Economists from the UIB put figures to degrowth: 2.5% fewer tourists would not sink the economy

PalmaWhat would happen if the Balearic Islands received nearly half a million fewer tourists during the months of maximum saturation in the summer? This is one of the questions that economists Maria Sard and Elisabeth Valle, from the University of the Balearic Islands, have tried to answer. According to their calculations, if a maximum of 2.5 million monthly tourists had been set in 2017, about 431,000 fewer visitors would have arrived compared to the total of 16.8 million, and all of them would have been lost during the months of July and August. The measure would have reduced annual arrivals by 2.56% and, according to the researchers' economic model, would have led to an estimated decrease of 1.07% in the wealth generated by the Balearic economy as a whole and 1.04% in employment, which would represent an equivalent drop in tourism spending and without compensatory measures.

This is a minor impact on the economy as a whole that brings to the table, with data, a proposal that in recent years has been part of the public debate and the outcry of the thousands of people who have taken to the streets this summer: “It is necessary to set limits on tourism”.

The work, titled Tourism degrowth: quantification of its economic impact and published in 2024 in the scientific journal Current Issues in Tourism, proposes a concrete way to address the debate on tourism degrowth: acting on summer saturation peaks without necessarily limiting arrivals during the rest of the year. Instead of establishing an annual ceiling for visitors, the researchers simulate four monthly limits and calculate the economic consequences they would have.

With this cap of 2.5 million per month—the least restrictive of the different scenarios proposed by the study—the remaining ten months of 2017 would have maintained exactly the same number of tourists. The reduction would have been concentrated exclusively in the two months with the most arrivals, the time when pressure on infrastructure, resources, and services also intensifies.

But tourism is growing much faster than the academy's ability to analyze the phenomenon. Just a few years later, reapplying the method of the UIB economists already presents an important novelty: if we set the same limit of 2.5 million monthly tourists to the real arrivals of 2025, the Balearic Islands would have received 1,410,308 fewer visitors, instead of the 431,000 that would have stopped coming in 2017. The reason is that now the cap would no longer have affected only July and August, but also June and September, which now already exceed it. This calculation, prepared based on the official statistics of 2025, is not part of the research by Sard and Valle, but it illustrates to what extent tourism growth is out of control.

Growth does not always mean more well-being

The study's conclusions connect with the debate raised by the Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Valladolid, Óscar Carpintero, a specialist in ecological economics, who visited Mallorca last week: "The Balearic Islands were not starving when they received ten million tourists," he stated to ARA Balears.

Carpintero questions the idea that a continuous increase in production and the number of visitors necessarily translates into an improvement in living conditions. "The increase in the number of tourists is related to a general worsening of living conditions," he warns, pointing especially to difficulties in accessing housing, environmental deterioration, and pressure on public services.

The professor argues that GDP cannot be the only measure of progress. An economy can grow while part of the population has less time, faces more difficulties in accessing housing, and bears growing pressure on the environment. For this reason, he considers it necessary to incorporate other indicators, such as the ecological footprint, material consumption, and living conditions.

The issue of employment is especially delicate in an economy as dependent on tourism as the Balearic one. Carpintero proposes addressing it based on two questions: what production is actually necessary and how the wealth that is generated is distributed. "The other fundamental question is how what we produce is distributed. That is the key," he asserts. He also believes that economic diversification is a good strategy to reduce the risks of a territory that depends excessively on a single activity.

The estimates by Sard and Valle allow for grounding part of this debate. A moderate reduction in arrivals would lead, according to their model, to a relatively limited loss of employment compared to that caused by much more severe restrictions. This does not eliminate the problem of the people who could lose their jobs, but it highlights the importance of the intensity of the measures and the policies that accompany them.

The researchers also study more restrictive scenarios. If the maximum had been two million monthly tourists, in 2017 there would have been approximately two million fewer visitors, 12.09% of the annual total. To estimate the consequences, the model simulates a 10% reduction in tourist spending, which would lead to a 4.29% decrease in the economy's value added and a 4.16% decrease in employment.

The effects would be more significant with even lower caps. A limit of 1.5 million visitors per month would have reduced 2017 arrivals by about 4.57 million people. In this case, the model simulates a 20% decrease in tourist consumption, with an estimated fall of 8.59% in value added and 8.33% in employment. With a ceiling of one million monthly tourists, nearly 7.9 million fewer visitors would have arrived, and the estimated employment losses in the corresponding economic scenario would reach 16.66%.

The authors consider that the least restrictive limit, that of 2.5 million monthly tourists, could be "the most appropriate to start applying a containment policy." However, they do not demonstrate that this figure is the ecological carrying capacity of the Islands, but rather use it as a reference based on the evolution of tourist saturation during the years studied. In this sense, Sard and Valle state in their study that "public tourism policies play a crucial role in establishing limits on the number of tourists."

The study thus offers a starting point for addressing with data a question that is often presented as an alternative between continuing to grow or endangering the economy.

Can the economic loss be compensated?

Sard and Valle also study the possibility that a reduction in the number of visitors could be compensated, at least partially, by an increase in tourist spending. In the least restrictive scenario, they suggest that an approximate 1% increase in real average spending per tourist could offset the estimated decrease in GDP. However, this is a simulation, not an automatic consequence of limiting arrivals.

Furthermore, the researchers warn that attracting visitors with higher spending capacity may lead to contradictions. On one hand, it could favor an elitist tourism model, a fact that other experts have already warned about. And on the other, attracting more distant markets, which in some cases spend more money, also generates a higher environmental footprint due to air travel.

The study also questions whether deseasonalization will solve saturation problems. If the number of tourists remains the same during the summer and arrivals are increased during the winter months, the Balearic Islands could end up with “more tourist pressure throughout the year.” Instead, the authors suggest acting specifically on periods of maximum concentration.

How can the number of tourists be reduced?

Beyond calculating the economic consequences, there is another question: what measures would allow for achieving this reduction? Geographer and researcher at the UIB Ivan Murray, who has been studying the impacts of the Balearic tourism model for years, has advocated for intervening in the infrastructure that facilitates its growth. In statements to ARA Balears, he has suggested on several occasions to "reduce airport capacity, restrict international night flights, and reduce the frequencies of domestic ones."

The proposals to limit air connections raise, however, jurisdictional and legal questions that would require specific development. The UIB study calculates the effects of hypothetical monthly ceilings, but does not determine which legal instrument would allow for their application.

Only a minority of the world's population flies

As much as it might seem unthinkable in places like the Balearic Islands, the percentage of people who fly is very small compared to the global population. Research by Stefan Gössling and Andreas Humpe, published in 2020 in the journal Global Environmental Change, estimates that only between 2% and 4% of the global population took international flights during 2018. If domestic flights are included, approximately 11% of the global population traveled by plane that year. The inequality is even more pronounced regarding emissions. According to the researchers, 1% of the global population, made up of the most frequent air travelers, accounts for approximately half of passenger aviation CO₂ emissions.

This data introduces a dimension of environmental justice into the discussion. The use of airplanes is an activity concentrated in a minority of the world's population, while the consequences of climate change affect territories and populations that, in many cases, have contributed much less to it.

In the Balearic Islands, where a large part of visitors arrive by plane, this reality also forces us to question the idea that attracting tourists with higher spending power "is necessarily an environmentally sustainable solution." This is what entities such as GOB and the Palma XXI platform have been proposing for some time, firmly committed to a bold reduction to "save what little remains of the quality of life and access to natural resources for the local population," says GOB vice president Tonina Siquier. A visitor who spends more may generate greater economic activity, but they may also have a higher carbon footprint if they arrive from distant markets.

A gradual reduction, not an economic standstill

The Balearic Islands have surpassed 19 million annual tourists, but the public debate continues to oscillate between the need to contain saturation and the fear of the economic consequences of limiting growth. Researchers advocate for a gradual policy that allows for the adaptation of economic activity and warn that containment measures must be accompanied by strategies that avoid undesirable social consequences. In the authors' words, the goal is to outline “a roadmap for the gradual reduction of the number of tourists that allows the economy to absorb the impact.”

A question remains that economic simulations do not resolve: to what extent could less tourist pressure improve access to housing, reduce resource consumption, and ease the congestion of infrastructure and public services. The study quantifies the estimated economic costs, but does not put figures on the possible social and environmental benefits.