All The Fun Of The Travel Fair

When Carlos Delgado became tourism minister he took a good-sized hunting knife to the budget for travel trade fairs. So much did he hack off that in Berlin last time round the Balearics stand comprised no more than a flip-chart, a fold-down camping table as a reception desk and a sign saying Balearic Islands that had been scrawled with a marker pen on a sheet someone had nicked from the two-star hostel where the fair's contingent had been forced to slum it. Embarrassing, some said. And worse still was that Carlos had forbidden that there be any "fun" in the form of jolly displays of ball de bot and the handing around of free glasses of hierbas and plates of frito. Travel fairs are for working, not for having fun, he commanded.

In 2013 there is to be more working at travel fairs. More than ever, or so it would seem. The great annual tourism promotion plan has been unveiled and the Balearics will be attending 17 general travel fairs and 28 specialised fairs. 45 fairs in all. I trust that you are impressed. You certainly should be impressed by the fact that the overall number of promotional "actions" - 107, 45 of which are fairs - will cost on average 80% less than in 2009 but will represent an increase of 78% on that year. 80%, 78%, whatever, my how they love trotting out these percentages. They are designed to impress, and yes, we are impressed.

More with less, this is the great tourism promotional mantra at present. So 80% less but 78% more sounds very much like more with less. The only worry is that a different mantra could be used. New for old. New travel fairs, same old message.

Carlos has been at pains to point out that all this gadding around travel fairs will help to reinvigorate winter tourism (isn't the "re" part rather redundant?). He has also been pointing out that the lack of winter tourism isn't the current government's fault, which is fair enough I suppose but shouldn't be taken as singling out the last PSOE administration alone for winter promotional inertia. In fact, I don't know how much any government over the past 25 years can truly be blamed. Successive administrations have come out with their own winter tourism solution, and it has been the same as was first conceived under the Cladera tourism plan in the 1980s and bears an uncanny resemblance to what the current government is proposing. New for old.

Just look at what these additional travel fairs will be promoting. Golf, cycling, nature ... . Do any of you notice anything familiar with any of these? What's new is that there are more places to go and stage fairs, so having failed to attract Brits and Germans for the past however many years with the delights of trekking across the Tramuntana in a howling winter gale, Carlos will be despatching the tourism ministry's one-man-band promotional task force with his all-in-one promotional kit to Moscow in order to entice Russians away from the competing attraction of basking in 25 degrees or more of sun by the Red Sea in winter.

Always assuming that this more with less, new for old message has some effect, it won't be an effect that will be witnessed in the next one or two years. "I would be lying if I were to say this," Carlos has said. Not lying, so therefore being honest. Well, there's a thing. The government will be improving things progressively every winter, which means little tiny bits of improvement until the next governmental upheaval in three years, when everything will change again.

To be fair, the government is trying, or at least seems to be. But when Delgado says, as he has, that the current reduction in flights and hotels being open in winter is all the consequence of a lack of demand, will the creation of what he claims to be the first "planned" winter tourism product really solve anything? He needs to flesh out precisely what this planned product is, other than attending more travel fairs and shoving information up on the internet.

It isn't really true to say that there haven't been previous "plans". They may not have been good plans and they may not have worked, but the winter tourism message has remained unaltered for years, save for the occasional strange innovation, like Nordic walking. So what's to say this new one will make any real difference? I hope it does, but far better would be just to hand over the cash to Melià or other hotel groups and have them construct a few whacking great, all-weather, all-year theme, entertainment, sports, fun complexes. Go on, Carlos, you know it makes sense.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.