The tourism boom of recent decades on the Costa del Sol has left the region with too many hotel complexes offering the same product. The inland town of Ronda has been suffering the same imbalance between supply and demand over recent years as well. Only ten years ago, the Serranía de Ronda, the Ronda Mountain Range area, had a total of eight hotels with 688 bedrooms in total. Now, in 2004, the region has 30 hotels with 1,400 beds, which is double the figure for 1994. This high level of growth, far superior to the demand, has obliged many promoters to look towards the Antequera area in the interior of the province as the best area to develop quality tourism, with the building of hotel and golf complexes and residential developments aimed at foreigners.
A wealth of projects
Antequera is the focal point of this new tourism development. Following the building of the Antequera Golf Hotel and the first 18-hole golf course in the region, the Golf Antequera S. L. company is planning the construction of another 18-hole course in the La Hacienda La Magdalena development, covering an area of 300 hectares. The project includes 450 houses, 100 apartments, a residence and a new five-star hotel with 230 rooms, a spa and a sports area that will cost 27 million euros in investment. Furthermore, at the end of this year the company will begin a project that involves the enlargement of the Antequera Golf Hotel, providing it with 50 more rooms.
But these will not be the only new golf courses to play on in the biggest municipality in the province. The promoters of Lauro Golf are planning a hotel and two golf courses on the Las Lomas farmland, situated in the Altiplano de Las Lagunillas. They have already been given the go ahead from the Environmental Department of the Junta de Andalucía. As the mayor of Antequera, Ricardo Millán, has said, this is the only project of all that his office has examined that does not include housing developments, given that it is situated in a protected area.
Apart from these tourism complexes that are scheduled to be finished in a matter of months, five more promoters are presenting different construction projects to the Town Hall in Antequera for the building of golf courses, high-category hotels and residential developments aimed primarily at the tourist market.
Millán tells us that the promoters are planning these projects “in the Cortijo de Las Gandijuelas, between a farmhouse in the Santa Ana area and Bobadilla Estación, in the area of the Guadalhorce reservoir, close to the area where the new airport is planned and the Casabermeja road, just past Villanueva de Cauche”.
According to Millán, “in all of them, there is a mixture of residential and sporting areas, and some of them include four-star hotels. Although the final design will depend on the urban plans for the region, as far as what exactly will be allowed and the area that can be built on.” These decisions have to be taken by different administrations, he added.
A thousand homes
In Villanueva del Rosario, the Mirador Group is awaiting a planning permit to begin work on the Valle del Rosario, which is a complex extending over 1.7 million square metres, close to the A-359 highway. This will include an 18-hole golf course, a luxury hotel with 300 rooms and operating theatres, spa and other health facilities and a residential development with 998 houses for the residential tourism market.
Besides Villanueva del Rosario, the Mirador Group is also looking towards Fuente de Piedra, where it plans to invest 12 million euros in the restoration of two houses near the town’s station built 120 years ago, to convert them into a cafeteria and congress hall. Three old industrial warehouses are also being restored, and a new hotel with 91 rooms is being built on the site. The land for the complex, which will have a health centre with a spa, has already been set aside as part of the municipal urban plans.
The project getting under way in Archidona also involves two schemes to be carried out by two different promoters. One is on land about four kilometres from the town centre and close to the Salinas area, where the Sierra Lumbral complex is planned on an area covering 1.5 million square metres. This complex will have an aparthotel with 300 rooms, “all of the highest category and a minimum of four stars,” we are told by Manuel Sánchez, the Mayor of the town. There will be an 18-hole golf course and 600 housing units, he says, adding that the urban plans already approved also include a Country Club. This will be built on land situated between the A-92 and the Salinas area, on land covering 2.1 million square metres.
A residential tourist complex of 360 housing units, a hotel and an aparthotel with 300 rooms, a nine-hole golf course and a services area beside the A-92 will be built on this land. As in the urban and golf projects in the other municipalities, the plans are included in the approved town plans, and will be subject to further approval from the relevant authorities.
The search for land
Apart from these projects already mentioned, the different promoters will continue to search for suitable land to build on in municipalities like Sierra de Yeguas. There, two more promotional companies are planning to build golf courses, we are told by the deputy mayor of the municipality, Tomás Ruiz. He explained that the promoters are interested in plots of land to build residential and holiday housing units and a tourism complex of the highest category. With these two projects finished in a few years, the entire Antequera area is set to become the new promised land of international tourism in inland Malaga.
Courtesy of Sur in English
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