Construction of Malaga's new Ibis hotel expected to take several years

The company, which has links to the Accor hotel group, has so far met the demolition work deadlines. In two months, the process should be completed, with the base and the rubble removal work done.

From now onwards, the countdown begins for the construction of a new hotel building on this site in the city centre. Already before the incident in May, Accor had been processing an application with the municipal planning department to increase the height of both the Ibis and two other hotels it owns in the Guadalmedina area: the Ibis Budget and the Suite Novotel.

A decree the regional government approved in 2021 protects the project. It allows the floor area of existing hotels to increase by up to 20 per cent if this results in an upgrade in category.

According to the document, the Ibis Málaga Centro hotel, which had 189 double rooms (378 hotel beds) and 47 parking spaces, was to gain 19 more rooms. The goal was to upgrade the hotel's rating from the current two stars to three stars or higher, with an increase of 390 square metres for new services.

The plan was to increase the number of storeys from ground floor plus three and ground floor plus four to ground floor plus six and ground floor plus seven. This refurbishment can now be adapted to the new hotel, as planning parameters relating to height or volume apply to a plot of land, not to a building.

It will still be several years, however, before the new Ibis can be built, which will be seven storeys high plus a ground floor.

In May last year, the city council accepted the planning application to increase the height of the three hotels mentioned. This was merely an initial administrative step that must lead to the formal approval process. It must first undergo a simplified environmental assessment process at the regional office of the regional ministry of sustainability and the environment.

According to sources, this department has already received and accepted the dossier for the relevant environmental assessment. However, the backlog of such procedures often leads to delays in their resolution, which, in some cases, can take a year or longer.

Until that environmental procedure has been completed, the approval process at the urban planning department cannot resume.

Following an environmental approval, the file will be subject to a public consultation period (minimum 20 working days) to gather any comments. The urban planning department will once again request reports from other departments, such as those of culture and civil aviation.

While all of this is happening and until the approval is published in the official provincial gazette, the developers may continue working to secure that final permission, which would allow construction to begin.

In principle, the new Ibis hotel should not be subject to the three-year moratorium the city council approved this past July, which only applies to projects for which the planning process had not begun by that time. Given that planning for the land where the future hotel will be had started before the moratorium, this should not be an obstacle for the owners.

The regional department of culture approved the increase in the hotel height of the Ibis Málaga Centro, Ibis Budget and Suite Novotel because it would not have an "environmental or visual impact" on Malaga's historic centre.

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