Margin Of Error: Tourist satisfaction

Opinion surveys can with some justification be said to only provide a snapshot of opinion, but companies which conduct them will always point to the professionalism of market researchers and the rigour of their methodologies, for which margins of error are taken into account and indeed duly noted.

The most recent Gadeso survey of tourist satisfaction had a maximum margin of error of five per cent either way plus a 95.5% level of confidence. What that means is that if other batches of people were surveyed, 95.5 times out of 100 there would be the same results within a five per cent margin. The original survey results can therefore be said to be if not totally definitive, then more or less definitive.

The survey only asked 400 people. Of all the millions of tourists who come to Mallorca, that sounds like a pretty small sample. It is, but within the market research industry (and a similar process is observable with all the statistics about tourist spend, etc. that are trotted out), there is an accepted standard for providing "reliable" data. The margin of error is that standard. For 400 people, the margin is defined as five per cent. The greater the sample, the lower the margin.

This explanation, whether of course you accept it or not, means that the satisfaction survey is sound in statistical terms. The problem, and this is the case with tourist spending surveys, is that the research is based on random sampling. Again, the margin of error would maintain that there is reliability, but of the millions who come to Mallorca, to be boiled down to 400 and to be representative of highly diverse backgrounds is a method that does make one wonder.

But let's say that the survey was pretty much accurate. If so, it doesn't provide for particularly encouraging reading. Despite the improvements that have been and are being made, the general level of satisfaction stubbornly refuses to increase. There are factors which start from higher base levels of satisfaction, such as the overall approval for accommodation, but this higher base is skewed through elevated appreciation of the non-mainstream, e.g. rural accommodation, to which can be added the newest element in the survey, that of the holiday rental. Both these secure significantly greater scores than hotels. In the case of holiday rentals, this should tell its own story of refuting claims that they are of a low standard, while hoteliers - for all their investment - are discovering that the punter isn't impressed enough to push the satisfaction rating upwards.

The factors which more than others drag the satisfaction level down are lack of cleanliness, noise and the "gastronomic and commercial offers": these are bars, restaurants and shops to you and me. As with all the time, effort, investment and publicity directed towards hotel improvements, so gastronomy, we are told repeatedly, has undergone something of a revolution. It may indeed have, but the revolution seems to have passed tourists by. As for the price-quality ratio of this "specialised offer", it is the worst performing factor of all. Ouch!

Of all the findings, it is the one about returning to Mallorca that perhaps offers the greatest alarm. This is down quite markedly from 2014, insofar as a 3.2% fall can be described as being marked, which the market research industry would insist that it can be. What does one conclude from this decline? Is it because of the numbers of tourists who, through a form of holidaying Hobson's choice, have abandoned other destinations, come to the safe haven of Mallorca and found it less than wholly satisfying? Hard to say, but if this is the case, then it is some confirmation of the fear that Mallorca is living through a time of plenty thanks only to the travails of others. 

Another type of snapshot of opinion, social media, provides an insight into what people on the island make of all this. If tourists are so apparently dissatisfied, then why are they coming? There was one comment from a shop owner who berated tourists (all of them?) for being rude. Unfortunately, it may be that rudeness or lack of good service which leads to the "commercial offer" being rated as low as it is.

But amidst those who join in on what for some is currently high season for tourist-baiting (nothing to actually do with the survey as such), there are others who are in agreement. There is an issue with cleanliness, for instance. And as for the hoteliers, they're just out for what they can make. No change there then, when it comes to a general local perception of the hotel industry.

Is the static level of satisfaction a reason to be concerned? Maybe it is, but I can't help but feel that if the same survey were to be conducted in some specific locations the levels would be considerably higher. Margin of error or not.

Tourist Satisfaction Not Guaranteed

We are told, repeatedly, that things have never been better for peak-summer tourism. In they come, the holidaymakers, great droves of them, boosting occupancy levels in some resorts to 100% (a figure which may be given but which is only truly attained in specific instances and never resort-wide). More passengers than ever before have passed through Son Sant Joan. The "irregular" offer of holiday accommodation is booming in much the same way as the legitimate offer is. But this joyous news is, as always, tempered by realities created by all-inclusives and of genuine spend. It may well be up, but the spread is not uniform.

It is also tempered by concerns that there are simply too many people. The strains on services, on infrastructure, on the environment are such that the regional government appears willing to consider what has not previously been unthinkable but which has not been acted upon or at least seen through: a deliberate and concerted strategy aimed at reduction, offset, the government would hope, by a smoothing of tourist numbers to create a longer season.

While the politicians agonise over this human and environmental pressure, dabble with financial engineering (tourist tax, off-season social security discounts) and constantly utter the mantra of a tourist base of greater quality, the hoteliers have been hard at it, raising their game along with their star classifications and so prices. Profit is up, turnover is up. Tour operators are gladdened by the upward trend in the quality of hotel stock. Mallorca may be more expensive - hotel-wise - than most of the Mediterranean, but to the advantages of reliability, safety and durability can be added this recent qualitative leap.

But if this is all the case, why are the people who really matter - the holidaymakers - not more satisfied? Are the strains causing them to be less satisfied? Are they more discerning, more demanding than ever before? Is dissatisfaction simply the result of their not having been asked before?

Gadeso, the Mallorcan research organisation, does ask tourists. It has been asking for a few years now. It isn't alone. Cala Millor is an example of a resort having finally cottoned on to the need to conduct surveys with the objective - it might be hoped - of the opinion-asking being more than just PR. But the surveying is limited; Gadeso's sample base is small - only 400 interviews.

Given the size of the sample, should the latest tourist satisfaction survey be considered credible? Can it ever be truly representative of what is, after all, a highly diverse market? Tourists form anything but a homogeneous market. It is one that differs in every way imaginable: demographics, attitudes, country of origin, expectations, to cite just a few.

The findings, therefore, come with this caveat. Nevertheless, there are worrying trends. Take the upping of the quality ante and of prices. The price-quality ratio for accommodation is deemed "adequate" (six out of ten), but it is slipping by a point year upon year. It's impossible to know if this is as a consequence of higher prices or of, for example, a more demanding attitude, one that may be influenced by experiences in other destinations. Whatever the cause, despite the efforts to raise quality, the satisfaction level stubbornly continues to drop.

It is when one leaves the hotel, however, that things go decidedly pear-shaped. The price-quality ratio satisfaction for the "specialised" offer - restaurants, beach services, shops, sports facilities, leisure activities - has gone from "deficient" to "very deficient" (2.9 out of ten). Gadeso supports this finding by referring to excessively high prices for food and shopping that are "repetitive and outmoded". It is an embarrassing finding, given that gastronomy is supposedly one of the great saviours of Mallorca's tourism.

Then there is what may be evidence of those strains of human pressure. Down have gone assessments for water quality (the sea's), for air pollution, for the general environment. Down also are opinions on what previous surveys had already identified as the two most deficient factors - cleanliness and noise (acoustic contamination).

Palma's new mayor, José Hila, has identified filth as a major problem for the city, and his administration is making efforts in rectifying this. But is Palma unique? Cast an eye around and observe, for example, plastics recycling containers that are overflowing and so not emptied often enough. Has it not occurred to anyone that there is high plastics waste on account of all those bottles of water and drinks being purchased? This is only one example, and standards of waste collection will doubtless vary from resort to resort, as will complaints about noise.

Gadeso cannot be taken as being definitive, but it is an indication. As such, therefore, it should serve not as the definitive word but as the starting-point. There should be far greater systematic surveying of visitors: resort by resort.

The Decline In Tourist Satisfaction

Tourism, it is an obvious thing to say, is nothing without tourists. Ah yes, tourists; all too often, it seems, the last people that certain elements of the tourism industry pay any attention to. Gadeso, the Mallorcan research organisation, has to be praised for being something of a rarity. It actually surveys tourists. Hears what tourists have to say. There should be very much more of this questioning and listening. Gadeso's is one survey. Its results can be disputed, but they are nonetheless worthy of attention. They don't make for very good reading.

The Gadeso survey of tourist satisfaction is limited, this much has to be said. The number interviewed is only 400, but the organisation is confident that the number is representative and that the margin of error from its results is no more and no less than 5%. The headlining part of the latest is that satisfaction continues its downward creep. Year after year, overall contentment with Mallorca slips. Not greatly by any means, but it slips all the same.

If you go through the survey, there are winners and losers as far as tourists are concerned. The biggest losers are the hotels and the complementary offer, i.e. the non-hotel sector. The biggest winners are agrotourism, rural hotels and residential private accommodation. The hoteliers will hate the fact that the latter of these has a higher satisfaction rating. They should also hate the fact that were it not for these three sectors of the industry, satisfaction with Mallorca would be very much lower. Agrotourism and rural hotels beat regular tourist hotels by almost two points out of ten.

The complementary offer, split into five components for the purpose of the survey, fares just as badly as the hotels. The greatest satisfaction is reserved for services on beaches and for recreational activities, though both of these show a downward trend. It is gastronomy, used here in a general way to refer to bars and restaurants, that shows one of the largest falls in satisfaction. Put alongside an overall rating of only three out of ten for the price-to-quality ratio for the complementary sector, you begin to get an appreciation of why satisfaction with bars and restaurants is in decline. It's all about price.

Indeed, it is price which is probably the most significant finding. The hotels, despite dissatisfaction in other ways, rate pretty well when it comes to the price-quality ratio, but Gadeso concludes that this is largely because of all-inclusive. Price is the prime motivation for coming to Mallorca. It rates almost 16 percentage points above sun and beach in second place. Yet, this seems curious when there appears to be dissatisfaction with prices in bars and restaurants. It isn't curious when you throw all-inclusives into the mix, and of those in the survey who had booked all-inclusive in Mallorca, almost 60% had done so for the first time this summer. Price, price, price.

This doesn't necessarily mean that these tourists will be returning. All-inclusive package holidaymakers say that it would depend both on the resort and the characteristics of the hotel, and what is meant by these characteristics is that some hotels simply don't seem to have made adequate preparation for offering all-inclusive. There is also the question as to where they are located. The intention among tourists to be repeat visitors to Mallorca has fallen by four percentage points over the past two years. The intention to be repeat visitors to the same tourism zone is as low as 16.4%. Why? The nature of many resorts, i.e. their maturity and/or obsolescence. It might seem perverse that all-inclusive holidaymakers should care that much about the state of the resorts, given the assumption that many don't go out of the hotel grounds, but they do.

There are other findings which should make the island's tourism industry take note. Levels of cleanliness are considered to be deficient. Levels of acoustic contamination - noise, in other words - are too great. And, cutting to the bone of the notion that Mallorca is a destination for cultural tourism, cultural facilities are found to also be deficient. As Gadeso says at the start of its report that there is "the necessity to improve our product". It's hard to argue with the statement.

All A Bit Academic: Tourist satisfaction in Mallorca

Mallorca claims second spot in tourist satisfaction with sun and beach destinations. Only the Caribbean beats it. This is one of the findings from research by Jaume Garau at the University of the Balearic Islands in Palma. "The Diario" has gone quite big on reporting this research - both the things that satisfy tourists and those which dissatisfy.

On the face of it, coming second to the Caribbean and ahead of places like Turkey, Greece, France, the Canaries sounds like good news - and it probably is. But having come up with this finding, what will anyone do with the results?

The research itself is published in the "Annals of Tourism Research", though the comparative findings (between different destinations) are not included in the paper to be found there. They must be published separately. The comparison seems to have been made by asking interviewees at Palma airport to rate destinations they had been to in recent years (including Mallorca).

There are conclusions which might be thought to have practical consequences. While the island's sun and beach tourism gets approval from a German-British-Spanish research population, there is less satisfaction with other things, such as local cuisine, culture and historical places and nightlife. But a question that follows is to what extent does satisfaction imply interest. One could say that what Garau has revealed is precisely what many, including myself, have long argued, and that is that it is the core brand of the Balearics and Mallorca - sun and beach - which is of greater importance to the tourist than other aspects, like gastronomy or culture.

While the main findings have been reported in one article, another looks at what dissatisfies tourists. And this is potentially quite revealing, and especially for the distinction it draws between Mallorca tourism "veterans" and those new to the island or islands. Among the old-hands, it is the apparent deterioration in the physical landscape - too much construction, too much noise, too much traffic etc. - that is the cause of dissatisfaction. For the newbies, it is prices. The veterans, however, seem to have little problem with these. Significantly perhaps, the research was actually conducted in 2006, i.e. B.C. - before crisis. It would, in a hypothetical world, be interesting were the same population of tourism veterans to be asked their views now as to prices. But even without this, the research has at least applied some academic rigour to the contentious issue of prices, one that is normally only dealt with via anecdote.

What the researchers are at pains to point out is that unlike surveys which seek measures of satisfaction alone, theirs has included measures of dissatisfaction as well. It is these, they argue, that need to be taken into account in determining a tourist's intention to return. They also argue that dissatisfaction is not the opposite of satisfaction (bet you didn't know this) in referring to the fact that interviewees who express satisfaction can also express dissatisfaction about the same thing.

The problem with this research, as is typically the case with academia, is that its purpose is not necessarily meant to be practical. The overriding objective is to establish the excellence of the research, the methodology and the need to do more research. Extracting the practical is possible, but it isn't easy, and for this reason, though the research is probably quite important, one wonders if anyone much, outside of academia, will really take much notice.

* Joaquín Alegre and Jaume Garau, "Tourist Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction", Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 37 No. 1 2010, Elsevier.


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