We Can't Go On This Way: Sustainable tourism in Mallorca

Any idea who Ivan Murray is? Probably not. So I shall tell you. His grandmother was Canadian of Scottish origin, he lives in Port Soller and is an academic at the university in Palma, whose specialism is the sustainability of tourism in the Balearics. What he has to say is important.

In yesterday's "Diario" there was a report into findings of a study led by Dr. Murray into different facets of tourism in Mallorca (and the Balearics). Perhaps the most revealing was that in order to realise a million euros worth of tourist expenditure, the number of tourists necessary to meet this target increased by almost 500 over the period from 2003 to 2008. The 2008 figure is 1906 tourists to make the million mark, a percentage rise of 35%. Over a third more. In six years, six years before the crisis took hold.

Ok, so what, you might ask. Just another set of statistics. True. But unlike the figures which get bandied about by the regional government, and which many tend not to believe, Murray's findings are, one would hope, independent. In an interview with the Diario's Matías Vallés a couple of years ago, Vallés suggested that Murray might just be a bit of a moaning leftie. By implication, this suggests he may have an agenda. Possibly, but academic rigour, and the demands placed on academics to support their research, might negate any hint of political bias. One should take Murray's findings for what they are, because they are significant.

While government figures always seem to indicate an increase in tourist spend, Murray refutes these. There has been a year-on-year decline if you take the annual growth in the numbers necessary to meet the target of a million euros (the figure did actually drop, however, from 2007 to 2008). Moreover, the findings beg some questions, most obviously why are that many more tourists needed to reach the spending level and what does this mean for pressure on resources. No answer is given in the paper's article to the first of these, but one might begin to hazard a guess or two. Let me make one such - the rise of all-inclusives, possibly?

Murray points out that despite the reliance on tourism to sustain the Balearic economy, there is a loss in efficiency, by which he means that increasing numbers of tourists are needed just to stand still, while these increasing numbers place ever more stress on the ability to cope with them. Consider this. In 2008 the highest recorded total population of the islands (that's everyone, tourists included) occurred between 10 and 12 August. The number was 1,930,000, or 1.8 times the actual normal population. And this is a figure spread out across the whole of the Balearics. Consider Alcúdia. If one takes its resident population to be 16,000 (and one does tend to get different figures), its population at the height of summer is - a guesstimate - about 45-50,000 (there are some 26,000 hotel places in Alcúdia to which one can add other types of accommodation and the temporary workforce). Around three times the normal population in other words.

In the earlier interview, Murray was asked what would be the ideal tourism population of the islands. He didn't really answer this, but did say that twelve million tourists (roughly accurate in terms of total annual tourists) is "an aberration without comparison in the whole world".

It is often in the nature of academia to raise questions and pose problems rather than necessarily answer the questions. While Murray clearly considers the tourism population to be excessive, he has also said that, strictly speaking, only six per cent of Mallorca is "constructed". While he would not advocate more construction, his findings imply that this is what is needed in order to increase tourism numbers just so that economic growth can be - at best - in neutral. It is a deeply worrying conclusion. Where would these tourists come from anyway?

Murray has also referred to a highly polarised society. He is not wrong to do so, and by doing so he paints a picture of potential increased social division allied to an economic model - of tourism - that is not sustainable, unless there is more and more construction in order to grow the tourism population. And even then, were the trend towards all-inclusive and to a more cautiously-spending tourist to persist, the numbers would continue to rise ever more in order to keep parity with that one million benchmark. Ever more construction, ever more tourists, and for what? But one does perhaps have to ask again the question as to what this population could or should be. The problem is that no-one, not even Dr. Murray I would suggest, can give an accurate answer, because I suspect that no-one actually knows. He has said that the Balearics have been a "field of experimentation", and in this he is correct. The experiment was in introducing mass tourism and in its growing like topsy, without any real regard to its ultimate sustainability or to the changing nature of markets and competition or to economic diversification.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.