Is the Ibiza Golden Goose Spluttering?

Last week I had drinks and dinner at a rooftop restaurant in San Antonio bay, I hadn’t booked a table but took my chances anyway. I needn’t have worried as the place wasn’t even half full. As I drove home just after midnight there was hardly a car on the road. I checked my calendar and it was definitely mid-July. Very curious.

In my business world I’ve listed more properties for sale in a month than I have in a year yet enquiries are only dripping through where I thought there would be a flood of requests to view. Very curious indeed.

Meanwhile checking UK flights to Ibiza in August, the prices have been slashed to the bone. £80-£130 return for the first week in August. Even more curious.

Is it just me or is Ibiza strangely quiet this summer? I’ve read the same about Mallorca however speaking to friend, he told me that Benidorm is packed to rafters and on its way to a record summer.

Is it time to face up to the truth yet? Has Ibiza priced itself out of the mainstream market? While the same 10 businesses clean up, the rest are fighting over the scraps, which isn’t pretty and will only get worse once the peak summer weeks come to an end.

Ibiza’s hotel prices are the highest in Spain (its property prices are amongst the highest too), the White Isle has shown amazing growth over the last 10 years but has the mass market been marginalised? Is Ibiza now a luxury brand only attracting a niche market during the high season while the mainstream market enjoy the buzz and bargains in Benidorm and the value of the eastern Med (Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and Egypt)?

The Ibiza golden goose appears to be coughing and spluttering on a post-pandemic comedown that will concern many small businesses that rely on the busy high season weeks to prop up their balance sheet.

After a few record years, 2024 has an over capacity of flights coupled with expensive hotel prices and an infrastructure and taxi network that struggles during peak times. Ibiza is going through a challenging period.

We’ve been here before of course and the island is very good at reinventing itself and finding new ways to survive. Ibiza has some of the best entrepreneurs in the world but this time many hotels and other businesses are on long term leases at sky high prices so it’s hard to see where the peak season discounts will come from. Airlines have discounted, will hotels follow? I doubt it.

Let’s see what happens over the next 8 weeks as things can change very quickly but with 70€ for a sunbed, 35€ for a caesar salad, 6€ for half a beer, 23€ for a cocktail and 19€ for a Gin n Tonic now becoming the norm on top of that spiralling hotel bill……as the old saying goes “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”.