Marina Alta hospitality sounds the alarm: margins down from 15 to 3 percent
Where bars and restaurants once kept 15 to 17 percent, reaching 3 to 4 percent now counts as a success, says the trade association. What is going on, and the lesson for anyone eyeing a business.
MILO SCHUIJT · 6 September 2026 · 4 min readThe terraces of Dénia, Jávea and Moraira were not always as full this summer as they looked. The Marina Alta’s hospitality association AEHTMA is raising the alarm: the profitability of bars and restaurants has fallen hard in recent years. Where owners once kept 15 to 17 percent margin, reaching 3 to 4 percent nowadays already counts as a success. And behind that squeeze sits more than one disappointing month.
From 15 percent margin to 4 at best
The figures come from Reme Cerdá, manager of trade association AEHTMA, speaking to regional paper La Marina Plaza. Her summary is sobering: the days of 15 to 17 percent returns are gone, and anyone closing the year on 3 to 4 percent can be satisfied. The culprits on the cost side are familiar but stubborn: higher taxes, energy, dearer purchasing, rising staff costs and hefty commercial rents. Turnover has long stopped outgrowing them.
July was the perfect storm
This summer added a bitter July, through three factors at once. The football World Cup kept part of the foreign guests at home in front of the screen. Extreme heat and humidity chased the midday trade off the terraces. And underneath slides a structural change: consumer studies by big drinks brands show guests drinking notably less wine and beer, exactly the products a bar makes its margin on. August happily picked up again, and the association counts on a good September and October.
Shorter stays, shorter season
Beneath the summer figures run longer lines. Visitors stay shorter than they used to, concentrating the peak into fewer days. And stretching the season, the sector’s great wish, keeps hitting the same wall: the school calendar. Families, still the backbone of tourism in the Marina Alta, simply cannot come outside the holidays. The association therefore prefers to judge the whole year rather than a single month: the verdict on 2026 falls only once the shoulder season is counted too.
The summer figures show exactly that tension. Coastal hotels were above 90 per cent in August and still at 88.1 in September, while costs rose faster than revenue. How full it really was here, with Moraira at 98.9 per cent as the outlier, is in our piece on September as the new high season.
The lesson if you are eyeing a business here
For anyone dreaming of their own bar or restaurant on the Costa Blanca, this story is no reason to give up, but every reason to run the numbers hard. Build your business plan on single digit margins, not on the fat years of old. Price the rent of a prime location honestly, because it is often the quietest margin eater. Lean into what guests order now: alcohol free drinks, coffee and food weigh heavier in the mix than before. And plan turnover by season, with July as a warning that even summer is no longer a guarantee. Want to know more about working for yourself in the region? Read our guide to working on the Costa Blanca too.
Milo Schuijt is an entrepreneur and DJ on the Costa Blanca. He writes about the places where he lives, works and plays: from beach bars to the housing market.