The Disposable Tourist

The first of May, the first day of the season. On 1 May, the hopes and fears of all the years - fears mostly in the past few years - are aroused.

On the first of May, the first great influx of tourists is awaited. Eyes scan the carreteras for the transfer coaches and for their contents. How many are there? The coaches don't look that full. Where are they going? The coaches' occupants are disgorged in their paleness, eyes blinking against the piercing luminescence of a Mallorcan spring.

So it begins. As it begins every year. And as every year, the first wave of tourism is like watching aliens land. The tourism mass, moulded from varying shapes and styles, manages to meld itself into one. It moves and it morphs in a constant state of transmogrification, but despite its transience it retains this mass, a production line of humanity processed at the airport, distributed by coach, packaged into hotels and ultimately recycled.

Tourism is a disposable commodity. It exists for only a short period of time. For a temporary period. It is migratory. It arrives in flocks, flutters for a time, and then flies away again, to be replaced by further flocks. During its brief stay, it co-habits with the indigenous species who feed off it, or so they hope.

The rules of this co-habitation, cultivated over years, have altered. There has always been exploitation from both sides, but who now is the greater exploiter? A one-time symbiotic relationship of mutual exploitation has been disrupted by the packaging part of the mass tourism production line, that which now packages with all included. The feeding has turned to hunger, a need to scavenge from the scraps tossed over the walls of a hotel ghetto. This is not how it was meant to be. This is not how it was.

Co-habitation was convivial. The festive spirit that took hold on the first of May, and earlier in times gone by, has been diminished and eroded by a resentment at the dismantling of the relationship.

There is a further reason, though, why the rules of co-habitation have changed. In the same way as tourism is disposable, so also is Mallorca. But it is disposable in a different way. The disposability of tourism lies in its short life span; it is once used and then thrown away, until, with any luck, it performs its own recycling and returns. Mallorca is disposable because there are other Mallorcas. It can be got rid of. The mass can move elsewhere. Once upon a time, its options were limited. It made the best of a limited supply; it no longer has to.

There was also, once upon a time, a shared sense of gratitude and a sharing of newness and adventure. For the tourist, Mallorca was a new world, a different world, a world beyond the imagination of the drudge of home. For Mallorca, the tourist was indeed like an alien, a new being from afar, destined to make for the island a better life.

This is all in the past. With changes in the rules of co-habitation, familiarity has bred familiarity, and Mallorca is treated not so much as though it were disposable but as a mere commodity, a vehicle for sun, for beach, for bar, for all-inclusive. 

How did it come to this? Perhaps it was inevitable. Once tourism was unleashed, it was bound to undergo a transmogrification through market forces. It could never have remained the same. But faults lie on both sides of what was once the mutual relationship. For Mallorca, it used to be the case that a tourist was a friend, which he or she still is, but this sloganising disguised a fundamental, semantic error. A tourist was never and should still not be "a tourist". It is "the tourist". Definite, not indefinite. Individual, different, even amidst the great mass. And the tourist was never and still isn't a tourist; he or she is a holidaymaker. The distinction is marked. Tourists make tours. Holidaymakers go on holiday, and holidays are fun.

The tourist has been at fault, too. He or she has forgotten the adventure of holiday. Forgotten the discovery, lulled into the belief that being corralled into a hotel of all-inclusive convenience does not amount to being commoditised, to being processed and packaged.

If there is hope, now that the first of May has arrived, it is that there is a rejection of disposability and of the tourist as a commodity. The tourist, all tourists are friends, are unique. And for all tourists (sorry, holidaymakers), Mallorca, all of Mallorca and not just all-inclusive Mallorca, is a friend.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.