A Sea Of Clichés: Tourism seasonality

"What's this?" I thought. Go to a particular website and there would be a PDF to download - "A Sea Of Experiences", it promised. Nice title, shame about the content, as I duly went to the website in question, did indeed download and got a lengthy document which listed all manner of Mallorcan cycling routes, hiking routes, Nordic walking routes, associations for kayaking, stuff about bodegas, gastronomy, shopping routes (there are such things apparently), to name but several among others.

What I thought I was going to be downloading was a document that would contain the insights of Mallorca's hoteliers, some members of government and some representatives from municipalities with strong tourism profiles into the burning topic of tackling the island's problem of seasonality. "A Sea Of Experiences", so it was said, was a project to mark the before and after of Mallorca's struggle with seasonality.

This was a pretty bold claim, one that I'm not entirely sure I understand. What I think it means is that the "sea of experiences" will wash away the struggle and leave a pristine beach of future and abundant off-season tourism. Something like this anyway.

The project and the experiences' sea were launched at a workshop the other day at which the Mallorcan hotel federation was joined by its governmental colleagues. I imagine they all had a nice lunch at the restaurant at the Son Muntaner Golf Club where, if you didn't know, "golf doesn't get any better than this" (better than Son Muntaner, modestly described as the "leading golf resort in the Mediterranean").

Golf is of course one aspect of the sea of experiences, so it was probably appropriate they all pitched up at a golf club to get on with their intensive workshopping and having lunch. And who was there? I don't know, other than I spied the government's finance, business and employment minister, Josep Aguiló, otherwise known as the debt-crisis, gone-out-of-business and unemployment minister. I imagine Delgado was there as well, though they probably kept him hidden, as would have been Alcúdia's Coloma, wittering on about cruise ships and gastronomy, and the Two Many Encrypts, Miguel and Tomeu, mayors of Santa Margalida and Pollensa, able to tell the workshop all about visitors' centres that are sometimes open but usually are closed at wildlife and nature parks. (And wildlife and nature parks are also part of the sea of experiences.)

So, what was the outcome of this gathering of the great minds of Mallorcan tourism and its collective workshop? One outcome was the PDF, a damn great list of routes, addresses, dates and other factual info that everyone already knew about. It would seem, though, that if you put a long list of such information together and slap a title on it like "A Sea Of Experiences", then you will have convinced Mallorca's mere mortals that you have actually been doing something constructive and not just having lunch. Moreover, you will be able to point to the list as being the "after" in the great struggle. List off-season tourism possibilities, and bingo, the problems of seasonality are over.

Except of course they aren't and nor are they likely to be thanks to the sea of experiences.

You know when you read something and you get to the end of it and think to yourself, "did I actually read this correctly?", meaning that you read it again and realise that you had read it correctly first time round. This is what happened when I read about the sea of experiences, and having read it a second time, my head dropped and smacked against the desk. One does on occasion feel like giving up.

It's all what has been banged on about for years. The only vaguely original aspect of the workshop seemed to involve the use of technology. Someone has clearly cottoned on to the existence of QR codes, and so now tourists will be able to access information via such codes. Fantastic. However, tourists do have to be in Mallorca first for them to benefit from waving a smartphone in the general direction of some black squiggles.

This is the nub of the issue. The sea of experiences is a sea of clichés, a sea of aspects of tourism that already exist and which have largely failed to address seasonality. And a reason why is because there aren't any tourists. The hotel federation, rather than worrying overly much about QR codes, should have been having a go at Aguiló. "Oi, Aguiló, what about some tax breaks in winter?"

Airport taxes going down 10% in winter might mean more flights, but then again maybe they won't. The hoteliers, the government, the mayors, the whoever can have all the workshops they like, but unless there are the right incentives in winter, they will come to nothing, QR codes or no QR codes. 


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.