When Tourism Generations Collide

It's a photo from 4 July, 1978. A certificate and gold medal are being handed over. The recipient is King Juan Carlos I. The award-giver is the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorca Tourist Board). Two years later the king received another medal, a commemorative one to mark 75 years of the Fomento. Last year, a similar award was made to the king's son. Felipe VI, for his love of Mallorca, was to receive a medal in honour of the 110 years of the Fomento.

Two generations of royalty divided by more than a generation in time and in tourism culture, for which also read political culture. Curiously, though, when the Fomento's board gathered to consider its awards last year, a participant was the tourism minister, Biel Barceló, not someone automatically bracketed in the royalist camp. But the awards were not the government's, they were those of the Mallorca Tourist Board, an institution long marginalised yet sustained almost symbolically - a vital part of the island's heritage.

Sustainability and heritage. Both were to the fore as the tourism ministry delivered its own tourism awards on Monday. Symbolism was inadvertent in the choice of Es Baluard as the location. It was from this edifice of culture that the so-called anti-tourist guided tour (an oddity in itself) had started two days before. This was a "route" which Barceló, also perhaps inadvertently, had helped to foster. Tourism politicians need to take greater care when mentioning the word "saturation".

The generational shift in tourism and political cultures has been immense. Juan Carlos received his medals at a time when Mallorca and Spain were grappling with the meaning of democracy. It was a time also when Mallorca was starting to truly debate its model of tourism. The years of uncontrolled construction demanded such a debate. The medals, one can suggest, were representative of "old" tourism, symbolised by the Fomento. Organisationally and politically, it was to become sidelined by the political institutionalism of tourism - regional government and the first tourism ministry from 1983.

The "new" tourism has undergone its twists and turns, and the most recent was on the way to Es Baluard for the Night of Tourism, a gala event crafted from the rocks of heritage and from the philosophy of sustainability. Here is a word, sustainability, so often uttered that it is ceasing to have meaning. Or rather, it can mean whatever is required. New tourism deals in concepts of open meaning. "Quality" is another. Whenever did anyone - business, government or whatever - make a case for lack of quality or indeed promote it? Come to Mallorca, where quality is absent. The concept is redundant.

As I remarked over a month ago when considering these tourism awards ("And The Sustainable Tourism Winner Will Be?"), the night of tourism could easily be called the Biel night of tourism. The minister referred to the many challenges, to the government's determination for there to be responsibility, to the pride in Balearic land and people. "This is what makes us say with pride that we are Mallorcans, Menorcans, Ibizans and Formenterans. We have been and are a land of welcome, inclusive and able to attract people from across the globe to admire natural and patrimonial aspects that we are making unique and infrastructures that are turning us into pioneers."

The awards were the tourist tax in physical form. There is and has been misunderstanding about the purposes to which its revenue will be allocated. Enshrined in law - that for the sustainable tourism tax - are these purposes. Hence why, for example, there was an award for the Council of Formentera for an initiative designed to recover the countryside, the island's agricultural heritage. Why also there were awards for technological innovation - to Robinson Club Cala Serena for its alchemy in converting seawater, to solutions related to climate change, to the business application of social Big Data.

These awards underpin the tourist tax thinking, the latest "new" tourism. The purposes for the tax revenue can be derided, but they are evidence, if one likes, of whole-island touristic thinking and of the desire of a left-wing government to spread the wealth generated by tourism more widely.

Had there been a night of tourism under the previous government, the recipients, one imagines, would have been different. The "new" tourism of the PP was the founder of beach clubs, of resort transformation. The usual suspects would have been paraded by the PP. It is most unlikely that the hotel chamber maids collective would have been honoured.

It was a night to celebrate sustainability, to represent the "new" tourism. A world away from awards to royalty. Yet, who else received a Fomento award last year? Among them was Liberto Rigo, a veteran tour guide from the "Excursionist Group", a creation by the Fomento a hundred years ago, and one dedicated to patrimony, heritage, culture and nature. Old meets new.

Glittering Prizes: Tourism awards

It's that time of the year. Out of mothballs come the dicky bows and cummerbunds, the evening gowns and the tiaras (not I suppose that a tiara is ever in mothballs, but you get my drift). The awards ceremony season is upon us. The season for self-congratulation and honours. The glittering occasions for the great and good.

There are some awards you'd think they'd rather keep a bit quiet. Like Christmas bonuses being awarded to bankers, prizes for the local tourism industry might seem like bad PR. In fact, they did keep them rather quiet, as in, while the Fomento del Turismo awards event was reported, there was no mention as to who had actually been presented with the gongs. Even the Fomento's own website was silent on the matter.

The Fomento, aka the Mallorca Tourist Board, is a strange organization in that it is private, not a government body. Indeed it has at times suffered from less than marvellous relations with government, but this year there was tourism minister Joana Barceló together with the board's president and the winners. The photos proved that there were winners after all, but you would need to recognize them to know who they were.

Being unable to put names to them, there is no alternative. We're just going to have make our own up. The tourism awards to honour the outstanding year that 2010 has been. There are plenty of new categories this year, which demonstrate that 2010 has been a year of genuine innovation. So here goes ...

The Guinness Book Of Records Award to the shortest-serving tourism minister in history. And the winner was ... Yes, Miguel Ferrer. 58 days in office. Sufficient time for his having been able to announce how bold he was going to be during the 18 months he would have at tourism's helm, only to be told to take his pen and clear off when he and the rest of his Unió Mallorquina party were shown the governmental door.

The Saddest Former Tourism Minister of 2010. It went to ... Miguel Ferrer. He was seen walking his dog in the streets of Alcúdia not long after his dismissal. He wandered down the Calle Mayor, past the town hall building where only a short time before he had reigned supreme as the town's mayor. Now out of two jobs, it was symbolic that the doors of the town hall were firmly shut.

The Whistling In The Dark To Keep Up Spirits Award was handed, as every year, to the Spanish national statistics office for its tireless efforts in producing tourism spend information that made everyone realize that things were much better than they thought.

The Ant and Dec I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of This Promotion Award was graciously accepted by Rafael Nadal whose luxury boat in which he cruised around the islands of the Balearics ("these islands of joy" went the advert) ran aground when the tourism ministry ran out of dosh.

(Following the presentation to Nadal, there was a musical interlude when a Corrs tribute act performed the advert's song. If it wasn't they who had done the original, it didn't half sound like them.)

The David Attenborough Award for Natural Phenomena in a Tourism Context was handed to the country of Iceland, which served to prove how effective a small bit of God-forsaken ice and rock in the North Atlantic can be in bringing the entire tourism industry to a halt.

The FIFA Award for Moral Certitude went to the Balearics own tourism ministry for having made anti-corruption investigation the islands' one growth industry, thus providing a legacy of which the ministry can be proud.

And a special, last-minute presentation, the Throwing A Sicky 'Cos We Only Earn Some 400 Grand A Year Award, was sheepishly received by Spanish air-traffic controllers and was met with rapturous applause when they were swiftly also handed notice of disciplinary proceedings.

All in all, a year of great achievement, and after the awards event all those attending went back to their hotel. Booking one had been a little difficult as there were hardly any open, but one was found and suitably enough it was of course all-inclusive.

Here's to an even better 2011.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.