Drinking Mallorca By The Bucket

Once upon a time you took a bucket and spade to the beach. You still take a bucket to the beach, but you no longer fill it with sand. You fill it instead with the boys' bevvy. Booze. Booze by the bucketloads.

The season has witnessed a growth in the sale of buckets in Mallorca's resorts, mainly Magalluf, Palmanova, Arenal and Cala Ratjada. The attraction of the bucket is not restricted by culture. Both the Brits and the Germans are bucketheads. There is a whole in their buckets, dear Lisa and liebe Lisa, a whole load of beer in their buckets.

"Drunken tourism" is becoming such an accepted term in the tourism lexicon that the Balearics Tourism Agency should give serious consideration to its inclusion in its marketing strategy. Alongside the alternatives of culture and good scoff, there would also be the promotion of drunken tourism. Where alcohol is concerned, they might have more in mind the attractions of local vino, available from boutique bodegas at absurd prices per bottle and with designer labels. Instead, they've got buckets with a sticky bar code and cold drink at bucketshop prices.

The agency wouldn't of course promote any such thing. All bad for the image and what have you: British and German youths traipsing off to the nearest beach with their buckets, crates of cheap drink and a box of straws. Oh no, you can't have gatherings of public drinking. You wouldn't get the local lads and lasses doing this. Except of course, that's exactly what you do get. If the locals can stage a "botellón", why shouldn't tourists do something similar? And, moreover, do it during the day when the sun's shining.

Boozing has been around in Mallorca as long as mass tourism has been. It might have changed in its nature - the bucket did used to be reserved solely for its accompanying spade in the good old days - but it has always been an essential part of the holiday experience. It was not only essential, it would also have been a badly missed opportunity in those good old days. A handful of pesetas for a liberal measure, followed by another handful of pesetas ... and for the same cost as a couple of Double Diamonds back in the UK, you could get tanked up enough to require a stomach pump.

Resorts in Mallorca may not be the leading exponents of drunken tourism in Spain - Lloret de Mar, as I wrote about previously, lays claim to the number-one slot - they may not even be among the leaders in the Med (think the alternatives such as Zante and its industrial alcohol), but they are still prominent, as they always have been.

Nevertheless, the growth in the phenomenon of drinking by the bucketload is causing sufficient concern for the Mallorca hoteliers' federation to call for a commission to look into the matter. What do they think this will achieve? A ban on the sale of buckets perhaps?

They could always try and get the drinking of alcohol in public places banned. Except they've tried this with the botellón with usually no effect whatsoever. In Alcúdia, there was meant to have been such a ban. If there was (or indeed still is), no one has taken much notice. Moreover, how would you define such a ban? You couldn't stop a holdaymaker (or indeed a local) cracking open a can of Saint Mick on the beach.

What the hoteliers are really concerned about is the fact that there are too many young people pitching up and occupying rooms that the hoteliers would prefer were kept for families. They're never satisfied, are they. TUI, and for once TUI is not trying to skirt the issue, has said that the youth market is important. Of course it's important. It means bums on airline seats and hanging out of balconies in hotels. Hats off to TUI. It is reported as also saying that "golfers and five star hotels alone don't fill airplanes". Well, well, well.

Quite how the youth market with their buckets and beer equates to a TUI vision of sustainable tourism I'm not sure. But sales of holidays are sales of holidays; sustainability can go hang, along with any sense that a tour operator should discriminate in terms of who it actually sells a holiday to. Which it most certainly shouldn't.

Ultimately, there is a fear that the bucketheads will drive away the family tourist. But it is a vastly overstated fear. Mallorca's tourism has always been a mix, as has that of its resorts: a bucket and spade for the kids and a bucket and beer for the older kids.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.