The rent a car sector in Ibiza is still waiting to know how the limitation of vehicles will be applied, a measure that will come into force on June 1 and that, in principle, will affect rental fleets and motorhomes.
As advanced by La Voz de Ibiza, the Consell Insular de Ibiza is working against the clock to bring to the February plenary session the proposal of quotas and begin to apply, from June, the Law 5/2024 to establish a “control of the influx of vehicles on the island of Ibiza for tourism sustainability”, approved on November 11 in the Parliament.
In this context, the president of the Rent a Car Dealers Association of PIMEEF, Juan Cárdenas, has assured that the Consell de Ibiza has not yet communicated the formula with which the quotas will be distributed among the companies, although they expect to receive an official response in the coming weeks.
“At the beginning of March we will have an answer on how the distribution of the amount of fleet that is finally decided will be made,” he said in statements to Cadena SER.
According to him, the figures are between 18,000 and 20,000 vehicles, a number based on previous studies on the sector’s activity. ” We will see if they finally remain at 18,000 or if they go down a little, but the figure will be around those values,” he assured.
Cardenas has made it clear that this limit cannot be definitive, since the demand for rental cars is directly linked to the volume of tourists. “If every year we break tourist records, we will have to see if that number, instead of lowering it, has to be increased,” he has warned. “We must start with a figure and assess over time if it is the right one or if it has to be modified,” he has calculated.
Criticism of the regulatory approach: “We are not the problem”.
One of the most controversial points of the regulation is that it focuses exclusively on rental vehicles and motorhomes, without including other types of cars circulating on the island. “We have always said that the problem is not in the rent a car. Our fleet represents only between 10 and 12% of the total traffic in Ibiza,” he said.
Cardenas has assured that the main factor of traffic saturation on the island is the large number of cars arriving from the mainland. “We are seeing how many vehicles enter, from workers with their cars to tourists and foreigners who come with their own vehicles,” he explained.
“Nor should we forget the traffic of trucks and cargo vans, which continues to increase because the island is growing and needs more supplies,” he reminded.
He has also warned that Ibiza’s infrastructure has not adapted to the increase in traffic. “The roads are the same, the island is not growing and we continue to put more cars. The limitation should also include those cars coming from the mainland,” he insisted.
Controls and sanctions: a model yet to be defined
The Consell de Ibiza has informed that the regulation will have a system of cameras in strategic points of the island and an application that will allow to control the fleets of each rent a car company. However, Cardenas has recognized that there is still no information on how the quotas will be applied and what criteria will be used to assign them to each company.
“We have a lot of misinformation here. It looks like a formula will be used instead of relying on the vehicles we’ve had in the past, but we don’t know the exact details yet,” he said.
Regarding sanctions, the president of the employers’ association considered that the first season should be applied as a pilot test, without strict fines from the start. “It doesn’t make much sense that at this point we don’t know anything and that we pretend to get it right from day one,” he criticized.
“I think the Consell will take into account that we are in a learning phase and that the key now is to collect data to adjust the regulation in the future,” he concluded.
