Who Shouts The Loudest: Balearics tourism industry

In October there was a significant development in the way that tourist businesses are organised. Different associations representing the non-hotel sector finally agreed to create a single body. These associations include those for restaurants, nightclubs, attractions, travel agencies, car rental and others.

The reasoning behind one body was obvious. It was to create a single voice to deal with the Balearic Government that could act as a counterbalance to the very strong and dominant single voice of the hoteliers. Though it has been said that the forming of this body was prompted by concerns about the increase in IVA by the national government, there were matters of local concern that were just as important. Many of them stemmed from the tourism law of 2012 and from the way in which the tourism market functions. All-inclusives, holiday rentals, hotels' secondary activities; these are just some of the issues which unite the non-hotel, complementary sector.

There not having been one body until now is a mystery. When one part of the tourism industry dominates as it does in the Balearics and has the ear of the government as closely as it does, then surely there should have been an alternative voice for the rest of the industry for years. One can attribute the absence of such a body to different reasons but perhaps the main one is that, because there are that many associations, finding common purpose among them all has been nigh on impossible.

The penny should have dropped a long time ago, though. The hoteliers have been in the ascendant for as long as there has been mass tourism. Obviously they have. Without them, there would have been no mass tourism and so wouldn't have been all the complementary elements. The hoteliers get a bad press, but it shouldn't be forgotten who it was who created mass tourism; it wasn't attractions or even restaurants.

This, though, interprets tourism in an imbalanced way. Something had to come first to get Mallorca to where it is, and the hotels were this something, but the complementary sector was equally as important. The tourism industry comprises many parts, all feeding off each other, complementing each other. But the very term complementary offer implies a secondary function; it complements the hotel sector. Without the hotels, there would be nothing to complement.

Nevertheless, for years this complementary status functioned well enough. Hotels did what hotels did. Restaurants and bars did what they did. But then, and one can place the point in time to be in the early to mid-1990s, the relationship began to change. Some twenty years on, the complementary sector only has itself to blame for what it did precious little to challenge: the arrival of the all-inclusive.

Complacency was undoubtedly a factor. All-inclusive was still only small scale. It would probably go away. It didn't. Organisation was another, and only now has it really come home to the complementary sector that its own organisation was flawed. There was the Balearics Confederation of Business Associations (CAEB) to represent it. But it also represented the hoteliers. Twenty years since becoming president of CAEB, Josep Oliver has stepped down. Business associations are reluctant to even nominate a successor. They have serious issues with CAEB because it has seemed pro-hotelier. They consider it to be useless.

If it is, then these business associations have surely allowed it to be. It is staggering that it has taken them so long to grasp the nettle and to attempt to place their interests at the top of the tourism industry agenda and not those of the hoteliers. It is staggering just how weak the pronouncements from some of these associations now sound. They can speak about the impact of all-inclusives as though these have only just been recognised. This impact may have been less obvious in the 1990s but by the turn of the century it had become obvious. Why weren't they raising merry hell about holiday rentals when the tourism law of 1999 was passed and not waiting until this year, and the reform of the national law on lettings, to begin to object strongly? The situation is fundamentally no different to what it was at the end of the last millennium.

Better late than never, one supposes, but what will this unified body achieve? One of the myriad associations on the island is Acotur, that which represents tourist businesses. In its most recent magazine it attacks the government for being too much on the side of the hoteliers and for reneging on an electoral promise to help the non-hotel sector. But then Acotur is just one voice among many. A unified body may achieve what it, Acotur, has wanted, but it will only do so if the government is confronted with a body with an assertive agenda. One recalls how the government buckled when the large retailers took it on over the green taxes. If business shouts loud enough, then the government will listen. Until now, though, it has been the hoteliers who have been doing the shouting. And with one voice.