Holidaying in Ibiza and craving some fish and chips with a pint of Tenants? Head to the Highlander Scottish bar. Or fancy some Guinness? Then step into O’Flaherty’s Irish bar nearby.

Welcome to the West End in Ibiza’s San Antonio, a famous strip full of night spots marketed at young Brits keen to party all night.

The bars and clubs here started in the 1970s as a cosmopolitan hangout for holidaymakers from Britain and across Europe. By the 1980s, it was dominated by young British holidaymakers on cheap package holidays and gained notoriety in the media for some visitors’ bad behaviour.

Those rowdy days may be in decline, however. Like many of Spain’s best-known resorts, San Antonio on the island’s west coast now appears to be moving away from la turismo de la borrachera (drunken tourism) and towards a more family-friendly offering.

Part of that is because Ibiza has become too expensive for young tourists, according to one bar owner. Business groups in San Antonio have said the past summer was their “worst season ever”.

“It has been an absolute disaster. Fewer people are arriving and the police presence is also dwindling,” the Ibiza Nightlife Business Association said in a statement.

The boss of a British bar in San Antonio’s West End, who did not want to be named, said: “I think over the past six years, Ibiza has become too expensive to get here and to stay here.”

But another major factor is that authorities are fed up with rowdy behaviour and are pivoting to more of an upmarket tourism model.

New rules against the worst excesses of drunken tourism are taking effect, including restrictions on drink sales and tighter regulations on party boats. Meanwhile, hotels are increasingly trying to promote themselves to families in a bid to make more money.

Holiday hotspots across Spain are changing

The shift can be seen in holiday destinations across Spain that traditionally welcomed young tourists looking for a party.

Magaluf in Mallorca is a stark sign of the change. It was perhaps the most notorious anything-goes resort in Spain, dubbed “Shagaluf” for the antics of Brits at this destination.

Yet, despite its wild reputation, it has undergone a dramatic shift in recent years. The strip of bars offering cheap drink deals and partying all night has been placed under greater control to stop Brits and other tourists’ worst excesses.

The clampdown included fines of up to €500 (£430) for drinking in the street, €400 (£345) for rowdy behaviour, while there is a ban on selling alcohol in shops between 9.30pm and 8am.

Xavier Pascuet, a consultant in sustainable tourism who was director of tourism in Calvià, the council which governs Magaluf, said hotel chains started to take the resort upmarket about a decade ago.

“The hotel repositioning started about a decade ago, particularly with Meliá [a major Spanish hotel chain] with a major upgrade of hotels in the area shifting to four-star hotels,” he told The i Paper.

“We attempted to attract families and we actually did change the audience, reducing by almost 40 per cent the drinking tourism and replacing it with families.”

He added: “Regulation on alcohol and public behaviour has helped change the environment too. I think the deeper change is economic. Magaluf is much less dependent on selling cheap beds to 18-25-year-olds. Party tourism is only part of the offer rather than the identity.”

Changes in Benidorm are another sign of new times. The Costa Blanca resort where Spanish tourism was born in the 1950s has seen a steady rise in the number of four-star hotels and a decrease in the number of people who say they came just for the nightlife.

In 2000, there were 14 four-star hotels but by 2025 this figure had reached 59, according to figures from Visit Benidorm, which promotes the destination.

Ten years ago, 13.7 per cent of visitors said their reason for visiting Benidorm was the pubs and clubs but this fell to 9.8 per cent between January and August this year.

British bars like The Bulldog and Yorkshire Pride are part of the Playa Levante side of Benidorm but increasingly UK visitors visit the Spanish side of the town, Playa Ponente, and go cycling or walking.

In Barcelona, Spain’s most popular tourist city which received more than 15 million visitors last year, authorities want to attract “quality tourism”.

“Getting drunk in the street and vomiting, disturbing neighbours, getting into fights, engaging in illegal activities. All of this – well, no – you can’t do it in Barcelona,” Mateu Hernández, director general of Barcelona Turisme, the public-private consortium that manages the city’s tourism, told The i Paper last year in an interview.

“This is not a question of price. It’s a question of what are you coming to do? The quality of tourism isn’t based on the type of visitor and how much they are prepared to pay, but rather what they want to do.”

Gen Z is ditching the boozy holiday

Changing trends are also driving younger holidaymakers away from traditional boozy club holidays that made Ibiza so famous, and which were once a rite of passage for younger Brits.

Generation Z, those aged between around 15 and 29, are drinking less and more interested in holidays that involve exploring more than the inside of a bar.

Elizabeth Keegan, the British director of the tourism board in Lloret de Mar, a Costa Brava destination in Catalonia popular with Brits since the 1960s, said post-pandemic behaviour among young people on holiday had changed.

“There are a lot of factors. There are campaigns of awareness of better behaviour, hotels investing lots of money, but finally youngsters themselves are looking for new destinations, Instagram places; they look for a healthy life, they look for places which are trendy. It is not only our initiatives. Post-pandemic, there is a different relationship towards alcohol,” she said.

José Manuel de Juan, director of the Spanish Tourist Office UK, said: “The widely reported Gen Z shift towards experiential holidays rather than party tourism is music to Spain’s ears. Our tourism strategy is focused on quality over quantity – holidays that are enriching for visitors while also bringing lasting benefits to the communities they visit.”