Being For The Benefit Of The Hoteliers

So, CAEB, the Balearics Business Confederation, has announced that this year's bumper tourism season has only benefited the hoteliers. Talk about making a statement of the bleeding obvious. I have a question for CAEB. Why has it not previously been making a song and dance about the imbalances that exist within the island's tourism industry?

One reason may be because of the diverse range of business interests that CAEB represents. Go back to May of last year, as an example, and CAEB was in a state of internal strife, some associations within it backing the regional government's tourism law and others not.

This lack of unity says much for how tourism operates in Mallorca. There are competing groups with competing self-interests which find it hard to create a coherent and single voice to challenge the business voice which is heard with clarity and one purpose - that of the hoteliers. The tourism law, criticised for having been a law for the hoteliers, was exposed to all too little opposition because of the fragmented nature of what opposition there was.

It is only now that this fragmentation is beginning to coalesce into something like a powerful alternative voice. The association which represents attractions was another which had been largely disregarded until the director of Palma Aquarium assumed its leadership and began to push for a far more co-ordinated approach by businesses from the non-hotel complementary sector. CAEB's announcement, one made in fact by the head of its restaurant association, can be seen as further evidence of dissatisfaction belatedly being expressed by this sector. Other groups which have been saying similar things include the Chamber of Commerce and the islands' major retailers.

A current preoccupation with seasonality and the lack of winter tourism produces debate which is a diversion. Regardless of whatever solutions might or more likely would not be arrived at, would similar dynamics to those of the summer not be at play? Open up more hotels and what type of accommodation might be offered? Bring in more tourists off-season and what sort of spend will they have? Why would trends towards more all-inclusive packages and towards lower spend be any less relevant were there more winter tourism?

The winter tourism debate is a diversion away from the underlying weaknesses of summer tourism. There is no weakness in terms of numbers of tourists, and there is unlikely to ever be such a weakness, but the numbers obscure the real issues, something to which CAEB has now alluded when it questions tourism spending statistics. Why question them now? Why has a professional body for so long apparently failed to appreciate that these statistics are compiled for a particular purpose - in order to satisfy a Bank of Spain requirement for balance of payments measures - that does not correspond with the real tourism economy?

It has also taken an inordinately long time for professional, non-hotel bodies to wise up to the contribution that non-hotel tourism accommodation makes to the Mallorcan economy. The Chamber of Commerce produced very revealing research about the levels of such accommodation way back in 2006, but why does it seem that it took the change in the national tenancy law this summer to shake business associations into beginning to voice strong opposition to the government's pro-hotel stance?

For the good of Mallorca's tourism industry, one would hope that there might be a unified voice which expresses the needs of all the industry's sectors, but there seems little chance of such a hope being fulfilled. The tourism ministry, as with the government as a whole, doesn't do dialogue. Witness what happened when Carlos Delgado said he was looking for consensus with regard to holiday rentals in August. He got it, but from whom? Not the business associations but from town halls and island administrations beaten into submission.

The ministry cannot be totally blamed for there not being a unified voice and a unified view of Mallorca's tourism. In the lead-up to the passing of the tourism law, there was a truce between the hoteliers and the complementary sector, the latter hopeful of gaining from the law by presenting a solid front. It was a naïve hope, and the hoteliers and the complementary sector have been at each other's throats ever since, the complementary sector pausing only to try and wring the ministry's neck.

The sadness in all this is that these three agencies - government, hoteliers and complementary sector - should be sitting together in order to come to an understanding of and to create a vision of Mallorca's tourism over the next couple of decades. The tourism market is constantly evolving and developments can be expected to be more rapid, but where is the unity of purpose to facilitate an appreciation of and response to these developments? There isn't one.

Crazy Golf: Too many courses in the Balearics?

Where do you go in Spain to have a quiet round of golf? The Balearics. Whole courses uninhabited by the one thing they should be inhabited with - golfers. Golfers of a local variety that is. Ignoring overseas players, a survey by the information company 11811, reveals that there are fewer registered golfers on the islands, relative to the number of courses, than any other region of Spain. The finding is slightly misleading as a further discovery of the survey is that the number of registered players per head of population is the sixth highest in the country. But what really gives the game away regarding how unused courses are in the Balearics is the fact that there are more courses for each and every resident of the islands than anywhere else in Spain.

The revelation as to the low numbers of golfers is nothing new. In April 2008 a different survey came to the same conclusion. Golf, far from booming, seems to be standing still. Is the relative unpopularity of the sport among residents, however, important in the wider debate surrounding golf courses? Local golfers are really only a sub-plot to the main story of golf tourism, but the fact that they are spread so thinly across the islands' courses - 387 registered players per course - represents a weakness in the "home" market and raises the question as to whether Mallorca and the islands need more courses.

A year on from that previous survey, the Balearics business confederation (CAEB) issued its own report which stated that as many as five more courses were needed in Mallorca alone. These were courses, it said, that were necessary for the development of golf tourism, and it received support from the then tourism minister Miguel Nadal. The support was not unexpected; Nadal's party, the Unió Mallorquina, has been cast, alongside the Partido Popular, as the devil of golf expansion by both the left and environmentalists.

The arguments advanced by CAEB for the islands as a whole are those echoed in the endless row regarding the development of the Muro golf course. These are well-rehearsed arguments: higher-value tourists; diversification of the tourism offer; a means of countering tourism seasonality.

The problem with these arguments is that they are just that - arguments. What invariably seems to be lacking is evidence as to what more courses would actually mean in terms of increased tourism. One would hope that a business confederation could be capable of presenting a sound business case in favour of more courses, just as one would hope that the Muro course developers could do the same. If so, then where is it?

Beyond the claims and the prospects of some employment being created, the pro-golf lobby has failed to win hearts and minds by pointing to serious numbers. Were it to, then it might do better in the propaganda war with the anti-golf lobby, bolstered recently by a report from an international organisation (the Ramsar Convention on wetlands) which recommends that Muro should definitely be scrapped because of the environmental impact. Furthermore, it is the no-to-golf side which attempts to come up with figures that dispute the yes-to-golf's arguments.

In September the environmental watchdog GOB produced what it reckoned was proof that golf does nothing to increase low-season tourism. Based on hotel occupancy figures, it argued that were there golf tourism demand in the likes of Alcúdia or Pollensa then hotels would be open, which with some exceptions they are not. It wasn't proof because GOB had overlooked non-hotel accommodation and figures from November to March, but it did nevertheless suggest that the quieter months of April and October did not show any real benefit from golf tourism.

Though tenuous, GOB's findings do deserve some attention, while more rigorous research for the off season would not go amiss. And to these findings, we have to take into account what appears to be the lack of a bedrock of support for golf in the local market. One wonders to what degree, if at all, the apparent unpopularity of golf is a reflection of the environmental case. It would also be interesting to know how many of the registered golfers in the Balearics are foreign residents.

What do local people think about the development of new courses? Are they ever asked? In Muro a flavour of opinion was evident in October last year when townspeople demonstrated against the possible demolition of the bungalows in Ses Casetes des Capellans. One prominent banner read: "A golf course is for the rich. Capellans is worth much more".

Local demand for golf is only part of the equation, but it cannot be overlooked. If one takes Muro's course, what might this demand be? Excluding the population of neighbouring Alcúdia, where a course exists, the combined population of Muro and its other neighbours - Santa Margalida, Sa Pobla, Búger and Llubi (where there are no courses) - is around 35,000. Extrapolating from the figures in the latest survey, this would mean a course that might attract 260 registered players. 260 across five towns. It doesn't sound like much of an argument for building a golf course. You would need an awful lot of golfing tourists to make it work. An awful lot of golfers that no one seems able to put a figure to. Crazy.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.