Emotional Investment: Not understanding tourists

What is the press's view of Mallorca's tourism; the local press's view, that is? It is a question I ask as a follow-up to yesterday's article in which I referred to an unquestioning complicity with regard to announcements from sources such as the hoteliers.

By local press, I mean the Spanish (or Catalan) press. And by tourism, it is necessary to identify what the local press deems important. When I spoke of a lack of questioning of figures issued by the hoteliers federation, along with its headliner of a "broken" economy, the local press is only too happy to swallow the line, as it fits with one element of what it considers to be important, namely the economic significance of tourism.

This much is to be expected. Local media is naturally concerned about an issue as fundamentally important as tourism and its contribution to the local economy, yet this fundamental importance does not translate into a real press examination of tourism, one that actually includes tourists. If one takes a different announcement, that of the contents of the new tourism law, there has been considerable discussion in the press, but it has been largely confined to one aspect of the law, namely hotel conversion and the modernisation of hotel stock.

Such press concentration reinforces the hotel-centric perspective that dominates the debate surrounding Mallorca's tourism. The hoteliers' "broken economy" statement is just another example of this. This "hotelism" is, therefore, synonymous with tourism, and tourism is synonymous with property and ultimately economics.

The hotels are content for this to be the case. In an ideal world, where the hotels are concerned, there would be a standard model for Mallorca's tourism, one, the hotels would argue, that is the most efficient model and the one that generates the greatest economic benefit. It would be a model with the hotel firmly (and only, probably) at its centre.

Because the hotels, and the regional government for that matter, constantly reinforce this implication of a standard model and its economic benefit, the press, mainly interested in the outcome of tourism (the economic benefit and employment), fails to look beyond the mechanics of tourism. The polemic, therefore, is about tourism as a process rather than about tourists, and the new tourism law reflects just this.

What has been striking about recent local press coverage is the almost total absence of any discussion regarding matters which are of importance to tourists and also to the expatriate community. All-inclusive hotels are not ignored by the local press but there is little that really challenges them, other than not infrequent, unqualified reporting of opposition and protest. The issue of holiday lets is almost completely ignored, other than to make reference - and it has a tendency to sound dutiful - to the "oferta ilegal".

This is not an issue which doesn't affect Mallorcan people as well as expatriate owners and tourists, but, and unlike "The Bulletin", the Spanish press seems to have little interest in it. One can only assume that this is because of the hotel-centric perspective which pervades tourism debate. If I am doing a disservice by saying that there has been an absence of discussion, then I can only apologise, but I have looked for its presence and drawn a blank.

Tourists and expatriates are interested in matters other than all-inclusives and holiday lets, of course they are, but the two subjects are representative of a different perspective, one that arises from not just financial investment (in holidays or homes) but also emotional investment. If this emotional investment is disregarded or not appreciated, then the tourism debate is reduced to the mechanics of tourism, which is exactly how the debate is generally presented and which is therefore incomplete, wrongheaded and myopic. 

Tourists differ between those who are here today and gone tomorrow and those who, even if not regular visitors, form an attachment and a sense of psychological ownership. This emotional investment should not be underestimated, as it has been strengthened by the ease in which information about and images of Mallorca, and the volume of both, can be relayed.

I use the issues of all-inclusives and holiday lets as examples, but they are good examples as they bring out emotion, whether for or against, and are therefore indicative of the emotion that is invested in Mallorca. But, as a consequence of "hotelism" and the support it appears to derive from the local press, this is an investment which seems misunderstood or not understood at all. Without an understanding of emotional investment, tourists, and therefore tourism, cannot be understood.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.