Written by our Mallorca transfers desk in Palma · Fares and EMT timetables last checked 14 September 2026
Palma Airport to Playa de Palma and S'Arenal taxi
This is the shortest mainstream transfer on the island. Can Pastilla is ten minutes from the terminal, the S'Arenal end about eighteen. The meter runs roughly €18 at the near end and €36 at the far end on a summer weekend, and our fixed prices are €25 to €32 depending on your section of the strip. We will be straight with you: on a run this short you are not buying a saving. You are buying a driver who is already standing there.
Across the strip
Drive time
Fixed, per car
Price agreed before you fly
Free cancellation up to 24 hours
timeline From wheels-down to your hotel door
Door-to-door totals for an August evening arrival, hotel around Balneario 5.
EMT A2 bus
55m
Waiting, then a long list of hotels
Rank taxi, August evening
50m
A 35-minute queue for a 15-minute drive
Pre-booked private car
15m
Straight to your balneario
Look at the middle column. On a route this short, the summer rank queue is longer than the journey — the wait is the product you are actually choosing between, not the drive.
How much is a taxi from Palma Airport to Playa de Palma?
Mallorca has run a single island-wide reference tariff since May 2025, and on this route one number does most of the work: the minimum airport fare of €16.95. That floor covers the flag-fall, the €4.65 airport supplement and the first seven kilometres — which, on a hop to Can Pastilla, is more or less the whole journey. Beyond seven kilometres you pay €1.20 a kilometre on weekdays between 07:00 and 21:00 and €1.35 at night, at weekends and on public holidays. The full breakdown of supplements and waiting rates is on our Palma Airport taxi guide.
| Where you are staying | Distance | On the meter | Our fixed price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can Pastilla, balnearios 15–12 | ~5 km | €18–26 | €25 |
| Les Meravelles and the middle, balnearios 11–7 | ~9 km | €22–31 | €28 |
| S'Arenal, balnearios 6–1 | ~12 km | €26–36 | €32 |
Guide figures calculated from the Balearic reference tariff and checked September 2026. The top of each range reflects the night and weekend band plus stationary time on the seafront road, which is billed at roughly €19–21 an hour.
thumb_up Where we genuinely do not save you money
A February Tuesday, a midday landing, a hotel at the Can Pastilla end. The meter reads about €19 and our fixed price is €25. The rank wins, there is no queue to speak of, and we would rather tell you that than dress up a six-euro premium as a bargain. On our longer routes the fixed price wins outright; here it does not, and the page should say so.
schedule What the fixed price actually buys here
Time, not money. Between 20:00 and 23:00 from late June to early September, when a dozen charters land inside an hour, the rank queue regularly runs 30 to 40 minutes. That is longer than the drive to S'Arenal. You are paying a few euros to skip a wait that is twice the length of your journey, with a driver who already knows which balneario you want.
The five kilometres of strip is most of the fare. Can Pastilla to S'Arenal roughly doubles the metered price, because the fixed portion — the minimum fare and airport supplement — is identical either way and everything above it is distance. It is why "Playa de Palma" as a destination is not a price, and why we quote by section.
Which balneario are you? The numbers run backwards
Playa de Palma — Platja de Palma in Catalan, and the Ballermann to most German visitors — is a beach of roughly four and a half to five kilometres with fifteen numbered beach kiosks along it. Locals, hotels and every taxi driver in the city navigate by those numbers, and on a strip where one avenue runs the entire length they are often more precise than a street address.
Here is the part that catches people out. The count descends as you move away from the airport: Balneario 15 sits at the Can Pastilla end and Balneario 1 at S'Arenal. Until 1993 there were only ten kiosks, numbered from 0 at Can Pastilla up to 9 at Arenal. When they were demolished and rebuilt as fifteen, the order was reversed — which is how the already famous number 6 kept both its number and its original spot. Nothing about it is intuitive, which is exactly why knowing it is worth thirty seconds of your time.
Can Pastilla
Balnearios 15–12
The closest resort to Palma Airport anywhere on the island, and the quietest stretch of the strip. A small marina, a working neighbourhood behind the seafront, and a ten-minute run to Departures — which makes it the practical choice if you have an early flight home.
Fixed price: €25
Les Meravelles and the middle
Balnearios 11–7
The broad centre, where most of the larger hotels sit. Wide promenade, pine walk behind the sand, and roughly equal distance from both ends if you plan to walk. This is where the majority of our Playa de Palma bookings go.
Fixed price: €28
S'Arenal
Balnearios 6–1
The far end, and the one that crosses a municipal boundary: balnearios 1 to 4 sit in Llucmajor rather than Palma. Balneario 6 — Ballermann 6, officially Beach Club Six since 2017 — anchors this end, along with the S'Arenal marina.
Fixed price: €32
Give us the balneario as well as the hotel name. Hotel names on this strip repeat, change hands and get rebranded, and the same avenue runs its full length. "Balneario 4" gives your driver a fixed point on a five-kilometre road. It costs nothing to add at booking and removes the single most common cause of a wrong drop-off here.
How long does the transfer take, and what slows it down?
Ten minutes to Can Pastilla, about fourteen to the middle of the strip, eighteen to the S'Arenal end. The route is the Ma-19 motorway running east along the bay — short, straight, well surfaced and rarely troublesome. Unlike almost every other destination on the island, the motorway is not the variable here.
The resort's own traffic is. In July and August the seafront road through the strip moves slowly from late afternoon onwards, and a hotel on the promenade can take longer to reach from the motorway exit than the exit took to reach from the airport. That is also where stationary time appears on a meter, which is the main reason the top of each fare range above sits so much higher than the bottom.
One more thing specific to this strip: you are directly under the approach path. Aircraft noise is part of the deal at the Can Pastilla end, and it is the trade-off for being ten minutes from your gate. Most people find it a fair exchange at 05:00 on the way home.
The drive at a glance
- Distance
- 5–12 km
- Typical drive
- 10–18 min
- Peak summer
- 20–30 min
- Main road
- Ma-19
- Bottleneck
- The seafront road
- Strip length
- ~5 km
The A2 and the A51: two airport buses, and most people take the wrong one
Playa de Palma is the best-served resort on the island for public transport, and on this route we will happily lose the booking to a bus. What almost nobody explains is that there are two airport services heading this way and they suit different people.
The strip line
EMT city service, all year
Runs from the airport through Can Pastilla, along Playa de Palma and on to S'Arenal, calling at a long list of hotel stops. Around €5 for a single bought on board, cheaper on contactless, roughly every half hour, and about 25 to 32 minutes end to end before you add the wait. If your accommodation is anywhere on the strip, this is your bus.
The express to S'Arenal
AeroTIB, hourly
The Campos line, which calls at S'Arenal on its way south to Llucmajor, Campos and eventually Cala d'Or. It does not stop along the strip, so it reaches S'Arenal far faster than the A2 does. If S'Arenal specifically is your destination and the timing works, take this one instead.
~€5
A2 single on board, per person
~30 min
A2 frequency, both directions
Under 5s
Travel free with a paying adult
Level 0
Stops face the terminal, outside Arrivals
Five things the timetable does not tell you
- u_turn_right The return is not a mirror image. Heading back to the airport, the A2 does not run through the centre of Can Pastilla the way it does outbound, so your arrival stop may not be your departure stop.
- do_not_step On the airport-bound leg some intermediate stops are not for getting off. If you board expecting to hop off halfway, check with the driver first.
- contactless Contactless is cheaper than paying the driver, and the difference is per person per journey — for a family of four it is worth the thirty seconds of setting it up.
- card_membership The free island transport you may have read about for 2026 is a residents' scheme, and the EMT airport lines are excluded from it anyway. As a visitor you pay the normal fare — see the note on our airport guide.
- luggage Luggage space on the A2 is limited and it is a city bus, not a coach. In peak summer afternoons it fills, and standing with two cases for twenty-five stops is a different experience from the one the fare suggests.
Our honest line: two adults with cabin bags landing at two in the afternoon should take the A2 and keep the difference. Four people with hold luggage landing at eleven at night should not. Timetables change seasonally, so check your date with EMT Palma or TIB before you plan around a departure.
Bus, rank taxi or pre-booked transfer, door to door
Costed for a family of four landing on a summer evening, hotel mid-strip.
| EMT A2 bus | Rank taxi | Private transfer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | About €5 each | €22–31 metered | €28 per vehicle |
| Four people pay | About €20 | €22–31 | €7 each |
| Door to door | 45–60 min with the wait | 15 min, plus a 30–40 min queue | ~15 min |
| Price known before you fly | Roughly | No | Yes |
| Works at 01:00 | Limited overnight service | Yes, rank runs 24/7 | Yes |
| Luggage | You carry it, space is tight | Loaded for you | Loaded for you |
| Child seats | Not provided | Almost never carried | Free, if requested at booking |
Note where the lines cross. At two people the bus is clearly the better buy. At four the bus and the car cost roughly the same, and the car takes a third of the time. There is no version of this route where the numbers are dramatic — which is the point, and why we would rather you chose on the clock than on the fare.
Two local rules worth knowing before you arrive
Neither affects your transfer, and both affect what you do once you are here. We mention them because guests ask us about them in the car more than anything else.
eco Palma's low-emission zone does not reach the strip
The ZBE covers Palma's old town, bounded by the Avenidas ring road and the Paseo Marítimo. Playa de Palma, Can Pastilla and S'Arenal sit well outside it, so getting to your hotel is unaffected whatever you arrive in. It matters on the day you drive a hire car into the city for the cathedral — that is when the camera enforcement and the emissions classes become your problem.
gavel The Balearic "tourism of excesses" rules apply here
Playa de Palma and S'Arenal are among the designated zones covered by the decree that also covers Magaluf and Sant Antoni. In practice that means limits on all-inclusive alcohol, a ban on drinking in the street, restricted late-night off-licence sales and real fines for breaches. Rules are tightened periodically — check the current position before you travel rather than relying on what was true last summer.
Where we drop off along the strip
We cover the whole of Playa de Palma door to door, from Can Pastilla round to the S'Arenal marina. A few of the areas and addresses we see most often:
Plus every hotel, aparthotel and private apartment between them. Coverage is by address, not by hotel list — add the street and the balneario number at booking and the quote confirms before you commit.
Going back: Playa de Palma to Palma Airport
This is the leg where being close to the airport genuinely pays. From Can Pastilla you can leave your hotel at a quarter to five and be at Departures before five. Nowhere else on the island lets you do that, and it is worth remembering when you are choosing between a resort here and one an hour north.
Finding a ride back is also easier here than in most resorts — there are ranks along the strip and the A2 runs from early. The two things that catch people out are the return routing, since the A2 does not retrace its outbound path through Can Pastilla, and the fact that a very early departure lands outside the useful part of the timetable. If your flight is before about seven in the morning, book the car.
Working backwards from your departure
Allow 20 minutes for the drive from mid-strip — a little more than the inbound run, because the seafront road is slower in the direction of travel and you want margin — then add your airline's check-in window. PMI's summer security and check-in queues are slow enough that we would want you at the terminal two and a half to three hours before a July departure.
Your flight
07:00
At the terminal
04:45
Drive time
20 min
Pickup
04:25
Same fixed price, same vehicle class, and a driver who has the exact pickup point rather than the resort name — which matters at 04:25, when reception may be unstaffed and the promenade addresses all look alike in the dark. Book the return when you book the arrival.
Palma Airport to Playa de Palma: common questions
How much is a taxi from Palma Airport to Playa de Palma?
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It depends which end of the strip you are on, because the five kilometres between Can Pastilla and S'Arenal is most of the fare. Expect roughly €18–26 on the meter to Can Pastilla, €22–31 to the middle and €26–36 to S'Arenal, with the top of each range reflecting the night and weekend tariff plus traffic. Our fixed prices are €25, €28 and €32 for the same three sections, per vehicle.
How long does it take to get from Palma Airport to Playa de Palma?
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Ten minutes to Can Pastilla, about fourteen to the middle of the strip and eighteen to S'Arenal, on the Ma-19 motorway. Allow twenty to thirty minutes on a summer afternoon or evening, when the seafront road through the resort is slow. The motorway is rarely the problem on this route; the strip itself is.
What are the balnearios, and which number am I?
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They are the fifteen numbered beach kiosks along Playa de Palma, used by everyone locally as the address system for the strip. The count runs backwards relative to the airport: Balneario 15 is at the Can Pastilla end and Balneario 1 at S'Arenal. The order was reversed when the kiosks were rebuilt in 1993, so that the famous number 6 could keep its number in its original position. Your hotel will list its balneario on its own website if you are not sure.
Is the A2 bus better than a taxi from Palma Airport?
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For one or two people travelling light on a daytime arrival, yes — it is about €5 each, it runs roughly every half hour, and it goes along the strip without a change. For four people the fares even out and the car takes a third of the time. If S'Arenal specifically is your destination, note that the AeroTIB A51 reaches it much faster than the A2, since it does not call along the strip.
Is Can Pastilla the same price as S'Arenal?
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No, and on this route the difference is proportionally large. Can Pastilla is about five kilometres from the terminal and S'Arenal about twelve, so the metered fare roughly doubles across the strip. We price in three sections — €25, €28 and €32 — rather than quoting one figure for "Playa de Palma", because one figure would be wrong for two thirds of our passengers.
Is it worth pre-booking for such a short journey?
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Honestly, not always. On a quiet winter weekday the rank is cheap and empty and you should just walk out and use it. The case for pre-booking here is seasonal and it is about time rather than money: between 20:00 and 23:00 in high summer the rank queue routinely runs 30 to 40 minutes, which is longer than the drive. It is also the better option with small children, at night, or if you would rather not negotiate anything at the end of a travel day.
What time should I leave Playa de Palma for an early flight?
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Allow 20 minutes for the drive from mid-strip, or as little as 12 from Can Pastilla, then add your check-in window. For a 07:00 summer departure a 04:25 pickup is comfortable. This is the one route on the island where you can reasonably be in bed until four and still make a dawn flight.
Does Palma's low-emission zone affect getting to my hotel?
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No. The ZBE covers Palma's old town within the Avenidas ring road and the Paseo Marítimo. Can Pastilla, Playa de Palma and S'Arenal all sit outside it, so your transfer is unaffected. It becomes relevant only if you drive a hire car into central Palma during the enforced hours, where cameras check emissions classes and fines apply.
Planning the rest of your trip
Further afield
Land, walk out, and be at the beach.
From €25, agreed before you fly. A driver holding your name in Arrivals, your balneario already on the booking, and no queue at the end of a long day.
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