‘This is the new tourist of Ibiza’: cool boxes, Tupperware and a half-empty beach in peak August

A woman walking Platja d’en Bossa on August 7 filmed clear sand, half-speed beach clubs and people eating from tupperware’s where sunbathers used to be. “This is the new tourist of Ibiza,” she said, and the island’s own figures go a long way towards backing her up.

‘The first summer it has looked this empty’

The clip was filmed on Friday August 7 along Platja d’en Bossa, the long strip south of Ibiza town that sits four kilometres from the airport and directly beneath the arrivals flight path. Partway through, the narration stops as a plane drops in low over the sand. “It is the first summer it has looked this empty,” the woman filming said, returning to the date as she walked. “August 7. This is the island’s high season.” She stayed on what she called the good part of the beach and still found it thin. Sarong sellers outnumbered the people they were selling to. Beach clubs were running at half pace.

“You find space for your towel,” she said. “It is perfect. You can swim on your own.” Stretches that were a swarm of people 13 years ago, in her description, now had gaps in them.

The people left on the sand are not there for the afternoon

What did fill parts of the frame wasn’t the sunbathers. “The tourist comes, and they are not going to a hotel any more, they are staying directly on the beach,” she said, panning across cool boxes, bags and piled-up belongings. “This is the new tourist of Ibiza.” She filmed people eating from plastic containers on the sand. “This is not fiction,” she said. “This is reality.”

It matches a separate video shared two days earlier by the account @frankibiza, filmed at 8am on ses Figueretes, showing people asleep on the beach with rucksacks beside them. The resident who recorded it called the beach a “tourist dormitory”, saying those pictured had no hotel and some appeared to be waiting for the hour of their flight home.

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Ibiza and Formentera lost 28,000 tourists in June, but earned more

Figures published by Ibestat, the Balearic statistics institute, drawing on Spain’s frontier tourism survey Frontur, show Ibiza and Formentera received 560,121 tourists in June, a fall of 4.75 per cent. Overnight stays dropped 1.64 per cent.

The interesting fact here is that spending moved the other way. Visitors spent more than €690 million in June, up 5.94 per cent, and spend per person rose 11.21 per cent to €1,232.01, the highest of any Balearic island. Daily spend per head reached €249.51. 

The French market, however, fell 20.57 per cent and the Italian 14.58 per cent. The British market was essentially flat at 0.08 per cent down, and only the Dutch grew, by close to 10 per cent.

Air traffic points the same way as the spending rather than the sand. Ibiza airport recorded its best June on record with 1,300,187 passengers, up 3.2 per cent on 2025. 

Why the money is landing in clubs rather than beach bars

Juan Miguel Costa, the island’s director of tourism, said part of the rise in spending may simply reflect higher prices, particularly for hotel rooms and flights. He called it “a very flat season”. Alfonso Rojo, president of the Pimeef small business association, said the extra money is not reaching every sector. Leisure spending is up while shops are down, and traditional shopping tourism tied to family holidays “is falling a lot”. 

Miguel Tur of Pimeef Restauració described an irregular summer for restaurants, with guests staying two or three nights and cutting back on eating out. “We are seeing that they go to the supermarket more, or buy ready-made food,” he said. The average stay across May and June was four days.

These insights lead to the same picture the video caught on the sand, seen from the other side of the counter.

Late bookers are paying up to 26 per cent less

Alicia Reina, president of the Spanish association of hotel directors and managers in the Balearics, said bookings made seven to 13 days before travel this summer have carried rates up to 26 per cent lower than those made 31 to 60 days ahead. Bookings in the final week still attract discounts of close to 25 per cent, and that pressure has now reached five-star hotels, a segment usually shielded from last-minute discounting. “This shows a structural change in tourism sales,” she said. For anyone with flexible dates, it is the most practical consequence buried in the figures. 

One line in the video will age quickly

“For the eclipse, we will surely be full,” she said on August 7, five days before the eclipse, as Ibiza sits in the path of totality. 

The island has not been chasing the extra visitors though. Costa said the Consell ran no promotion around the eclipse because, under its policy of containing visitor numbers, directing the flow mattered more than adding to it. 

He also said the first half of July looked similar to 2025 while the second half slowed, and that no clear read on the season is possible until the July, August and September figures land. Aena’s July passenger count and Ibestat’s July tourist data are what will cement this year’s seasonal trend, and between them they should show whether the emptier sand is a blip or the shape of Ibiza’s new season.