The 5.5 Million Gamble: Spain's tourism promotion

When the 2.7 million euros for Balearics tourism promotion in 2014 is derided, as it is often is, a thought should be spared for promotion budgets elsewhere. I have previously noted the higher regional budgets, e.g. those of the Canaries and especially Catalonia, but what about the national budget, that at the command of the national tourism institute, Turespaña? You might be amazed to learn that it will be all of 5.5 million euros in 2014, only twice as much as the Balearics and lower than the Canaries. There again, you might be even more amazed to learn that it was only 1.1 million euros this year.

The figures don't do full justice because they don't include all the work done by  tourism offices and delegations in parts of the globe. There is more to what Turespaña does than merely promotional campaigns, but one can't help but feel that 5.5 million euros is a pretty miserly sum for a country with such a high dependence on tourism. Marta Blanco, the new director-general, will argue (and she already has) that it isn't miserly because it is five times the 2013 budget, but five point five million ...? It sounds like a promotional drop in the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and any other ocean you might wish to mention.

Not, it must be said, that these oceans are particularly relevant, except for European countries with an Atlantic coastline, most obviously France and Great Britain. The 5.5 million is mostly going to be spent on mature tourism markets, says Sra. Blanco. So much, therefore, for all those emerging markets. Apparently it is a far more efficient use of resources to concentrate on established markets, which it probably is, but tourism in 2013 and 2104 does not live by established markets alone. Or shouldn't.

These established European markets will be regaled with promotion which focuses on urban tourism, cultural tourism, health tourism, shopping tourism, meetings tourism and, a newer theme, so it is said, rural tourism. My just having examined two of these - urban and rural - was coincidental but it was fortuitous, as things have turned out. There is an obvious form of tourism that isn't due to be focused on, that of sun and beach. Fair enough perhaps as it pretty much sells itself, but Spanish tourism should never neglect the bread and butter and the bucket and spade that got it to where it is, no more so than in Mallorca.

On rural tourism though, this has a sense of back-to-the-future promotion. Before the days of the Costas and the Mallorcan beaches being packed by northern Europeans in desperate search of post-austerity sun in the late 1950s and 1960s, rural tourism was a big thing. Or at least, the Franco regime attempted to make it a big thing. It eyed up what the French were doing and had hopes of a tourism that was and still is very much more diverse than Spanish tourism. With hindsight, it is perhaps a shame that the diversity and spread between countryside and coast which typifies French tourism was never attained in Spain. The coasts would look very different, had it been.

As my two recent articles noted, urban tourism is a growth market while rural tourism is in a bit of a trough. It seems counter-intuituive to therefore promote a type of tourism that has registered a 10% fall in general tourism terms, but this said, maybe rural tourism could do with some more effective promotion. Back in the day, i.e. before the peseta dropped and Franco's mob came to understand that tourists wanted to go to the seaside, a not untypical image was the "Castilian Landscape" of a rainbow tumbling into a wheat field. Perhaps it's unsurprising that it never took off. One trusts that current-day promotion might be better.

Where Mallorca is concerned, a Turespaña drive in urban and rural tourism might be beneficial and opportune, despite my misgivings about Palma as an urban tourism destination and about the contribution of rural tourism to the island. The new Balearics tourism minister, having helped with the clauses regarding the advancement of rural tourism in the 2012 bill, will doubtless be happy and will be sending felicitations to a fellow novice in Sra. Blanco.

The campaign for 2014 is the first which she will have overseen since her surprising appointment in September to succeed Manuel Butler. It was a surprise to many in the tourism industry who had never heard of her. A career politico with banking experience, like Martinez in the Balearics and Borrego at the national tourism ministry, one does have to wonder as to the personnel in charge of tourism both regionally and nationally. Still, she seems like a very nice lady, and I wish her well. But really ... 5.5 million euros? Is that all?