What exactly is AEON accusing these boats of?
AEON, Ibiza's employers' association for nightlife venues, filed a formal complaint describing the vessels as "authentic floating discotheques": boats that sell DJ sets, all-inclusive bar packages and sometimes meals, without carrying any of the obligations that land-based clubs like Amnesia, Hï Ibiza, Ushuaïa and O Beach have to absorb. Its board put it plainly:
"They aren't subject to the same obligations, controls, opening-hour limits, security requirements, inspections and administrative burdens carried by the island's regulated leisure venues."
Licensed rooms have to clear capacity caps, acoustic control, fire and security inspections and tourism-activity licensing before they sell a single ticket. AEON's complaint is that a boat can sell an identical night, DJ, bar, crowd, for a fraction of that overhead, and the tourism registry barely tracks who's running them: only 11 vessels appear on it, against a fleet the industry describes as far larger.
How much money is actually moving through this?
The pricing sits comfortably inside what a club would charge for a big Sunday. A standard four-hour sunset run costs 50 to 90 euros; operators selling the full-day trip out to Formentera charge 180 euros; peak-season sailings built around a headline DJ can pass 100 euros a head. None of that revenue runs through a nightclub license, none of it is taxed the way a licensed venue's door and bar are, and there's no capacity limit forcing an operator to turn away the next booking once a boat is full.
Why are locals angry too, not just club owners?
The complaint isn't only about money. Residents of Ibiza's old town have logged noise complaints against boats returning late with sound systems still running, and plastic cups and party debris have turned up near Es Vedrà, the protected rock formation off the island's southwest coast. Anchoring near the Ses Salines Natural Park, roughly six kilometres from some of the routes, risks the Posidonia seagrass beds the park exists to protect, the same seagrass Balearic authorities have spent years trying to shield from exactly this kind of anchor damage.
Could Ibiza actually shut this down?
Eivissa's mayor, Rafael Triguero, has floated banning the parties outright, arguing the boats are licensed for maritime excursions, not for what happens once the music starts: they are, in his words, boats "authorised to run sea excursions, not parties on board." Sant Antoni's mayor, Marcos Serra, already tried a street-level clampdown and it didn't hold. Right now Sant Antoni is the only municipality with the legal authority to inspect the boats at all, under a 2024 decree, and even the baseline rule, that alcohol can't be sold on board, is openly ignored: operators advertise open-bar packages anyway.
