, it has some 42,000 inhabitants, just over four per cent of Mallorca’s total population.

With a predominantly agrarian economy, most of these municipalities experienced a process of depopulation that well predated the tourism boom of the 1960s. From the 1980s onwards, the populations began to recover, but tourism in the region was to remain negligible until fairly recently.

The municipalities are grouped into an entity known as a ‘mancomunitat’, a commonwealth, the purpose of which is some sharing of resources and cooperative policies. The Mancomunitat del Pla is by far the most active of Mallorca’s commonwealths. It is in fact the only one that seems to function to any meaningful degree, and the promotion of a common tourism strategy is something that unites the municipalities.

The latest initiative, one for promoting the low season, follows product lines in development over recent years - active tourism, with cycling and hiking routes; rural tourism; food and wine tourism; cultural tourism; religious tourism; slow tourism that highlights the landscape; and tourism accommodation that is based principally on holiday rental properties and to a lesser extent on agrotourism establishments.

In the Pla region there are currently 9,246 tourist accommodation places (beds), of which 7,881 are for holiday rentals. There are only eleven hotels, seven of which are classified as ‘rural hotels’. The figures come from an analysis by the mancomunitat and the Council of Mallorca as part of the strategic plan for sustainable tourism in the region.

Between them, five of the 14 municipalities provide over 50% of the accommodation places - Algaida, Porreres, Sencelles, Sineu and Petra. The most visited municipalities in 2023 were, in order, Algaida, Sencelles, Porreres, Montuïri, Petra, Sineu and Maria de la Salut. Almost seventy-five per cent of the region’s tourism is international.