*4.1. Current Situation and Recent Trends of the Tourist Activity*

Having presented the urban-tourist evolution of both neighborhoods in the previous section, we will now delve into the current tourist offer and the trends that have been recorded over the last five years, in accordance with the objectives of this work.

The Santa Catalina-Canteras neighborhood had 21 hotels, three hostels, and 3221 beds at the beginning of 2020, which made up a diverse offer: two five-star, four four-star, and eight three-star establishments and the remaining seven with lower categories (Table 1). The offer is also varied in relation to the size of the establishments: three of them large for an urban environment, with more than 400 rooms, four of intermediate size, and the vast majority being small hotels with less than 100 rooms.


**Table 1.** Touristic offer in Santa Catalina-Canteras and El Terreno. Source: Own elaboration, based on Listings of Accommodation Establishments (Tourism Boards of Mallorca and Gran Canaria).

Most of these businesses were inaugurated in the 1960s and, except for a few of lower category, have been thoroughly reformed and upgraded in the last decade. In addition, there are other small and medium sized businesses that have been opened in recent years and that make up a fabric of emblematic hotels in historic buildings, collection hotels, and boutique hotels, aimed at a clientele with medium-high purchasing power. It was precisely the recent opening of new hotels and the future prospects in this regard that led the Trip Advisor portal to recognize the city as the first emerging destination in Europe in 2016 [62].

The hotel offer is completed in the neighborhood with a wide range of apartments. Seventeen apartment complexes are in operation in the Santa Catalina-Canteras neighborhood, coming to a total of 1288 beds. They are all small or medium sized complexes that began their operation in the sixties and seventies. A few of these complexes, which are the best located, have undergone processes of remodeling and maintain the unity of exploitation. In some cases, new operating companies commercialize them. Others are still oriented to a low-price segment, without obtaining income from their excellent location.

To this regulated tourist offer, we must add 2188 beds in tourist housing, a type of vacation rental recently introduced in the Canary Islands, with an even more recent regulation at the regional and municipal level. In relation to this tourist housing of the

neighborhood, three situations can be found, depending on their origin and form of exploitation. First, main homes or those that were for real estate rental that have been registered as tourist housing by their owners. Second, former apartment complexes that were residentialized between the seventies and nineties when the city's tourist decline took place. They have recently begun to be marketed under this new formula, in view of the greater business prospects by their owners, or through operating companies that have entered in this market, under contractual formulas involving the remodeling of the properties. Third, apartment complexes without a previous residentialization process change their operating model. Therefore, the current panorama brings together situations typical of the collaborative economy with others that are clearly professionalized.

In the case of El Terreno, a neighborhood considered the first tourist district of the Balearic Islands and categorized as a mature tourist enclave, it is observed that it has progressively abandoned its tourist specialization. Unlike Santa Catalina-Canteras, tourism is now secondary, with a predominance of low-quality accommodation and leisure on the promenade, although some properties have been revaluated as secondary homes.

Currently, the neighborhood has five hotels and 603 beds: one of five stars, another of three, and the rest, which are hotels and hostels of low category (Table 1). Unlike the modern and luxurious boutique hotels that are constantly increasing their offer in the historical center of Palma [63], in El Terreno all the hotels are more than 60 years old. That is, they were built during the so-called first tourist boom. The most upscale and biggest capacity hotel is located on the seafront, on the same promenade. The lower category hotels are in the degraded Joan Miró street, former epicenter of tourism in the 1950s and 1960s.

The upper part of the neighborhood concentrates 14 of the 16 ETV (tourist housing stays). The other two are in Joan Miró street. The oldest one opened in 2014. Twelve are from 2017 and the last one is from 2018. These 16 ETV offer 91 beds according to the official data offered by the Government of the Balearic Islands. However, the reality and the use of other alternative sources show a much more important offer. AIRDNA, from the homes located in the Airbnb and Vrbo platforms, accounted for 75 active rentals in the fourth quarter of 2019. This is lower than the data obtained four years earlier (fourth quarter 2016), when they totaled 123. This decrease is probably linked to the effects of tourist zoning (areas suitable for tourist marketing) because of the application of Law 6/2017 on Tourism in the Balearic Islands. In April 2018, Palma was declared a single zone. This prohibits, without exceptions, the rental of houses to tourists and, with some exceptions, is allowed in single-family homes. With these rules, Palma became the first Spanish city to take measures of this scope.
