A study by CaixaBank Research points to the Balearic Islands restaurant sector having the highest bills in Spain. The average spend per customer in 2024 was 35 euros, the highest in the country and 14 euros above the national average. The study also indicates that restaurants on the islands are more dependent on spending by foreign visitors than anywhere else in Spain.
The research was based on data from millions of card payment transactions and shows a clear correlation between average price and a foreign-visitor dependence. The report states: “The higher the proportion of international tourist spending in a province, the higher the average price.” There are exceptions in terms of a high dependence on foreign customers, e.g. Tenerife, but the average bills are more modest by comparison. In all provinces, local spending has a higher percentage than foreign with the exception of the Balearics, Tenerife and Gran Canaria.
A separate report by a Barcelona-based analytics company Delectatech, which has a system called FoodRadar, indicates that the Balearic Islands, Navarre and the Basque Country, were the three regions of Spain which had the highest increase in average bills in 2024 compared to the previous year.
The CaixaBank report highlights another key variable. The Balearics restaurant sector has the highest seasonality in the country. Sixty-one per cent of its turnover was concentrated in the four months of June to September. The Spanish average was 40.5%.
The president of the CAEB Restaurants Association in Mallorca, Juanmi Ferrer, suggested last week that there should be a socioeconomic study to identify causes of the decline in the sector’s turnover over the last two seasons. In this regard, he referred to changes such as customer habits. Ahead of the 2025 season, Ferrer spoke of a need to contain prices in order to offset the drop in spending in 2024, but in general this hasn’t been the case.