Spend, Spend, Spend: Tourists and their money

I was waiting at the head of what became a lengthening queue at the local tabacs. All I wanted to do was hand over my euro for "The Bulletin" (and, yes, I pay for my copy). I could have just plonked the coin down on the counter and cleared off, but the wait promised to be productive, more so than that of the Guardia officer who wasn't prepared to tarry long in his quest for a pack of 20.

The queue developed because of Brit tourists, wristband wearing and cleaning the place out of cigarettes. The whole exchange was fascinating to observe, right down to the production of a sealed brown envelope with its bung of snout spondulicks. When finally all the booty was assembled on the counter, out came the calculator. "Nine hundred and four euros," said the girl. The envelope was emptied of its folding notes.

Nine hundred euros, thought I. There's a convenient amount. Where had I heard nine hundred euros, more or less, mentioned before? If I had forgotten, which I hadn't, I was to find out when thumbing through the newspaper. Tourism spend. The average spend per stay. It's always in the 900 region, a bit more. 900 euros on Super Kings and whatever else being handed over to the tobacco companies. 900 euros worth of fags being carted back to the all-inclusive. I wonder what else the Brits had been spending their money on, if anything.

The statistics on tourism spend come from something known as Egatur ("Encuesta de Gasto Turístico" - the tourist expenditure survey). The information it provides, so the blurb goes, "makes it possible to ascertain with a greater degree of precision the volume of tourist expenditure by foreign visitors". Moreover, it can "improve strategic knowledge of variables regarding fundamental expenditure and tourist behaviour by visitors from other countries".

These are bold claims for information that the casual reader of it in the press is often disinclined to believe, especially when it shows an upward trend.

What the tourism spend stats are not are exact figures. They are an estimation. They are arrived at through questionnaire-based interviews at border road crossings, airports and ports. A minimum of just over 100,000 interviews are conducted annually, the majority of them at airports (and this is nationally, by the way, not just in Mallorca). When the national statistics office speaks of "fundamental expenditure", what it is referring to are five key components which contribute to total tourist spend. Of these, two, spend in restaurants and on excursions and "others", amount to a third of the total. The rest comprises spend on accommodation, transport and the tourism package.

The tourism spend stats are also not, therefore, indications of what is actually being spent on what. Take the tobacco. Unless this is included under "others" (and I don't think for one moment that it is), then where is this spend in the equation, or that in other shops, come to that? And what of that in the chemists? Spend on mosquito-bite treatment alone must run into the many thousands.

The collection of data is also reliant on the interviewee giving accurate numbers. They are more than likely also to be estimations. Come on, how many of you can say precisely how much you spend on restaurants? Unless you are one of a small breed who writes all expenditure down in a diary, then you can't be 100% certain. It is just this sort of exact data capture that tourism spend surveys should require, but it is just this sort of exact data capture that isn't being conducted. And where higher spend is registered, to what extent does this reflect an increase in prices? If it does, then any increased spend is not necessarily one in real terms. Just to take an example, has the IVA rise been discounted in figures since 1 July which suggest an improvement in tourism spend?

Much time and many column inches are devoted to the various statistics, but in truth, and God knows I have spent a sadly large amount of time myself over the years discussing them, they really aren't of any great consequence. Certainly not when it comes to providing an accurate picture of activity in the resorts. The value of the tourism spend statistics, such as it is, lies in the contribution to a calculation of overall economic performance. As for "fundamental expenditure", yes that on restaurants and excursions is fundamental, but so also, for many tourists, is that over the counter in the tobacconists.

Tourism spend statistics? Ignore them.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.