This summer has proved really busy on Ibiza with dates for the rest of August hard to find.
However, September and October are our personal favourite months, when the sea is still warm, the kids are back at school and villa prices dramatically fall…
If you need a hit of sunshine and Spanish pace of life before dealing with a Northern European winter, we’re here for you…
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Photo caption: Around the world in 80 days…
Austerity has hit most Europeans pretty hard over the last few years and, as a result, those precious few days of ‘family holiday’ have more or less been priced out of the reach of Joe Normal.
Insisting that every child of school age can only vacation during the six week summer holidays has created an artificial market where demand far exceeds supply and unscrupulous entrepreneurs can flourish.
Let’s hope that this is the start of an outbreak of common sense in a country that hasn’t exhibited much recently?
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Ryanair roll out the red carpet for visitors to Ibiza with an announcement that you’ll receive after you’ve placed your booking…
“Dear Customer,
Your flight to Ibiza – Booking reference MUSTTRYHARDER
In order to prioritise the comfort and safety of all passengers, Ryanair will implement the following restrictions on your flight to IBIZA:
- Customers will not be allowed to carry alcohol on board and all cabin baggage will be searched at the boarding gates.
- Any alcohol purchased in airport shops or elsewhere must be packed carefully in a suitable item of cabin baggage, which will be tagged at the gate and then placed in the aircraft hold free of charge.
- If the bag is unsuitable for placing in the hold (e.g. plastic bag) then customers will be required to dispose of the alcohol in the bins provided.
- Boarding gates will be carefully monitored and customers showing any signs of anti-social behavior or attempting to conceal alcohol will be denied travel without refund or compensation.
Thank you in advance for your co-operation with these procedures which we hope will allow you to enjoy your flight with us to Ibiza.
Yours sincerely,
Ryanair Customer Services”
It seems there’s not much point in visiting the ‘soon to be re-introduced’ “duty free” at the airport unless you come armed with ‘a suitable item of cabin baggage’ that won’t be allowed into the cabin…
The only clue is that this is not a ‘plastic bag’…
Presumably the boarding gate staff will be a little worse for wear, or offering discounts to people sporting a ‘suitable item of cabin baggage’?
Ryanair continue their mission to unite the people of Europe in their own unique style!
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By nature we hate to blow our own trumpet, but we’re being harassed into doing so – so here goes…
Ibiza Holiday Villas are proud to announce that we have been appointed ‘authorised agents’ for Ibiza by ‘Le Collectionist’ – a global holiday villa rental company based on the Champs Élysées in Paris. Their observation on appointing us was that we ‘come back very quickly and are efficient (unlike lots of other people on the island!!)’. Hmm, high praise indeed!
In the meantime, you may have noticed that we are the recommended agents for wedding villas in the ‘Ibiza Wedding Guide’ http://ibiza-wedding-guide.com/portfolio/ibiza-villas-wedding/
We’re proud to announce our association with this prestigious organisation, as well as the thirty plus wedding villas that we’ve sourced in order to provide them with a comprehensive selection. This selection covers wedding parties from 30 to 200+ at villas all over the island and of all shapes and styles, in order to suit every budget – from the likes of you and me right through to royalty…
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Some of the finest moments to be experienced on Ibiza are often those that you least expect and which don’t involve vast expenditure.
The nightclubs and beachfront restaurants garner global publicity but, as nice as they are, the memories that most readily spring to mind involve a simple table in a field surrounded by fellow immigrant residents, who we may or may not have met before, enjoying food, drink and laughter.
That these occasions are so rare makes them all the more memorable…
This week we were fortunate to be invited to a ‘corporate event’ organised to launch Bryony’s Rich Kitchen, which is a handle with which you will all soon surely become familiar.
Bryony is an island icon as a result of the venues that she’s run in the past. Notably Santa Eulalia’s Black Cat, Can Reyet and Pomelo to name but a few.
Although we count her as a friend, we weren’t quite sure what to expect or who we would be sharing it with?
We needn’t have worried, we knew almost everyone present, so this ‘corporate event’ took on a completely different shine.
It was all about the food and when we say ‘food’ we feel obliged to qualify such an inadequate description.
However, instead we offer a shortcut to the Facebook page that tells you in detail not only what we were treated to, but even how to make it!
If, like me, you’re not overly confident in the kitchen or even in the supermarket sourcing ingredients, just contact Bryony and ask her to pop round and sort it all out.
She’s not just an amazing cook, she’s also fabulous fun to have around on any occasion…
Can you believe it’s only 80 days till May 1st – when Ibiza explodes back into life!
You can almost smell the pine forests and the lemon blossom, feel the sun on your back, the sand between your toes…
Then there’s the soundtrack – the lapping of waves on the beach, the ambient chill-out of the beach clubs, the throbbing rhythm of the nightclubs…
Time to say goodbye to the winter blues and plan your summer?
Read moreMost people consider Ibiza to be a summer party destination that opens in May and shuts at the end of October each year. This is certainly true of the big nightclubs and most of the hotels, but our big sister island of Mallorca remains ‘open’ all year round.
How can this be?
Perhaps it’s a subconscious decision by the island’s indigenous population, despite the regularly stated efforts of the government to create all year round tourism. When you consider the numbers, it becomes easier to understand…
Ibiza’s resident population is a little over 130,000 but, when you factor in tourist visitors, this ‘population’ swells to well over half a million at any one time. By comparison, Mallorca’s resident population of 870,000 is barely tripled by its 1 ¾ million visitors in peak season. At the same time, Mallorca is seven times the size of Ibiza, so there’s much more room to accommodate everyone. Maybe Mallorca’s residents don’t feel the pressure so much.
Or perhaps it’s because the Ibicencos value their idyllic winters so much that they really don’t want to share them? They refuse to risk spoiling their annual sojourn in the paradise that is an Ibiza winter. From the end of October the difference is palpable as the island suddenly slows down to the pace of the Ibiza of old, and emits a collective sigh of relief!
Gone are the traffic jams cluttered with coaches, lorries, taxis and dithering hire cars. You can park right outside your destination again, and the most commonly heard word is ‘mañana’…
We won’t be popular locally for disclosing this well kept secret, but the island is particularly stunning in the winter. We use the word ‘winter’ loosely because, following the occasional autumnal downpour, it’s actually more like a Northern European Spring with flowers springing up all over and those cloud galleons of the sky to decorate each sunset. It is often breathtaking, and then there are the beaches, too many to choose from, where in the sun and out of the breeze you can enjoy a picnic with only yourselves for company…
Between the trips to the beach there are regular fiestas doing the rounds of the island villages where the locals show us how they used to party, long before Ibiza took the concept global. The grand finale has to be the indescribable display of almond blossom in late January and February all over the island, and especially in Santa Inés (Agnès in Catalan)…
Because the majority of the hotels are shut throughout the winter, growing numbers of villa owners in the booming private rental sector have decided to buck the trend and are making their villas and fincas ready and available for smart winter visitors.
The older traditional fincas need little improvement to cater for their winter visitors. They were built to be comfortable in both winter and summer even back in the days when you built your home from locally sourced stone, timber, lime and seaweed! The owners of more recently built villas across the island nowadays include underfloor heating or state of the art hot/cold air conditioning units to enable them to rent all year round.
So, if you fancy a winter break, take a look at the prices that apply ‘out of season’. You’ll be shocked to discover that villas cost as little as half, sometimes a third, of their normal summer price!
The problem in the past has been getting to Ibiza, but this has now been solved by the cut-price airlines. It is perfectly feasible to fly to Ibiza via either Madrid or Barcelona for €100 or less!
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Holiday rental advertising occupies contested territory in Spain. The Barcelona government recently announced fines of €60,000 for HomeAway and AirBnB for advertising properties without tourist licences. Against the backdrop of this wrangling, challenger LaComunity.com, which has a licenced properties-only policy, has ambitious plans to use new investment funds to quadruple its listings and expand internationally.
Does this signal a shift in the balance of power in Holiday rental advertising towards smaller, more service intensive sites?
Holiday Rental Regulations require a licence
Spain requires holiday rental properties to have tourist licences. Each region sets its own rules regarding what types of properties can be offered as short-term rentals, and what is required for licencing. For example, in the Balearic Islands single-family homes are allowed tourist licences, but not apartments. There is considerable friction in Spain between tourist industry professionals and peer-to-peer offerings like Uber and AirBnB. HomeAway, however, operates on a traditional classified model: it is free to use for travellers and homeowners pay an annual subscription fee to advertise.
HomeAway issued a statement via PR spokesperson Laura Rivera Casares in response to the Barcelona fine, which stated that HomeAway complies with its legal obligations and will, “take all necessary legal action in order to defend our position.” It added: “We consider that the decision to impose a sanction to online platforms is not an appropriate solution. It builds an important obstacle to free competition, innovation and the generation of new business opportunities.”
“Free competition” has put Spain’s established tourist service providers on the defensive, and given the size and power of the hotel industry, digital Holiday rental advertising will likely face further regulatory battles.
The LaComunity Model in Barcelona
LaComunity founder Francesc Sanz Puigdemont started the website because he saw a gap in the online holiday rental market. “The existing brands didn’t offer great user experience, you paid owners directly for bookings which wasn’t safe,” he said. “My idea was a model where safety came first. Users don’t want surprises.”
The ethos of LaComunity is to remove caveat emptor from the vacation rental experience. “On most sites the booking is between the client and the property owner, but that’s not how we run our business,” said Sanz. “If someone books through LaComunity we are responsible for everything that happens.”
A key way to reduce fraud or disappointment is to ensure that every property advertised has a tourist licence. Sanz says the company adheres to regional policy: “When a tourist licence is compulsory we don’t advertise apartments that don’t have a tourist licence.”
This requires extra effort to check each property’s status, and reduces the pool of available properties. However, Sanz felt the benefits outweighed the drawbacks. “We focus on big companies who rent vacation accommodation. These clients have bigger-than-average amounts of bookings and spend more money than individuals. We focus on the higher-priced market and make commission on each booking.”
The New Model Market?
Industry experts are sceptical of official intervention. “History is full of governments trying to stop new forms of commerce, but it never works,” said Fernando Encinar, communications director and co-founder of idealista, which owns the holiday portal Rentalia. “The internet revolutionised buying a car and looking for a house, it will revolutionise tourism. The solution is not to prohibit but to modernise and improve services.”
Rather than fighting Holiday rental advertising, he suggested hoteliers will start buying and running home-style apartments. “The industry is going to have to change, to offer more services, to unite.” This in turn, will drive the evolution of online rental platforms. Holiday rental advertisers will be called upon to manage and meet the expectations of ever-more informed, empowered and vocal consumers. With regulatory pressure on one side, and customer demand on the other, digital companies have an increasingly active role to play in the physical world.
“Things are going to change, which is good,” said Sanz. “The vacation rental market is huge and expanding. It is good to make clear rules and give customers a clear experience.”
Information gleaned from a recent issue of the Classified Intelligence Report (The AIM Group)
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