Cuts And Blows ... To Mallorca's Hairdressers

"Where are you going on your holidays?"

Is it the case that, when studying for a hairdressing NVQ in Britain, there is a specific module known as the snipper small talk? The holiday question may be a cliché, but it happens to be true. So true and so equated with holidays is the trip to the hairdresser, that salons the length and breadth of Britain are missing a business opportunity. They could double as travel agencies or be the promotional mouthpieces for tourism boards.

"Cut and blow, sir? It's brought you to today by our sponsors, the Balearics tourism agency."

Rather than staring gormlessly into the mirror and having to field the holiday question, why not let the client watch a bit of promotional telly. Wheel a monitor in front of him or her and play the latest advert for Mallorca. Oh, sorry, forgot, there isn't one. But you get the idea.

Whether Mallorca's hairdressers would reciprocate and show films of Anne Hathaway's cottage and the Norfolk Broads might be doubtful, but they need to sharpen up their scissors and their act a bit. Times are hard among the perm and set fraternities and sororities.

The island's hairdressers' guild is concerned as to the fate of the traditional hairdressing salon. Illegal operators, low-cost franchises and the Chinese - always the Chinese - are undermining salons. A crisis in the sector took hold strongly last year and shows no sign of abating.

A further reason why salons might be having a hard time of it is that there are too many of them. A bit like estate agencies which open up on the back of clients that an individual estate agent takes with him, so hairdressing salons open thanks to those clients who always insist that so-and-so does their hair. Unlike estate agencies, however, there is still a hands-on demand for the service. You can't, as yet, get a hair cut via the internet, but you can buy a house. There always were far too many estate agencies in Mallorca, many of them now closed because of crisis. Similarly, despite the necessity of the hair cut, the proliferation of salons is being trimmed.

Mention of the low-cost franchises is pertinent. Unfortunately for the traditional hairdresser, someone's come up with the idea of a bit of competition. Perish the thought that you should be able to get your barnet cut for under a tenner, but you can. Thanks to the franchises. They may be more like discos than a hairdresser, they may be all black and white style, down to the broom and brushpan, but they are that rare of beasts - value for money.

And mention of the Chinese is also pertinent. Not because of low-cost hairdressing. Quite the reverse. In Hong Kong, the tourism board there has accredited various salons as part of its "quality tourism services". The cost of a hair cut can be anything up to a thousand Hong Kong dollars. Ten per cent of one salon chain's business is from tourism.

In the Hong Kong case, a fair proportion of the tourism clientele is from mainland China, at around half of the 10%. Yes it's a very different market, but rather than hairdressing being treated as a cheap commodity, a luxury end of the market is thriving. And there is, where Mallorca might be concerned, the Chinese tourist as well as any others who could indulge in a spot of hairdressing tourism.

I may have been sceptical about the potential for Chinese tourism, but recent figures indicate not just the growing size of the Chinese market in Spain but also what it spends. In 2010, the market grew by 22%. The total number of Chinese tourists was 102,000. And these tourists, on average, spent 2,000 euros per person. One does, as always, have to be wary about this sort of data, but what seems irrefutable is the fact that the Chinese are among the highest-spending of all tourist groups, if not the highest-spending along with the Russians, and that they will typically purchase quality products, such as jewellery and watches.

This may not represent potential salvation for the traditional Mallorcan salon, but it may, along with the Hong Kong experience of high-value hairdressing, be a different type of opportunity for the island's hairdressers, a type of tourism directed at the high-net-worth sector, and not just the Chinese. Though if the Chinese were to be a factor, then the hairdressers of the island would need to take some lessons. How do you ask where you are going on your holidays in Chinese? Not that they would need to, as they would already be on their holidays.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.