A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

Oh well, so all is ok. The weather may have been somewhat iffy this month but at least the four months of the year were good - statistically speaking. Ho hum, here we go again. The silly statistics season. Not that it is a season, it is all-year, a hardy annual. But during those first four months, the total number of visitors to he Balearics was up by 1.5 %. Champagne-corking time indeed. Ah, but wait. Put the champagne back on ice and settle for a Vimto. In April, there was a decrease of 2.4 %. You see, statistics can tell you all sorts of stories. April is close to May. Generally speaking, it is the month before May. Maybe that decrease is more telling than the cheery numbers taken across the whole of the first third of the year. Anyway, despite the economic gloom back in the UK, it is the UK market that is keeping the Balearics buoyant. There was a 3.7% increase in the number of Brits from January to April.

The problem is, however much the figures are spun, and there is a love affair with statistical evidence as to the splendid number of visitors, there are also the numbers and the anecdotal evidence regarding the visitors' spend. This is more important than the totals coming into the islands. Those totals are used as means of self-congratulation, but they disguise the real tourist economy.

I am unaware of any figures yet for spend this year, but I was chatting today to someone who, anecdotally admittedly, probably has a decent handle on how things are this season. He is one of the few PRs knocking around Alcúdia. He's been doing it for years. His first words to me today were: "hard work, mate, bloody hard work". "How come?" "No money, mate. No one's spending. The pound and euro."

This comes as absolutely no surprise. Combine the weak pound with the economic problems back in the UK and you have the conditions for weak spend as well.


And then there is the hard work that is being caused by the weather. Go to forums at the moment and there is considerable anxiety among those coming over the next week or so and even into the middle of June. Ever since it became possible to see weather forecasts so easily, the visitor has become a nervous wreck, checking those forecasts by the day and fretting over what to pack, what to do if it rains, and even whether to cancel. Now I don't wish to diminish the importance of the weather. Of course people want sun, but, in a way, all that information, all that ease of information, has just led to worry; worry that didn't exist in the good old days when you got on a plane and listened intently to the pilot telling you it was 75 degrees or whatever. My take on all the current forecasts is that, though cloud and rain is being shown for a few days yet, there may be occasional showers, but that generally it will be fine, sunny and warm. Yesterday was like that. Rain in the morning. Good by midday and then for the rest of the day.

There is another take on the rain that we've been having. It's good for gardens and farmers. The editor of "The Bulletin" made a point of this, saying that he finally said to a taxi-driver who was commenting on the benefits of the rain for farmers, that he was sick of hearing this and that we need good weather for the far more important economic sector that is tourism. He's right, but the taxi-driver wasn't necessarily right. That rain has been a disaster for some involved in the market gardening sector - the potato-growers in particular. There is a real concern in the centre of the potato - Sa Pobla - as to how well exports will be this year because of the rain. The fact is that the rain is generally not important. Go through the centres of farming and market gardening and there are always sprinklers; water, artifically applied, is what much of the agricultural community uses. Rain, at least rain at this time of the year, is of questionable value. So, could someone just stop it. Stop it raining that is.


QUIZ
Chain - "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" to The Mamas and The Papas, to "Creeque Alley" and so McGuinn and McGuire. So how do you get from Roger McGuinn to the great British film "The Innocents"? Yesterday's title - Mary Hopkin. Today's title - who?

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