Spain holiday warning as Brits face paying extra at restaurants for easy mistake

BRITS heading for Majorca will find themselves out of pocket if they make a restaurant reservation but fail to turn up.

Restaurant owners say they are fed up with “no shows” which are leaving them out of pocket.

Majorca’s restaurant association,  Restauración CAEB says it will in future ask for a credit card number when a reservation is made.

If diners fail to turn up, they will be charged 20 per cent of the average anticipated bill.

Group president Alfonso Robledo said: “What we are looking for is for customers who don’t leave restaurants hanging and make it a habit to call and say they can’t keep their reservation.”

And he warned: “If you do not cancel early enough, you will be charged an amount of money for not coming and this is legal because there are a whole series of labour and production costs involved that have to be mitigated somehow.” 

The new rule will apply to restaurants across the Balearics but especially in Majorca.

Owners say that during the pandemic, the no-show situation became so bad that about 30 per cent of tables were left vacant because of reservations not being fulfilled.

“This problem has gone deep and we want to nip it at the root,” Mr Robledo told Spanish newspaper Ultimahora.es

“The idea is not to make money with this practice but the logical thing is to act in a similar way to hotels, which always ask for a credit card when you make a reservation and only charge you when you do not show up without cancelling within the established time limit.”

A recent study revealed 50 percent of customers weren’t even aware of what a no-show was while 17 percent confessed to having done so as “it did not occur to them to cancel”

Restaurateurs in Majorca have also revealed the strategies of some companies in the sector that, using the practice of no-shows, make reservations at competing restaurants in order to artificially fill them and prevent them from reserving more tables. 

Mr. Robledo said: “It is a practice that exists because it has been verified, which we consider illegal since it threatens the viability of the affected restaurants.”

The employers will carry out a specific follow-up to detect the restaurants that carry out these commercial practices and report them.

Cheap hotels and nightclubs in Majorca and Ibiza are even facing being closed down due to new restrictions to encourage “quality not quantity of tourists”.

The Balearic government says it is allocating €10million to buy “low-category establishments” and will then close them down – this would include hotels and entertainment venues.

There are already a number of new rules in place to curb anti-social behavior from unruly tourists.

Brits in Ibiza and Majorca will only be allowed to have six drinks per day when staying at all-inclusive resorts.

And Majorca council confirmed last week that it intends to crackdown on the tourist capacity of the island which will include a limit on the number of tourist beds available.

But there is some good news, as Spain has scrapped all Covid restrictions for Brits just in time for the half term.