Mallorca uncovered: the surprising truth about its tourism industry

Mallorca has something of a reputation problem within the tourism industry.

You could probably imagine that the ten million annual visitors to Mallorca generate a lot of employment: taxi drivers, waiters, hotel receptionists and the like.

But corporate jobs in offices dealing with challenges that aren´t related to actual local visitors? 

Unknown to the wider travel industry outside of Spain, there’s a great deal of lawyers, HR professionals, IT specialists, marketing executives, accountants, managers and back-office staff working here on the island. 

In fact some of Europe’s biggest hotel chains have their global head office here, including Melia, Riu, Barceló, and Iberostar.

Why is this you may ask? You need to go back to the 1960s when Mallorca was one of the first mass tourism destinations in Europe. 

The island rode the wave of mass tourism, with the most successful hoteliers taking their knowledge (and money) to found hotels on mainland Spain in the 1980s, and then later on in the Caribbean and even Asia Pacific.

This led to a deep pool of tourism educated, English speaking, highly experienced professionals being available on the island. In turn that meant that travel businesses moved here and start-ups favoured the location.

Perhaps the best example of that might be Globalia Corporation, which is the owner of not only Air Europa but also a great many other travel businesses such as Spain’s top three travel agency, Halcón Viajes (currently merging with Avoris). 

We challenge you to find a single other location in Europe with a higher concentration of headquarters and corporate offices for travel businesses. 

For example TUI’s Musement division has chosen to call the island home, with several hundred staff based here, and Sixt has a big back-office here too. 

There are many B2B travel companies in Mallorca too. The best example being Hotelbeds, a bedbank with 5,000 staff globally and sales in the billions. Its head office is right next to the airport and is the island’s single largest office site. 

Other quite important B2B tourism examples here include the destination management companies Jumbo Tours and MTS Globe; the bedbank arm of Iberostar, called World2Meet; many businesses within Globalia, including a ground handler; and many other innovative travel technology companies such as Fastpayhotels, Juniper, Roiback, Roibos, and TravelGateX. 

Last but not least, it is worth mentioning that both of the top Spanish travel trade media publications are based in Mallorca. Yes both Hosteltur and Preferente are in Palma. 

All of this perhaps explains why we at Belvera Partners call Mallorca home. Visit us and we´ll literally give you a guided tour of our global tourism hub.