Tourism Stats Are Not Cricket Stats

Cricket is a sport which gives the impression that it only exists in order to generate statistics. The numbers are a sport within a sport and their gatherers become names in their own right alongside pundits and players. They are numbers, though, which cannot be misinterpreted. When Jimmy Anderson and Joe Root put on 198 for the tenth wicket against India, it was a world record and there was absolutely no dispute. In a sense, they aren't statistics. They are simple maths. One plus one equals two, it always has done and it always will do. Statistics aren't so simple. If they were, there wouldn't be huge armies of statisticians engaged in their gathering and huge arguments over their validity.

Tourism statisticians can give the impression that, like cricket, tourism only exists because of its statistical evidence. It is evidence, however robust the methodologies are said to be, which often fails to convince because of the apparent discrepancies between numbers and the evidence of the eye or the ear. For all this, an avalanche of statistics over the past few days, taken at their most general level, would appear to tell a story that is beyond dispute. There is something a bit odd going on.

Firstly, we learned that in July and for Spain as a whole, there had been a record number of foreign tourists - 8.3 million, up by 6% over 2013. Yet, the number of hotel overnight stays fell; in the Balearics, the decline was in the order of 4.7%.  How could this be, especially as the Balearics had, for the first time ever, exceeded two million foreign tourists during July? There are two explanations. One is that holidays are shorter. The other is that tourists choose to stay in alternative accommodation. For the whole of Spain, overnight stays in rented accommodation, in visitors' own properties or in those of families or friends were up by over 14%.

We then learned that, despite this record number of July visitors, spending by tourists in the Balearics fell by over 5%. This was largely attributable to what is being described as a "collapse" in the German market. Its spend alone was apparently down by a whopping 14%. There could of course be an explanation for this - stay-at-home Germans watching the World Cup. The overall Spanish tourism market suffered a fall in German spend, but it wasn't at the level supposedly recorded in the Balearics; 6% versus 14%. Moreover, while total Balearics spend was down, spend was up more or less everywhere else (Catalonia, Andalusia, Canaries). The one exception was Valencia.

One can reach for certain other explanations for this decline in the Balearics. All-inclusives would be one. But this would be too simplistic. All-inclusives are not confined to the Balearics by any stretch of the imagination. Nor are illegal or legal holiday rentals confined to the Balearics. These spending statistics, as I have sought to explain on many an occasion, are not an exact science. Nevertheless, they do give an indication. Are we to conclude, therefore, that despite the efforts of the Balearics to push the islands in the direction of attracting a higher-net-worth tourist, the opposite is in fact happening? The numbers will create a great debate and a scratching of heads. If only the statistics were as clear as those in cricket.