The Worst Form Of Tourism

The World Travel Market (WTM) in London starts tomorrow. The world will be travelling to the ExCel; getting on for 5,000 exhibitors, 3,000 journalists and any number of VIPs, politicians, businesspeople and the poor sods who have to stand around at the exhibitions for four days.

Among the exhibiting of the 5,000 will be the Balearics Tourism Agency (stand EM1650, if you must know), proudly listed in the alphabetical running-order below Baki Tur, not a tobacconist tour agency but something designed to get you heading off to Azerbaijan. There is an awful lot of world travel to be had nowadays. How very different to the days when the Mallorca (spelt with two l's for the purposes of the WTM) Tourist Board was founded in 1905. Sharing the stand with the tourism agency, its blurb reminds everyone that it really is this old and that "2005 will its centenary year". Oh well, let's hope no one actually reads the blurb. There's nothing like incorrect grammar and downright error to influence people.

The Balearics participation in this year's WTM is, as has been well-publicised, an altogether more austere affair than it has been in the past. The hangers-on are down in number and the budget has been cut. Tourism minister Delgado has insisted that the fair isn't an excuse for a jolly; it's all about business. Which is only right as the WTM itself has adopted the snappy slogan "WTM Means Business", which it doesn't as it means World Travel Market, but let's not quibble.

The WTM isn't just about stands and selling destinations. It is also about trends, and each year a report is produced which considers these trends and immediate prospects. But such reports overlook the unexpected. The 2010 report had nothing about the Arab spring. It predicted "weak performance" for European travel and tourism, which was right only up to a point as it hadn't figured on the boost that the Arab spring gave to tourism to destinations such as Mallorca.

And word coming out of the WTM is that the Arab effect hasn't finished. Libya and Syria together with a perception of growing Islamist influence in both Tunisia and Egypt are likely to help to make 2012 just as good for Mallorca. What can't yet be determined is the extent of any fallout in Europe itself as a result of the Greek and Euro crisis. It is perhaps slightly unfortunate that the WTM international press centre is being sponsored by the Greek National Tourism Organisation.

Among the speakers at the WTM will be representatives of organisations that make it sound like an echo of the recent ABTA convention in Palma - British Airways, Royal Caribbean, Google - but perhaps the most interesting will be Leo Hickman.

That Hickman is a journalist with "The Guardian" is likely to have you leap to all manner of conclusions, but what he has to say is far from unimportant and will chime with what many think about issues in Mallorca. His book "The Final Call" was based on travels across the globe; he didn't make it to Mallorca, but he did get to Ibiza where there are similar issues.

To give you a flavour of his views, and I quote from an interview on the Worldhum website, here is Hickman on tourism in general: "a one-sided transaction whereby the buyer - the tourist - comes off much better from the deal than the sellers at the destination". "Tourism predominantly creates 'McJobs' ... it is largely a myth that (it) creates a form of trickle-down wealth for all." Here he is on "nefarious" effects of tourism. Sex tourism is the worst, but beyond this come all-inclusive hotels (and cruise ships); "one of the most damaging forms of tourism in the fact that they offer the destination so little".

Hickman also refers to the theory of the remarkably named Dr. Stanley Plog who has plotted the rise of tourism destinations to a peak of too much development and then an inevitable decline, one that can be avoided by the right planning by regional governments and others but is all too often absent and instead dominated by short-term thinking.

There is an awful lot of sense in what Hickman says. Though the Balearics Tourism Agency will be busy doing business, it might do well to send at least one of its representatives along to Hickman's presentation. Tourists getting much the better of the deal, McJobs, all-inclusives the worst form of tourism after prostitution, and the inevitable decline of destinations that are too developed. It does sound rather familiar.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.