Hotel growth in Malaga is experiencing unprecedented expansion.
In the last decade the supply of beds has increased by 40% to almost 12,000 - according to data from Costa del Sol Tourism and the Malaga City Council - and reaches 15,000 if hostels and guesthouses are added.
“The city has been doing well for many years in terms of offering tourist products: museums, theaters, gastronomy, cruises... This has generated a large movement of people who need to stay and hoteliers are seeing that the city is throwing away, explains Bruno Hallé , managing partner of hospitality at the real estate consultancy Cushman and Wakefield.
The facilities provided by the airport and the technological boost that the capital is experiencing—with the landing of Google as a banner—have made it easier, Hallé emphasizes, to also break the seasonality gap.
“There is a high demand from tourists and that attracts investors,” insists Javier Hernández, executive vice president of the Association of Hotel Entrepreneurs of the Costa del Sol.
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In 2023, the capital of Malaga broke its own record with 1.5 million hotel travelers, who totaled 3.4 million overnight stays, according to the National Institute of Statistics.
The year also closed with 81% occupancy, like never before.
“Few cities are in such a sweet moment,” said the president of Grupo Hotusa, Amancio López Seijas, at the beginning of this year, during the presentation of the five-star hotel with 141 rooms that the company intends to open in 2026. It will do so in Palacio de la Tinta, a century-old building near the La Malagueta neighborhood that the company bought from the Junta de Andalucía for 21 million euros.
It is not the only hotel project in the making.
Before, at the end of this year, the Meliá chain is scheduled to open, under its luxury brand ME, another five-star hotel with 128 rooms.
The property is already being built next to the Plaza de la Merced - in the heart of the city - promoted by former Barça footballer Gerard Piqué, who has invested 50 million in this project.
The central neighborhood of La Victoria will also soon see another five-star hotel and in the Montes de Málaga natural park, the Cortijo La Reina hotel will also move into luxury and will triple its current rooms to reach 80. In addition, the two jewels remain. of the crown.
On one side, the 200-room establishment planned by an Israeli magnate in the iconic building where the Post Office was located.
On the other, the 150-meter, 35-story, 378-room skyscraper promoted by a Qatari business group in the port, still pending before the courts and the approval or rejection of the Council of Ministers.
Although there are also other one-, two- and three-star establishments planned, the luxury sector is Malaga's biggest bet.
It has been so far – with a 400% growth in the number of establishments in the last ten years – and it will be so in the future.
The councilor for tourism, Jacobo Florido, highlights that the objective is to host 2,000 more places in the short term in the municipal commitment to “quality tourism compatible with citizen coexistence.”
It corresponds to the model promoted by the city council that defends “growing in quality and not in quantity”, as the mayor, Francisco de la Torre, has stressed on several occasions.
“In the end all this is a question of money.
Málaga works and the chains that are not there want to go there and those that do have a presence are already looking to expand it,” says Rosa Madrid, director at
Andalusia from the consulting firm CBRE.
“This is leading to a great growth in hotel beds, which stands out above all because Malaga comes from a brutal supply deficit: before it had nothing,” says the specialist, who believes that the city is still far from having to consider that it does not new hotels fit.
“All the numbers are good: we are not there at all at that moment,” she emphasizes.
“And the future will depend on demand, because the current demand is not enough,” they add from Aehcos, where they highlight there are peaks in the season where people end up in Torremolinos or Benalmádena because the places in Malaga are already covered.
Are there too many hotels?
Enrique Navarro, a professor at the Faculty of Tourism at the University of Malaga and director of the Andalusian Institute for Research and Innovation in Tourism at its headquarters in Malaga, is not so clear, who remembers that just a few minutes away the Costa del Sol is home to a huge hotel offering. .
“Now investors are seeing that Malaga is fashionable, many tourists arrive and profitability is high.
But if the supply of places grows, the cake must be shared among more.
The number of visitors cannot grow indefinitely, so situations can be reached that it now seems that the investment does not contemplate.
However, from an academic point of view we do believe that we can get there in 10 or 15 years because we have already seen examples in other cities,” says Navarro, who highlights that future forecasts are practically impossible in the tourism industry because they depend on of numerous factors.
“Everything indicates that the demand to travel to Malaga will continue to grow with the current conditions, but we cannot know if these conditions will be maintained in the future,” he observes.
Among the aspects that can affect a destination are that a large cheap flight company decides to bet on another destination, the evolution of competitors, investment in advertising or the increase in the intensity of heat waves.
Also the scarcity of natural resources, as is the case with the drought, which has the tourism sector in suspense ahead of this summer.
The discomfort that local citizens transmit towards tourism also influences.
It is just one of the sensations that is beginning to grow in Malaga.
There are hardly any signs of tourismphobia yet, but tourism is the sector that is looked at to explain why the center has lost its soul to become almost a decoration and to which part of the population blames the overcrowding in the streets.
Or, even worse, the constant increase in the price of apartments.
The proliferation of homes for tourist purposes, in fact, is devastating: if in 2016 there were only 846, in 2024 there will already be more than 11,000.
That is to say, they have multiplied by thirteen in just eight years to reach almost 60,000 places, to which we can add another 7,000 tourist apartments.
Today the majority of buildings that are rehabilitated, especially in the center, are destined for tourist exploitation.
In return, residential use is scarce.
The high prices of apartments, in fact, lead the concerns of Malaga residents, according to a recent survey presented by the University of Malaga.
Tourism occupies seventh position.
Is there too much accommodation on offer in the city?
"Depending on your point of view.
Perhaps from an economic point of view it turns out that there is demand for all hotels, but we also have to measure the social or environmental impact that this activity generates,” says Navarro, who recalls a basic concept that is sometimes forgotten: that tourism uses public space. for private benefit.
“We are not going to criticize that, but then inconsistencies and measures as unpopular as closing the Plaza de España in Seville arise.
"Tourism generates income, but also expenses: more police, more cleaning, modification of traditional commerce... And we never want to study that in as much depth as it deserves, neither from the private nor the public sector," warns the expert, which advocates for more open governance to analyze the future growth of Malaga.
“There is no other way than to talk, negotiate and raise.
Nobody has the same interests nor does each sector have a monolithic opinion.
We must expand the participation of all actors,” he concludes.
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