As more and more tourists continue to pour into the beautiful Spanish island of Majorca, boosting hotel occupancy and airport traffic, there’s another side of the island’s hospitality scene that seems to be still struggling - its restaurants. Despite the many packed terraces and buzzing streets, panicked restaurant owners are sounding the alarm due to staff shortages, lack of industry recognition and rising costs, which is forcing some establishments to sometimes shut early, even at the height of the season.
Last year, the islands welcomed a record number of tourists with a massive 33.3 million passengers recorded for Palma de Mallorca airport in 2024, and the tourist numbers are expected to increase by another 6% in 2025.
Juanmi Ferrer, president of the Mallorca CAEB Restaurants Association told Ultima Hora: "The absenteeism on Fridays and Mondays, for example, is incomprehensible and is very suspicious, an extension of the weekend. This absenteeism does not appear in the official statistics, but it's something we all suffer from.
"In the restaurant industry, it's a real problem. Imagine having a team of four people, and someone lets you know the night before that they won’t be coming in. Sometimes you can’t even open the kitchen, or you have to close early…
"You end up providing poor service. Most of these absences are questionable. There’s a lack of solidarity with the team and the business, especially in smaller establishments."
The president of the island's restaurants' association told Ultima Hora that Majorca’s restaurant sector needs its own separate labour agreement, as the current one is shared with hoteliers and no longer reflects the own unique challenges of the island's restaurants.
He called for fair, realistic wage policies and greater autonomy in the sector's negotiations.
Ferrer said there should be a separate collective agreement for the restaurant industry in Majorca in order to have better representation and better address the issues of unpredictable staffing, short tourist seasons, and those of smaller restaurants as well.
While workers deserve better pay, he said restaurants can’t afford the steep raises proposed by unions and he argued against reducing hours given the current staff shortages reduced hours and housing issues.
Ferrer added: "There's no way we can do this. In fact, why don't we look for ways to extend overtime so people can earn more money? How can we reduce working hours in a region where there's a lack of housing, where there's a lack of staff? Unions are demanding that hiring periods be extended to nine, ten, eleven months.
"The reality is that there isn't enough tourist volume to keep the restaurant sector open for more than six months in some tourism areas."
