Same Old Rot: Tourism in the off-season

Easter is late this year. Easter Sunday is the 24th of April, three weeks later than 2010, and a week before the real season kicks in on 1 May. An earlier Easter makes life awkward for businesses. Open, and they face the inevitable hiatus of the phoney season before the May lift-off. This year is not quite so awkward.

Nevertheless, many hotels will not be opening for Easter. In Alcúdia, 26 establishments will remain closed. It seems perverse. At a time when Mallorca is reaping the benefits of north African disturbances, should all hotels not be taking the plunge and opening that one week earlier?

This is the headline-grabber. Hotels not opening for Easter, a late Easter at that. This is the headline-grabber that inspires rumblings as to the state of the tourism market, the tourism industry not trying hard enough, and all the other rot that goes with it.

It is rot. What the headline fails to tell you is that 24 hotels will be open at Easter. I make that roughly the same number that will not be open. So what's the problem? Answer? There isn't one. Demand, with or without Egyptian uprisings, is not so high that all hotels need to be open at Easter. Moreover, most of the hotels form parts of chains. One, two maybe, are sufficient. All of them? Of course not.

There is also the smell of a rat with the hotel-opening and hotel-not-opening figures. It is one that comes from their source, the local hotel association in Alcúdia. Not all hotels in Alcúdia are listed by the association on its website, as not all hotels are members. One very large complex that isn't listed is Bellevue. One whole chain, GC, which typically does open its hotels either early or through the winter, is similarly not present.

The point is that when you are fed stories about hotels and consequently the state of the tourism market, you don't always get a complete picture, while it is easier to be convinced as to the rotten state of the market by the fact of non-opening hotels than to be convinced as to a reasonable state of the market by the fact of a similar number which are open.

But let's get real. Out of season, only a few hotels being open can be viable. Of the 24 hotels in Alcúdia open by Easter, only six will have opened by the start of March (plus others that are not members of the local association). The Alcúdia hotel association, in releasing the figures as to non-opening hotels, has taken the opportunity to also state that the situation with winter tourism is very bad. Yes, I think we know this, and it applies not only to Alcúdia and the north of the island, but also to the whole of Mallorca. So what's new?

Well, there are some things that are new. Two different and more positive opportunities to lengthen the season and to make the off-version less "very bad". One is the "bienestar activo" concept of activities, the other, the "estación náutica" branding of Alcúdia as a watersports resort. The association supports both these initiatives.

It is hopeful that the activities included in "bienestar" (hiking, Nordic walking and so on) will reap some reward this coming season, that the results from this "strategy" and its promotion will bear fruit. But these activities are essentially non-summer activities. What difference are they likely to make in summer? Very little, I would suggest.

Far more important is that this so-called strategy should be aimed at the winter market, but what actually is the strategy? And where is this promotion? Not on the association's website, as far as I can see, unless you count the absurdly passive question - "have you been to our new Nordic walking park yet?" A word in the association's shell-like. Do not ask a closed question, the answer to which may well be "no" and which inspires no further interest or action. It's known in the trade as motivational copy. Or in the association's case, non-motivational.

The establishment of the "estación náutica" concept, an element of which is an obligation to have hotels open in the off-season (at least from March and to the end of November), presents the opportunity for the hotels to ensure that they are open before Easter. It will also test their resolve. Will they open? And will they make sufficient effort to promote this concept to ensure that it is sensible for them to open?

Here are two initiatives which in theory can lengthen the season and which can reduce the whingeing about the winter season being "very bad". The theory is one thing; the practice is quite another. Will they really mean that more hotels open earlier? It is very doubtful. How many watersports enthusiasts or Nordic walkers might be expected? Not enough to fill more than a handful of hotels. Around the same number that will be open during this "very bad" off-season, hotel association figures or otherwise.

Rot? You'd better believe it.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.