Life For Rent

When they go on about new and different tourism markets, the emphasis is - as you will well know if you've been coming to this blog for many a month - on culture, sport, gastronomy etc. But there is one sector that appears to be doing very nicely thank you but that never gets a mention by the various authorities. Hardly surprising, given the nature of it, but on the back of the gay-sex scandal featuring the Palma councillor and his visits to gay bars, it's good to know that the girlie bars are also well-frequented. That's the nature of the tourism. Sex tourism to Mallorca. Don't get much about this is in official circles, but apparently it's thriving. Can't imagine why it doesn't get more prominence though, having said that, there has been some press talk on the subject, not least in the German freebie with the confusingly Spanish title "El Aviso".

According to this paper, Balearics sex tourism is worth between 300 and 400 million euros a year, which sounds like an awful lot of money being handed over for some rumpy. How do they actually measure this anyway? And can we really accept that top-earners in the industry are taking over 100,000 a year, albeit that much of it then finds its way to others?

They talk about sex tourism, and by implication this suggests that there are those flocking to Mallorca for precisely this purpose. It is something I find quite difficult to believe, but perhaps the Internet is instrumental in fuelling this alternative (and seemingly lucrative) line of tourism. Maybe the authorities should get on the bandwagon - Magaluf has long been known as "shagaluf"; why not brand the whole island similarly?

It's not as if the island is short of venues for such tourism. There are, for example, four that I am aware of in Alcúdia, but I'm not naming them or saying where they are. A couple of years ago, I wrote about an approach to advertise one "relax house". I turned it down. Alcúdia is a family resort, not a bordello on the bay. And so of course the tourist authorities would want to distance themselves from such tourism, despite the money it attracts - if one believes the figures.


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