Too Many Tourists On Tourist Island

When Monty Python discovered that there were too many Whickers on Whicker Island, the principal problem of this Whicker massification was that there were no longer enough people to interview. By contrast, Mallorca doesn't suffer from any shortage of tourists who might be interviewed, if only by the clipboard-wielding surveyors of the Egatur tourist spend statistical gathering, while there are masses of investigators and politicians eager to dissect the consequences of the abundance of human raw material that is processed by a voracious tourism industry.

Mallorca, it is reasonable to suggest, is tourist island: not the only such island but a fairly significant one in the league table of tourist islands in the sun. It lives by tourism. It would not die by tourism - or its absence - but it would be placed under constant attention in intensive care were tourism to flee its shores. Fortunately, for Mallorca and for politicians, there is and will be no need for saline and glucose drips to be attached to the veins of economic lifeblood. Which is why politicians can indulge themselves in experimentation. Too many tourists on tourist island? Let's get rid of some then.

The least one can say about the government of change in the Balearics is that it is willing to engage in debate. In this new era of dialogue, it really couldn't do anything else. But even with such a spirit of interlocution, are there political red lines in the sands of Mallorca over which ever more tourists must not cross? Is there, or should there be, a limit on tourist numbers?

In theory, limits should be self-defining. They are only as great as the ability to move human traffic and to accommodate it, but as airport privatisation demands ever increasing volume to satisfy the investment returns of shareholders and as the collaborative economy revolution makes available a glut of private properties (to say nothing also of new palaces of four star plus or five star variety), limits cease to be self-defining: the boundaries are constantly exceeded.

Tourism on tourist island is not, and we all know this, evenly distributed. Massification is a summer phenomenon and the smoothing of distribution in order to counteract the economically debilitating factor of seasonality is and will remain a pipe dream. Mallorca comes under massive attack, especially in high summer. As is now traditional, towards the end of this year the statistics gatherers will reveal the day on which - during August - Mallorca reached its maximum population level. You can expect that a new record will be set this summer.

Geographically, tourist island benefits from distribution. South, north, east and even parts of the west (in the mountains) accommodate this spread, albeit that Calvia, Palma and the bays of Alcúdia and Cala Millor are where the spread is at its most disproportionate. There has, though, been tourist island creep. Interior tourism and some additional coastal development have gobbled up land previously not registered according to the tourism accommodation quotas (the oddly acronymed POOT). Yes, quotas do exist. Limits are in fact defined, but they are limits which exist to be extended.

Tourism creep should be advantageous, but the "Benidorm Effect" has, counter-intuitively, established that environmental and resource-efficient righteousness comes from density and concentration: it is less expensive and less demanding of resources to have tourism massification in specific areas.

What is the thinking behind the debate sparked off by Biel Barceló, the new tourism minister, with its echoes in Barcelona and the moratorium on licences for hotel development? Is it purely the environment? No, it also has to do with the intangible of quality of life made tangible via a reduction in numbers but an elevation of often elusive and often disrespectful "quality". It has to do with, rightly however, an acknowledgement that there is a significant tourism base which contributes little but extracts much. It also has to do with the quest for the grail of a new economic model, one that will result in improved pay and conditions for those who remain in the tourism industry and from a diversification of the economy. Such a theory might, however, take an inordinately long time to become practice.

This is not new thinking, though. Celesti Alomar, the tourism minister who oversaw the introduction of the original eco-tax, once spoke about bringing an end to mass tourism, or at least reducing mass tourism. The tax was not the means to that end, however. And nor will it now be. Alomar appeared to be on some form of misguided crusade. Barceló isn't. In a strange way, he is a son of Carlos Delgado: the Partido Popular tourism minister also spoke of tourist reduction through a greater concentration on the higher end of the market.

Are there too many tourists? Possibly so. But if there are, you sure as hell need to know how you will replace them.