When Monty Python discovered that there were too many Whickers on Whicker Island, the principal problem of this Whicker massification was that there were no longer enough people to interview. By contrast, Mallorca doesn't suffer from any shortage of tourists who might be interviewed, if only by the clipboard-wielding surveyors of the Egatur tourist spend statistical gathering, while there are masses of investigators and politicians eager to dissect the consequences of the abundance of human raw material that is processed by a voracious tourism industry.
Mallorca, it is reasonable to suggest, is tourist island: not the only such island but a fairly significant one in the league table of tourist islands in the sun. It lives by tourism. It would not die by tourism - or its absence - but it would be placed under constant attention in intensive care were tourism to flee its shores. Fortunately, for Mallorca and for politicians, there is and will be no need for saline and glucose drips to be attached to the veins of economic lifeblood. Which is why politicians can indulge themselves in experimentation. Too many tourists on tourist island? Let's get rid of some then.
The least one can say about the government of change in the Balearics is that it is willing to engage in debate. In this new era of dialogue, it really couldn't do anything else. But even with such a spirit of interlocution, are there political red lines in the sands of Mallorca over which ever more tourists must not cross? Is there, or should there be, a limit on tourist numbers?
In theory, limits should be self-defining. They are only as great as the ability to move human traffic and to accommodate it, but as airport privatisation demands ever increasing volume to satisfy the investment returns of shareholders and as the collaborative economy revolution makes available a glut of private properties (to say nothing also of new palaces of four star plus or five star variety), limits cease to be self-defining: the boundaries are constantly exceeded.
Tourism on tourist island is not, and we all know this, evenly distributed. Massification is a summer phenomenon and the smoothing of distribution in order to counteract the economically debilitating factor of seasonality is and will remain a pipe dream. Mallorca comes under massive attack, especially in high summer. As is now traditional, towards the end of this year the statistics gatherers will reveal the day on which - during August - Mallorca reached its maximum population level. You can expect that a new record will be set this summer.
Geographically, tourist island benefits from distribution. South, north, east and even parts of the west (in the mountains) accommodate this spread, albeit that Calvia, Palma and the bays of Alcúdia and Cala Millor are where the spread is at its most disproportionate. There has, though, been tourist island creep. Interior tourism and some additional coastal development have gobbled up land previously not registered according to the tourism accommodation quotas (the oddly acronymed POOT). Yes, quotas do exist. Limits are in fact defined, but they are limits which exist to be extended.
Tourism creep should be advantageous, but the "Benidorm Effect" has, counter-intuitively, established that environmental and resource-efficient righteousness comes from density and concentration: it is less expensive and less demanding of resources to have tourism massification in specific areas.
What is the thinking behind the debate sparked off by Biel Barceló, the new tourism minister, with its echoes in Barcelona and the moratorium on licences for hotel development? Is it purely the environment? No, it also has to do with the intangible of quality of life made tangible via a reduction in numbers but an elevation of often elusive and often disrespectful "quality". It has to do with, rightly however, an acknowledgement that there is a significant tourism base which contributes little but extracts much. It also has to do with the quest for the grail of a new economic model, one that will result in improved pay and conditions for those who remain in the tourism industry and from a diversification of the economy. Such a theory might, however, take an inordinately long time to become practice.
This is not new thinking, though. Celesti Alomar, the tourism minister who oversaw the introduction of the original eco-tax, once spoke about bringing an end to mass tourism, or at least reducing mass tourism. The tax was not the means to that end, however. And nor will it now be. Alomar appeared to be on some form of misguided crusade. Barceló isn't. In a strange way, he is a son of Carlos Delgado: the Partido Popular tourism minister also spoke of tourist reduction through a greater concentration on the higher end of the market.
Are there too many tourists? Possibly so. But if there are, you sure as hell need to know how you will replace them.
Showing posts with label Reduction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reduction. Show all posts
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Reduce vs. Increase: Tourism volume
There are various themes related to Mallorca's tourism which crop up with regularity and those which surface far less regularly. The first category includes the controversies surrounding all-inclusives, off-season tourism and holiday rentals, while the latter includes the subject of tourism volume. These controversies would naturally form a part of any discussion of tourism volume, but the complexities raised by each of them in isolation are not of the same order of complexity entailed in the consideration of tourism volume. It is more complex because any adjustment to this volume pre-supposes a fundamental change in the nature of Mallorca's tourism, were there to be a planned reduction in the number of tourists, which is typically what the volume debate means.
It was reported last week that the Confederación de Patronales Turísticas de Baleares (CPTB), which is the body which represents a host of non-hotel, complementary offer businesses, had called for a reduction in tourist numbers. It hadn't and it has tweeted to that effect, just in case there was any misunderstanding. The call for a reduction came from the Més political grouping, one that combines the PSM socialists (with their Mallorcan nationalist beliefs) and others on the left, including the Greens. The CPTB had in fact only expressed a desire for tourists with greater purchasing power. Més agreed but wanted fewer of them.
Over the years, there have been discussions about the nature of tourism and about its mass in Mallorca. One can go back to the fallout from the oil crisis in the 1970s in order to discover the first really serious discussion. The shock of a sudden decline in tourist numbers (it took four to five years for numbers to recover) led some to wonder if this unexpected reduction might not in fact be beneficial. Such a thought didn't linger. Come the 1990s, and there was a boom in construction that didn't match that of the 1960s but nevertheless contributed to a major increase in tourist numbers. Economic advancement demanded ever more volume and ever more mass.
But some politicians were uneasy. Maria Antonia Munar, the president of the Council of Mallorca, was one of them. Another was the tourism minister in the first Antich PSOE administration from 1999 to 2003, Celesti Alomar. Munar made references to the need for more "quality" tourists over mere quantity. Alomar went further. He even spoke of the end of mass tourism.
No one has ever gone as far as Alomar, but the question of volume has continued to be an issue which has bubbled under the tourism surface without ever erupting into a full and frank debate. It is one that should be had, but because of its complexity and potential negativity it is studiously avoided in political circles. The complexity is such that any strategy for reduction would have to be considered alongside a strategy for what would compensate for any reduction.
Why should there be a reduction in any case? The stock answer, and the one which Més subscribes to, is the resource one. Land, services, the environment cannot cope with more volume or even with the existing volume. But is this true? What actually might be considered to be the point at which the volume of tourism is too great, and has it indeed been reached or passed? One of the foremost authorities on the subject, Dr. Ivan Murray at the university in Palma, has been unable to come up with what should be the ideal tourism population, except to have noted that twelve million tourists spread across the Balearics constitute "an aberration without comparison in the whole world".
It might be considered to be an aberration, but how can one be certain that it is? Where Murray is on firmer ground is when it comes to the contribution that this volume makes. He has discovered, among other things, that in 2008 a 35% increase in tourist numbers over those in 2003 had been required in order to realise the same level of tourism expenditure five years before. It was a discovery that was to prove to be not that dissimilar to one that the hoteliers federation were to make. But where the hoteliers wanted more tourists, Murray argued there should be fewer.
It has been known for years that there is a percentage of tourists who are either neutral in terms of their "profitability" for Mallorca or who represent a loss. As it costs more to service these tourists than they contribute, then why not cut them adrift and so reduce the tourism volume? It isn't as easy as this, though, and one reason why not is that politicians, regardless of what some might have said, cannot be boastful if numbers fall. Increases are what matter. They are the stuff of political machismo.
It was reported last week that the Confederación de Patronales Turísticas de Baleares (CPTB), which is the body which represents a host of non-hotel, complementary offer businesses, had called for a reduction in tourist numbers. It hadn't and it has tweeted to that effect, just in case there was any misunderstanding. The call for a reduction came from the Més political grouping, one that combines the PSM socialists (with their Mallorcan nationalist beliefs) and others on the left, including the Greens. The CPTB had in fact only expressed a desire for tourists with greater purchasing power. Més agreed but wanted fewer of them.
Over the years, there have been discussions about the nature of tourism and about its mass in Mallorca. One can go back to the fallout from the oil crisis in the 1970s in order to discover the first really serious discussion. The shock of a sudden decline in tourist numbers (it took four to five years for numbers to recover) led some to wonder if this unexpected reduction might not in fact be beneficial. Such a thought didn't linger. Come the 1990s, and there was a boom in construction that didn't match that of the 1960s but nevertheless contributed to a major increase in tourist numbers. Economic advancement demanded ever more volume and ever more mass.
But some politicians were uneasy. Maria Antonia Munar, the president of the Council of Mallorca, was one of them. Another was the tourism minister in the first Antich PSOE administration from 1999 to 2003, Celesti Alomar. Munar made references to the need for more "quality" tourists over mere quantity. Alomar went further. He even spoke of the end of mass tourism.
No one has ever gone as far as Alomar, but the question of volume has continued to be an issue which has bubbled under the tourism surface without ever erupting into a full and frank debate. It is one that should be had, but because of its complexity and potential negativity it is studiously avoided in political circles. The complexity is such that any strategy for reduction would have to be considered alongside a strategy for what would compensate for any reduction.
Why should there be a reduction in any case? The stock answer, and the one which Més subscribes to, is the resource one. Land, services, the environment cannot cope with more volume or even with the existing volume. But is this true? What actually might be considered to be the point at which the volume of tourism is too great, and has it indeed been reached or passed? One of the foremost authorities on the subject, Dr. Ivan Murray at the university in Palma, has been unable to come up with what should be the ideal tourism population, except to have noted that twelve million tourists spread across the Balearics constitute "an aberration without comparison in the whole world".
It might be considered to be an aberration, but how can one be certain that it is? Where Murray is on firmer ground is when it comes to the contribution that this volume makes. He has discovered, among other things, that in 2008 a 35% increase in tourist numbers over those in 2003 had been required in order to realise the same level of tourism expenditure five years before. It was a discovery that was to prove to be not that dissimilar to one that the hoteliers federation were to make. But where the hoteliers wanted more tourists, Murray argued there should be fewer.
It has been known for years that there is a percentage of tourists who are either neutral in terms of their "profitability" for Mallorca or who represent a loss. As it costs more to service these tourists than they contribute, then why not cut them adrift and so reduce the tourism volume? It isn't as easy as this, though, and one reason why not is that politicians, regardless of what some might have said, cannot be boastful if numbers fall. Increases are what matter. They are the stuff of political machismo.
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