The Illogic Of Mallorca's Tourism

There are two organisations in Mallorca which above all others deserve being listened to when it comes to tourism issues. Neither may be totally independent - (which organisation can be?) - but each does its best in being objective. The organisations are the Chamber of Commerce and the Universitat de les Illes Balears. They strive for objectivity, and one reason why they generally succeed in doing so is because they both undertake their own research.

Antoni Riera, professor of applied economics at the university, has been making some observations about the nature of Mallorca's tourism, drawing on a study that was undertaken last summer. The findings will come as no surprise, but they will be findings which, in certain respects, will be ignored. A key one has to do with private accommodation tourism, aka holiday lets. Tourists who rent accommodation spend on average 30% more than tourists who stay in hotels. This is spend which is necessary. It is what keeps a great number of the almost 50,000 tourist-related businesses (the complementary sector and tourism services) going.

Who will be doing the ignoring? Those who are not objective; the regional government being among them. The hoteliers will also want to ignore the findings except to point out that this rental market is partly illegal and unfair competition. It is unfair in different ways, one being that the accommodation is generally cheaper. And so it may well be. But that is the reason why those doing the renting can spend 30% more than the hotel-based tourist.

This 30% figure is striking not just in that it shows a much higher level of spending. It is also very similar to the figure for the total spend by tourists in Mallorca that ends up with the complementary sector. That figure is 29%. Where does the rest go? On hotel accommodation and price of the holiday package.

It needs to be noted that the hotel part of the equation includes all type of board and so not only all-inclusive, but all-inclusive has exacerbated the situation and quite dramatically so. Economic crisis brought about a significant increase in the level of AI. The consequence has been that, although Mallorca has registered record numbers of tourists in the past couple of years and has in fact registered record levels of turnover, the level of spend has declined and is continuing to decline. All-inclusives have seen to this and will continue to see to this.

As I say, none of this will come as a surprise. Indeed, none of it is new. But it sometimes needs organisations with real credibility to try and get the message across. The trouble is that they are consistently ignored, as was the Chamber of Commerce when it issued a report in 2006. This looked at the level of private accommodation holiday rental. One of the report's conclusions was that spending behaviour between hotel and rental tourists represented two distinct profiles. The former spent less than the latter. Another conclusion was that rental tourism lengthened the tourism season (the hoteliers have consistently said that it doesn't). A further conclusion was that a "more stable" tourist resort required a capacity for rental tourism.

We were given grand figures this week for the economic contribution of all-inclusives. 2.5 billion euros. At least there was an admission that the lion's share of this comprised the cost of hotel accommodation and the package. I've been seemingly banging my head against a brick wall for years trying to explain that spend statistics primarily consist of these costs. Just as others, like the Chamber of Commerce and the university, have been trying to explain that there is a vast tourism population which contributes negligible amounts to the local economy and that there is a significant tourism population which stays in rental accommodation which contributes a great deal to the local, non-hotel economy. If there was any logic to Mallorca's tourism, you would think that someone in government might reflect on the model of the island's tourism and conclude that the all-eggs-in-the-hotel-basket model is not necessarily the best model.

But then, when did logic have anything to do with anything? If it did, then the government would accept that there are distinct profiles of tourist, as the Chamber of Commerce noted in 2006, and as Professor Riera has reiterated this past week. One profile being that which makes a telling contribution to the general economy and another one which doesn't.

Doctoring Nadal

During this week the Tramuntana has been transformed into a Christmas card scene. Absent from its snowy peaks, though, was Mallorca's Mr. Christmas (Sr. Nadal). He was in Miami and was thus spared the snowballs of the press being lobbed in his general direction. It was a difficult week for Rafael the red-faced racket-player who declined to go down in history by becoming the first sportsperson to accept an honorary doctorate from the Universitat de les Illes Balears.

The source of the boy Nadal's embarrassment was the succession of volleys fired over the net of the university management council's decision earlier this month to award the doctorate. When the press did finally manage to catch up with him in Florida, he explained that his life was just fine without a doctorate. Which it almost certainly is, so why disrupt this wonderful life by bothering to make space in the Nadal trophy warehouse for an honorary mortar board with accompanying gown?

At the heart of the rumpus - supposedly - was whether Nadal was deserving of the award. He is only a sportsperson, after all. Had he added to his sporting achievements by presenting a thesis on the aerodynamics of belting a small yellow thing over some netting, then that would have been all right. But no, all he had done was win the odd tennis tournament.

The university rector Llorenç Huguet, only in the post for a few months, has been learning, as did his predecessor, the late Montserrat Casas, that there is more to this running-a-university malarkey than smiling nicely when handing over certificates. There are the politics as well, and Huguet suggested that elements on the university governing council (as distinct to its management council) had been the ones who had "dynamited" the doctorate. Rafa had been blown up.

With the press and its readership also none too certain that the doctorate was merited, Nadal added to his wonderful-life statement by saying that, in the absence of unanimity at the governing council, he would decline the offer. And more light was shed on these dissident elements on the council by Miguel Deyá, who is the regional government's director-general for universities. He described them as "anti-Spanish". Because Nadal "feels Spanish" and has shown himself to be, the anti-mob wanted nothing to do with him. Or at least I think this was what he was on about (and Nadal is a Real Madrid fan).

Perhaps with this rather odd observation in mind, Huguet moved the tramlines in justifying the original decision. Nadal was deserving not just because of his sporting achievement but also because he should be considered part of the culture - Balearics culture, that is. Whether he is or he isn't, advantage was with the governing council dissidents, and Huguet and Nadal duly lost. Game, set and match to the anti-Spanish.

The 781-Year-Old Professor: Ramon Llull

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been fortunate in being entertained by political daftness and political cock-up. In the town of Porreres, the Més leftist grouping wanted to impose a charge on any householder who hung a Santa Claus up on the front of the house (it was a means of tackling what Més considered to be a "plague" of Santas in the town). Then there was the gift which keeps on giving, namely the estate agent education minister Joana Maria Camps, who gave us the international tread-on report into educational performance (the "trepitja", meaning tread on, versus PISA translation muddle). Now, and proving that daftness and ignorance aren't confined to Mallorca, we have the case of some advisor or other at the national education and culture ministry who has rung up the university in Palma to enquire about a salary.

The university, as is common with many universities, has a Chair, and a Chair, in university parlance, means a professorship. The university may have several Chairs for all I know, but it is one Chair in particular that has come to the attention of the national ministry. The Ramon Llull Chair.

Those of you who have followed my writings over the years may well remember my having mentioned Ramon Llull. He is a not unimportant person in Mallorca's history, but I have wondered about how important he is considered to be elsewhere. By which I have meant other countries. I have assumed that Llull would have been considered important and well known elsewhere in Spain, especially to someone who works for the national education and culture ministry.

Llull, in case you need reminding, was alive in mediaeval times. He was born in 1232 and died either in 1315 or 1316 (more on this below). As such therefore, it is unlikely - nay, impossible - for him to occupy the Chair at the university that is named after him. And this, the naming, gets us to the point of the story. The advisor at the ministry wanted to know what salary this Ramon Llull person was receiving. The Chair, or the director of it anyway, is in fact someone called Joan Antoni Mesquida who is also the director of Catalan philology at the university and so is not Ramon Llull, who died almost 700 years ago and who was born getting on for 800 years ago. The advisor was informed of the name of the director, and his interlocutor decided it wasn't worth spending the time trying to explain to him who Ramon Llull was. One trusts that the advisor doesn't now confuse this Joan Mesquida with the one who was once national secretary-general for tourism and national director-general for the National Police and Guardia Civil. For if he does, the hilarity factor will be raised higher.

Of course, this all been meat and drink to those of a Catalanist tendency (and even to those who aren't). It is indicative of a lack of appreciation of all things educationally and culturally Catalan by the anti-Catalanists in Madrid and those in particular in the department of national education minister José Ignacio Wert (though he, one rather suspects, would know who Ramon Llull was; or would he?).

It could be said it was a simple enough mistake, but then this could have been said of Joana Camps translating PISA into tread on. It was a mistake which shouldn't have been made, and political capital has been made out of it by the same political grouping, Més, which is bothered about the plague of Father Christmases in Porreres. Its spokesperson at the Council of Mallorca made a point of pointing out the mistake, accusing the national ministry and therefore the Partido Popular of being insensitive to Catalan cultural matters. This was done at a Council session to declare the years 2015 and 2016 as the years of Ramon Llull.

Years? Why should the old boy have more than one? Well, for a kick-off the Bishop of Mallorca had proposed some twelve months ago that there be more than one year, and it was a proposal, one imagines, to get round the arguments as to when Llull actually died. The Bishop suggested the "year" should cover two years - from November to November - which would mean from and to 27 November, which is Ramon's feast day. But the starting-point in November will be five months after when it is normally thought that Llull died. i.e. on 29 June, 1315. One says normally thought, but there is a good deal of evidence which suggests that he died quite a bit later; in 1316 in fact.

Anyway, whenever he died or didn't, he will be getting two years to his name, and one hopes that his name will become better known than it currently is, especially among advisors to the national education and culture ministry. "Hello, can I speak to Ramon Llull, please ..."

Tourism Without Tourists

If you were Mallorcan and were of an age to be going to university, you might fancy a few years at the Universitat de les Illes Balears studying tourism. The university has a strong reputation for tourism, Mallorca's main industry is tourism, so a degree should set you up nicely. Or so you might think.

There is a fair old debate going on as to the value of the tourism degree. It has been criticised for not being orientated to the tourism market itself, while obtaining a degree appears to be no guarantee of getting a job any grander than that of receptionist, assuming a job can be got at all.

It's a familiar story of course, and one not solely confined to a tourism degree or to university studies in Mallorca. But tourism is after all what Mallorca does, and the number of places on the degree course is not that high (400), so you would indeed think that something decent, career-wise, might come at the end of it.

Picking over the bones of the debate, however, another criticism emerges, and it is one of the choice of the course in the first place. Tourism, a bit like teaching (or certainly how teaching once was in the UK), is a career to get into mainly because it's there. It is a default choice. But it would seem that students embark on the degree not really appreciating what it entails.

I'm not surprised they aren't aware what the course involves. The document which sets it out runs to an excruciating 247 pages of tables, flowcharts and verbiage. Students, either before or during their studies, are not generally inclined to read what they are meant to; I can say this with some authority, as I certainly never did.

Even assuming they do read it, what do they expect to get from the course? The simple answer is a good job. But what job? This is the nub of the problem, or one of the nubs.

One can draw a comparison between tourism and publishing. I have been asked in the past for advice about "getting into publishing", to which the response has always been - what do you mean by publishing? It's the same with tourism; what is meant by it and what is meant by jobs within the industry?

Were students to read the entire prospectus for the course, they might get an inkling. Without detailing the whole course, some of its key modules cover marketing, management, finance, law and languages. English and either French or German are mandatory, but previous reports on the English-speaking abilities of students leaving the university suggest that two-thirds of them struggle with the language to the point of not understanding it.

But this isn't necessarily surprising. A multi-disciplinary tourism course makes its students Jacos of several trades and maestros of none, other than tourism, or so they might believe.

Yet, amidst the law and the management of the course, there is something which is glaring by its omission. Nowhere does there appear to be anything about the tourist himself. You can learn about some mechanics and operations of tourism but nothing about what it's like to be a tourist. Arguably, this is what the course should be about. Students in Mallorca may have some idea of what it's like to be a tourist, if they have been one, but can have no appreciation of what it's like to be a tourist in Mallorca or little appreciation of the cultures and backgrounds of the people they would hope to be make a living off.

Where are, for example, cultural studies in the tourism course? Cultural studies of the British, the Germans, the Russians or whoever. You come back, therefore, to the criticism that the course is not orientated to the market and therefore the people - the tourists - who make up the market.

Tourism is ultimately about people and understanding their needs and demands. I can think of managers in hotels in Mallorca who certainly didn't study tourism in their home countries, if they studied at university at all. They came to Mallorca and got jobs in the likes of entertainment. And because they were any good, they rose a managerial ladder. Crucially, though, they know about tourists and tourists from different cultures.

I can sympathise, however, with the students. The course seems like a reflection of much of what passes for a general debate about Mallorca's tourism. It is one in which tourism is somehow remote from its raw material, the tourists themselves. It's extraordinary, as though there is tourism but without tourists.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Squeezing Lemons: Puerto Pollensa wants a tourism study

The protest against conditions in Puerto Pollensa at the start of June has led to there being meetings between the town hall and representatives of businesses and residents in Puerto Pollensa. At the latest meeting the town hall decided to invite the university in Palma to investigate reasons why the port has been losing tourists and its image (as reported in "The Diario").

When all fails, call for a study, but there is an obstacle: Mayor Cerdà doesn't know who will pay for it. Which just goes to prove that money can indeed not buy everything, if you don't have any. There is an awful lot of everything in Pollensa that cannot be paid for.

The mayor says that he doesn't know whether the tourism problem is as a result of tourists deciding against staying in the port, of the tour operators going elsewhere, of a bad image or of inadequate hotels. Things he might know are that there has been a recession, that the British market, upon which Puerto Pollensa is over-reliant, has been particularly affected, that the pound has been weak. Any study would have to establish that there was a discernible downward trend BC (before crisis). If there wasn't, then the mayor might think a study to be a waste of time and money, were there any. Its mere suggestion smacks of a dose of PR and of attempting to mollify the Moll revolutionaries.

There is a colossal amount of garbage spoken about the apparent malaise that has laid Puerto Pollensa low. Garbage being one aspect, along with what you'd rather not tread on and even, for God's sake, road signs not pointing people in the direction of the Moll. All of it is irrelevant. Cerdà's unknown unknowns are not all unknown. Funnily enough, yes, tour operators do choose to go elsewhere. And perhaps some of the hotels aren't up to scratch. Perhaps there simply aren't enough hotels, a point to which the revolutionaries have alluded.

But let's suppose a study were to be conducted. What do you think would happen? Chances are that the hefty tome of a report would gather dust on shelves somewhere in the improved town hall building that cost a mere couple of million euros along with shelved tourism ideas, such as the lunatic notion of using the image of Agatha Christie to promote Puerto Pollensa. Whatever happened to that? Let me hazard a guess. It would have cost an arm, a leg and the equivalent of several studies by the university to dosh up for image rights.

Research is fine. Nothing wrong with it, so long as it is meaningful and might result in some action. Trouble is that in Puerto Pollensa they do research, and have done so for some time. Remember? June 29 last year - "The Lemon Tree". That was about the questionnaire of tourism satisfaction that does the rounds. I doubted then that anything was done with the survey results, and I doubt it even more now. So, Pollensa town hall, go find some money down the back of the mayoral sofa, hand it over to the university and wait for another bunch of lemons. Ridiculous.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.