Mallorca

Four holidays on one island

Mallorca holds at least four holidays that have almost nothing to do with one another, and people who come home disappointed usually booked one of them while picturing another.

There is Palma, a working Spanish city of around 400,000 with a cathedral on the water. There is the Serra de Tramuntana, the UNESCO-listed range along the north-west coast, where the villages are stone and swimming is an afterthought. There is the family coast north and east — Puerto Pollensa, Alcudia, Cala Millor, Sa Coma — built on shallow sand and half board. And there are Magaluf and Playa de Palma, the party strips, which in July and August do exactly what they are famous for.

Decide which one you want before you look at a single hotel photograph.

Mallorca one: Palma

Palma is a real city on a bay, not a resort with a historic quarter attached: offices, a university, restaurants that run on locals. The cathedral, La Seu, rises straight off the seafront, and behind it the old town is a weave of Renaissance courtyards, Arab baths and shaded lanes. Santa Catalina is the market and eating district; around the Passeig Mallorca sits a cluster of small design hotels in converted townhouses.

It suits couples and anyone who finds a fortnight on a lounger unbearable; families less so, because the city beaches are city beaches and to swim properly you drive. Parking in the centre is genuinely hard in summer, most boutique hotels have no car park of their own, and on a three-ship cruise day the old town is a different place between eleven and four.

Mallorca two: the Serra de Tramuntana

The north-west is a mountain range dropping into the sea, terraced by hand with dry-stone walls and UNESCO-listed for that landscape rather than any single building. Deia is the famous village: ochre houses on a slope, Robert Graves in the churchyard, prices to match. Soller sits in a bowl of orange groves, its port five minutes down the valley by tram. Valldemossa has the monastery where Chopin spent a miserable winter; Banyalbufar has the steepest terraces and fewest coaches.

This is barely a beach holiday. Swimming means Cala Deia, a rocky cove at the bottom of a walk you will feel the next day, the sheltered bay at Port de Soller, or Sa Calobra, reached by a road that loses several hundred metres in hairpins and takes forty minutes each way. The stock is agroturismo: a rural finca turned into a small hotel, six to twenty rooms, a pool, olive trees, often no lift, usually fifteen minutes from anywhere.

Mallorca three: the family north and east

Alcudia has the best beach on the island for small children, and that is barely opinion: the bay is long, the sand fine, and the water shelves so slowly that a four-year-old can walk a long way before it reaches their waist. Puerto Pollensa next door is quieter and slightly smarter. On the east coast, Cala Millor, Sa Coma, Cala Bona and Canyamel are the same idea in different sizes — long sand, a pedestrianised seafront, and rows of large hotels selling half board and all-inclusive to British, German and Scandinavian families.

This is the island's volume stock: kids' clubs, buffets, slides on the bigger properties, a season from late April to the end of October, many closing entirely in winter. None of it is picturesque the way Deia is, and you can walk the whole resort in twenty minutes. With a three-year-old and a pram, functional is the point.

Mallorca four: Magaluf and Arenal

Magaluf, west of Palma, is the British party strip; Playa de Palma and Arenal, east of the airport, is the German one, the stretch known as the Ballermann. Both have had a decade of clean-up — new promenades, better hotels, licensing crackdowns, some good four-star refurbishments — and both still deliver in July and August exactly what they are famous for. The strips are loud until the early hours, the crowd is young, and hotel photographs of pool, sea view and buffet do not show what happens two streets inland at one in the morning.

People book these by accident, because the price looks thirty or forty per cent under the same star rating elsewhere and there is a reason for that. If it is what you want, nowhere in the Mediterranean does it better and we will quote it without judgement. If not, check these names on a map first: Magaluf, Palmanova, Playa de Palma, Arenal, Can Pastilla.

Do you need a hire car?

Often yes, and it changes the trip more than any other decision. Buses radiate from Palma and work well on the main corridors — Alcudia, Soller, the airport — plus two inland train lines, so in Palma, or sitting still in Alcudia with small children, you will be glad not to have one.

Everything else is effectively car-only: the Tramuntana villages beyond Valldemossa and Soller, the south-eastern calas such as Cala Llombards, Cala s’Almunia and Cala Mondrago, and Es Trenc, all unserved or served by one bus a day in summer.

The flipside is real. Parking in Palma and Soller is hard from June to September and you will pay for a garage. The road down to Sa Calobra is remarkable engineering and also exhausting, particularly behind a coach. And a hire car is dead weight if you have a week of all-inclusive in Alcudia with a toddler.

What the hotel stock actually is

Star ratings, board types and what a budget buys

Mallorca has more four-star hotels than anything else and the band is wide. Half board is the default on the family coasts; all-inclusive exists but is less dominant than on the Turkish or Egyptian coast. In Palma and the Tramuntana, room-only and bed-and-breakfast are the norm, and most agroturismos offer nothing beyond breakfast and a set dinner.

Around 85 EUR per person per night in May or October buys a solid four-star with half board on the north or east coast, or a small Palma city hotel with breakfast. Around 120 EUR buys better sea-view rooms, recent refurbishments and the lower end of the Palma boutique stock. Above 200 EUR you are into Tramuntana country houses, adults-only coastal five-stars and the few luxury properties around Deia and Puerto Portals. In August all of those figures move up sharply, often by half again.

Golf is real here rather than a slogan: the courses cluster around Palma, Santa Ponsa, Bendinat and the south-east, and the season that matters is November to March, when the fairways are quiet and playable and hotel rates are at their lowest.

Getting there

Palma de Mallorca airport (PMI) sits about 8 km east of the city and is one of the busiest in Spain in summer, which is why flights are usually reasonably priced and August queues are not. It is roughly 15 minutes to central Palma, 35 to 50 to Puerto Pollensa and Alcudia, and 45 to 60 to Soller or the far east coast around Cala Ratjada; Magaluf is about 25 minutes west, Arenal about 10 east.

To be clear about what we do: we quote accommodation through partner agencies. Our own vehicles and drivers have run airport transfers in Turkey since 2016, and that is the one thing on this site we operate ourselves. Mallorca is not Turkey, so a transfer here is arranged locally through the partner.

When to go

May, June, September and October are the months to aim for: warm, swimmable from June, everything open, and the mountain roads a pleasure rather than a penance.

July and August are hot, full and expensive, and August is a category of its own — comfortably the most expensive and most crowded month of the year, because Spain, Germany and Britain are on holiday at once.

February to April is cycling season: road cyclists arrive in large organised groups and the Tramuntana belongs to them, so be patient on those roads. It is also almond blossom.

November to January is quiet, mild and green with half the coastal hotels shut. Palma stays open, the golf is at its best, and rates are a fraction of summer.

Beaches worth the drive

Es Trenc is the one everybody asks about: a long stretch of white sand and shallow, pale water on the south coast with nothing behind it but a car park, two beach bars and salt flats. It is undeveloped on purpose, so you drive to it and drive away again.

Cala Llombards and Cala s’Almunia in the south-east are small, rock-edged and clear; Cala Mondrago sits inside a natural park; Formentor at the northern tip has pines to the sand and a road restricted to buses in high summer.

The Soller train and tram appears on every list. Enjoy it, but understand it is a vintage tourist ride rather than transport: slow, sold out, and several times the price of the bus.

Who should skip Mallorca

If you want a fortnight of all-inclusive with a swim-up bar and a beach visible from the balcony at the lowest possible price, Turkey and Egypt do that better and for less.

If you will not hire a car but want to see the island rather than one resort, you will spend the week frustrated.

If you want nightlife on the scale of Ibiza, that is a different island half an hour away by ferry.

And with small children, do not book the Tramuntana because the pictures are lovely: no beach, stairs everywhere, and the nearest supermarket possibly twenty minutes of hairpins away.

Getting a real price

Mallorca rates are driven by two things at once: the week of the year, and which of the four islands your hotel stands on. The same four-star label can mean a quiet family half-board in Puerto Pollensa or a room above a strip in Magaluf, and the photographs will not tell you which.

So tell us the dates, how many of you there are, how old the children are, and what you want the week to feel like. A consultant comes back within one working day with two or three properties, the resort each sits in, and an honest note on noise, board and distance to the sand. The quote is free and commits you to nothing, no payment is taken on this site, and the partner agency named in the offer issues the booking and your voucher.