Luggage storage businesses boom in Malaga

Alba Tenza

Malaga

Monday, 22 July 2024, 16:29

Luggage storage businesses are booming in Malaga city as tourism hits record highs. With check-in and check-out times usually not coinciding with flight departure and arrival times, tourists search for places they can store their luggage, enabling them to see the city in comfort. Seven years ago, tourism in Malaga was already making this business grow, although at that time there were only a couple of places where visitors could entrust their luggage, as opposed to the more than ten that exist today in the city centre alone.

"We were the first to open and from a year ago to the present day, more than nine automated luggage lockers have opened," said BagsCare's owner, Ricardo Castro. Undoubtedly, the boom in tourism in recent post-pandemic years has meant more luggage storage business have emerged in the centre of Malaga, which is why companies in the sector pointed out to SUR they are experiencing a "good moment", although they are facing challenges such as rising costs.

"Our investment is for the long term, it is true that tourism has helped it to grow; In fact, the use of lockers has advanced much more that of storing visitors' suitcases, as we now see how even the locals themselves use these lockers to store their belongings, for example, when they go out partying and want to avoid theft," said The Lockers, a company from Malaga that started in 2022 and today already has nine locations - with around 30 lockers in each one of them - in the city centre. With a growing business expanded in other cities such as Seville and Granada, they aim to open in Madrid and Valencia before the end of this year.

However these businesses face prices which are increasing rapidly. "This year the rent has gone up by 600 euros, there are times when the accounts don't work out, at least we have a cash machine at the door that discounts us money, but we have been struggling all these years; before we were making very good profit and now we have lost about 2,000 euros a month," said Castro, who pointed out how other businesses expanding in the centre has created a new competition they had not imagined.

While for The Lockers, the expansion of its business is a clear example of the benefits of the increase in tourism in Malaga, for other companies such as City Locker, which was founded in 2017, the emergence of new luggage lockers in such a short time is "unfair competition for not taking into account that they are setting up right next to the first businesses," one of the owners said.

Those who started out when there were no luggage lockers in the city, such as BagsCare, have no choice but to reinvent themselves. "We are the only left-luggage office left where we store suitcases on shelves with personal attention, and at the same time we offer bicycle rental and souvenir sales. Tourists also come to us to help them get to the airport, for example," added Castro.

Although summer brings with it an increase in visitors, for these businesses it is not always synonymous with greater demand, since, as they said, summer stays in the city tend to be of longer duration while in winter they tend to be of two or three days, so the number of ticket office bookings is usually even higher than in the summer months.