If It Could Happen In Greece ...

Following the euphoria of a party swept into a power on a raft of promises which may prove to be less feasible in their implementation than in their oratory, Greece is waking up to what the nitty-gritty of policies will actually be, and there is one area of policy on which a weather eye will be kept by many in Mallorca and other regions of Spain that are competitor tourist destinations.

Syriza's Alexis Tsipras has met with businesspeople to outline what the party's tourism policy is likely to entail, and there are some headlining elements which will resonate here, in particular those to do with all-inclusive hotels and airlines. On the latter, Syriza will look at the possibility of creating a national airline, by which one assumes that it would be a government-owned airline, and at stopping the privatisation of airports on the Greek islands. With protests against the AENA partial privatisation occurring in the Balearics, there will be interest in seeing if and how Syriza halts the privatisation process in Greece.

It is what Tsipras has had to say about all-inclusives which will probably attract greater attention. Syriza has said that it won't ban AI projects that already exist but that it would look to reduce the number of AI packages and prevent any further developments which are to offer AI in a country where an eighth of tourism revenue is derived from AI. Tsipras's observation that all-inclusive resorts exist "at the margin of local economies" will, for many in Mallorca, be indisputable. "Tourism is an issue for local communities which live and breathe it." Amen.

But AI or not AI, the Syriza line appears to be one that will block or inhibit new resort development (on a grand scale) of any type. Investors, if they haven't already, will be packing their bags and heading off in search of more amenable political regimes. And it is this, investment, which is a fault line in Syriza's policy. Were it to dry up in supporting a major industry such as tourism, then righting the Greek economy might remain a pipe-dream.

It has been suggested that the current flurry of hotel investment activity and licence applications in Mallorca has been inspired in part by fears of what a Podemos-influenced if not Podemos-led regional government might mean. Comparisons between Podemos and Syriza aren't as straightforward as some might think, as I have noted, but one would have to believe that there would be some similarity in thinking when it comes to tourism. Investment in Mallorca might, despite getting permissions in place, be affected were Podemos to become a major political influence after May.

Comparisons between Greece and Mallorca and indeed Greece and Spain in terms of tourism are also not straightforward. The Greek market is very much smaller than Spain's; the total number of tourists to Greece in 2014 amounted to roughly twice the number that Mallorca alone attracted. Given the substantially lower volume, it is just conceivable that policy changes wouldn't harm the country's tourism to the extent that numbers would fall, except that these would be policy changes that would also have an impact on tour operators, and it has been the case that, in certain parts of the globe, government attempts to outlaw or reduce AI have had to be re-thought because of tour operator influence and threats.

A further difference lies with the political organisation of Greece and Spain. Greece is a unitary state, meaning that the administrative regions of Greece do not have the devolved and autonomous powers that the regions of Spain do. These powers include tourism policies, so the Balearics (or any other region) could, in theory, ban AI, though such a ban would probably end up at the Supreme Court as it might be argued that it exceeded these powers and contravened regions' statutes of autonomy. It is these very statutes, however, that could be invoked in reverse were, hypothetically, the state to decree that there would be a halt to all new large-scale tourism development and also to AI. Much though it is argued that the regions enjoy too much power, the statutes of autonomy do act as a means of preventing abuses by central government; they could only be altered by a re-writing of the constitution.

I accept that this is all speculative, but while I find it inconceivable at present to think that Podemos might become the dominant influence in both national and regional (Balearics) government, it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility. And were such a possibility to be realised, then, assuming there were tourism policies similar to those that Syriza plans, the scale of AI might well be reduced. Which might sound like good news, but then one would have to ask about future investment: a question that the Greeks will now have to ask.