According to a report on the Economic Impact of Golf in Spain by Professor Juan Santaló of the IE University, 56,636 golf tourists own second homes in the Balearics.
The report was presented at a Wednesday meeting at the offices of the Confederation of Balearic Business Associations (CAEB). In attendance were representatives of the golf sector in Spain and in the Balearics.
The average value of property owned by these golf tourists is put at 365,000 euros, the second highest in the country after the Basque Country; the national average is 251,000 euros. The total value of the real estate investment of golf tourists in the islands amounts to 20.6 billion; it is 82.3 billion in Spain as a whole.
The home-owning tourists constitute slightly more than a quarter of all golfers who travel to the Balearics – around 206,000 per annum. They are estimated to spend a total of 870 million euros. To place this in context, total tourist spend is some 20 billion.
The turnover of the islands’ golf courses is put at 60.5 million euros per year – around three million per course. This equates to seven per cent of the national total. Each course attracts an average of some 11,000 tourists.
The CAEB president, Carmen Planas, underlined “the importance of supporting businesspeople in a sector that is so important for tourism on the islands.” The Council of Mallorca’s tourism councillor, José Marcial Rodríguez, said that the findings of the report should raise awareness in society as a whole about the impact of golf, “which is so important for the island’s economy.”
