Airbnb Myths: Correct Or Not?

The study, "Myth and Reality of Holiday Rentals in the Balearic Islands", should be an important contribution to the holiday rentals' debate. The work of two researchers at the university, Professor José Luis Groizard and Associate Professor William Nilsson, it is valuable because it deals with facts. It is also a product of the university's applied economics department, which has been responsible for excellent tourism research in the past.

Groizard and Nilsson know how to hook their audience. The full report, of which I have a copy, starts by saying: "the negative consequences of holiday rentals (and of Airbnb in particular) have been exaggerated." Straight to the point, therefore.

They examine eight myths and generally speaking dismantle them all. Holiday rentals generate an unsustainable increase in tourist stays; they create an underground economy and tax evasion; they lead to residents leaving urban centres (the so-called gentrification); they increase the price of housing; they reduce the availability of rental accommodation in the long term; they destroy the landscape by enabling speculation on rural land; they provide unfair competition to hotels; they create wealth outside of the Balearics.

To get to the nitty-gritty of the facts, the researchers establish that in August last year there were over 15,000 properties in Mallorca on the Airbnb website. Debugging this data (for duplications for example), the number was 12,136 offering some 63,000 places. These numbers are in fact very similar to those provided by the environmentalists Terraferida, based on Airbnb data for January 2016.

When Terraferida made its announcement, there was sensationalism attached. The tone of the university's research is different. But it should be noted that Terraferida then updated its research. In March this year, the group revealed that the number of places in Mallorca had climbed to 110,000 and the number of properties to getting on for 15,000: in the region, therefore, of an 80% increase in places in the course of a year.

For a piece of academic work, which might typically be devoid of headline-grabbing statements, Groizard and Nilsson are prone to doing just this. In addition to that opening statement about the exaggerated consequences, they state under Myth One: "It isn't Airbnb, it is the Arab Spring and Islamic terrorism!" (the exclamation mark is theirs). They say that since 2011 there has been an increase in the number of tourist stays in the Balearics and Spain and point, rightly enough, to a 15% increase in tourism to Spain which has been a consequence of the problems in other destinations.

But what they don't show is the growth of Airbnb since the time it first became a feature in Mallorca. I recall doing an article about Airbnb, which must have been about five or six years ago, that referred to a very modest number of properties. It was around fifty, if I remember rightly; whatever the number, it was negligible. So while geopolitics is unquestionably a reason why there are more tourists, Airbnb is also a factor. It isn't one or the other.

Airbnb isn't of course the only means of publicising properties. It may be the best known, but there are numerous other means for owners to advertise, always accepting that they may well be promoting the same property on different sites. As the two professors provide some evidence that Terraferida's figures for 2016 were rigorous, it is legitimate to assume that Terraferida's latest figures are also reasonably accurate: an 80% increase in places cannot be put down solely to those geopolitics.

The study is important, and the professors do make very valid points, but perhaps the main issue they overlook is the propensity for the growth of the rentals' market. And its very sudden growth and all the consequences this has.

Is The Medical Faculty Really Needed?

They were handing out awards the other evening. While Hollywood was congratulating itself, in Mallorca there were congratulations for, among others, Real Mallorca - an award for longevity, one supposes.

These were the Ramon Llull prizes and Gold Medal. They are dished out each year to coincide with Balearics Day. Because it is the Balearics and not just Mallorca, there are awards for the other islands. The Ibiza university school of tourism and the Mahon Philharmonic got gongs as well. Good for them.

The highest award of this gala event at Palma's Teatre Principal was the Gold Medal. This is the award that carries the greatest distinction in the autonomous community that is the Balearics. It went to a doctor, Oriol Bonnín, who has devoted the past generation to being one of the islands' leading heart surgeons. Asked about the possibility (his name has been mentioned) of his becoming the first dean of the medical faculty at the University of the Balearic Islands, he said that there are those who are better prepared than he is for such a role.

That the medical faculty should crop up was inevitable. Might it, some years down the line, receive a Ramon Llull just like the Ibiza tourism school did the other evening? If the politicians have anything to do with it, then yes. The politicians who support it, that is. Because of Bonnin's standing in the medical profession, he was bound to have been asked the question. Though he seems less than interested in the post of dean, he is a strong supporter of the faculty. It is something which, on the surface, would seem to be politically neutral. Something that is a "good thing". So why is there the fuss over it that there is?

The faculty has long been called for. There are only two regions of the country that don't have one: La Rioja and the Balearics. For a region, the Balearics, with one of the country's finest public health hospitals, a strong reputation for health care in any event and ambitions for health tourism, the absence of kudos from a medical faculty can seem anachronistic. A medical faculty brings it with it greater prestige, higher levels of professionalism, more rigorous research. It also has great advantages for those undertaking medical studies. A medical school in Mallorca will mean not being obliged to study on the mainland, with the attendant additional costs for studying that this entails.

It had already been announced that a course in medical studies would be introduced for the 2016-2017 university year. Despite this, it wasn't until a few days ago that the regional government formally approved the creation of the faculty. Such apparent lateness, given that the course would begin in September, has been offset to some extent by the fact that a joint committee from the university and regional ministries of education and health have been paving the way for the course since last September.

Back in February, the government announced that half a million euros would be budgeted for something that won't require new facilities as it will be integrated into the medical teaching unit at Son Espases. But also in February, Podemos launched a major assault on the plan for the faculty. This wasn't because the party was against it but because it argued that it was neither an educational nor a health priority. In one of the more coherent cases that Podemos has put forward in challenging a government decision, the party argued that it would still be the case that students would need to move to the mainland because of the limited number of places, that there were other disciplines as deserving of their own faculties as medicine, that a whole host of major organisations have been advising against the necessity for more medical faculties in Spain and that the budget to be diverted towards it could be prejudicial to existing faculties and research at the university.

Above all, Podemos challenged the decision-making process that was to lead to the government's ultimate approval. Different options needed to have been presented with "transparency" and only once they were understood could a decision be taken. Essentially, it was arguing that the decision had come not from the education ministry but from the health ministry, and Podemos has had its issues with that ministry because of the alleged nepotism over the appointment of Juli Fuster as director-general of IB-Salut.

The budget for the initial course has since been increased by 100,000 euros, and the budget is just one source of what has become a row between Podemos and the government that is every bit as raw as the one over the tourist tax. Money should be devoted to primary care, scholarships and social needs, Podemos argues.

Is the faculty simply a prestige project for the government? For Podemos, it would seem that it is.

Intelligent Tourism: What are the Balearics doing?

While the regional government can give the impression that all it is concerned with is its arguments over the tourist tax, it does occasionally show signs of devoting itself to other tourism issues, one aspect of which is the use of technology. This said, the tourism technology equation has not been well managed over the years, and there hasn't been a great deal of evidence of improvement with the current government, as was typified by the flop with its demonstrating its tourism "escarparate turístico intelligente" showcase at London's World Travel Market. It wasn't that someone forgot to plug it in, they didn't bother taking it at all, despite making a song and dance about its appearance. The no-show, said the official version, was due to some "errors". These were due, apparently, to deficient information contained in this showcase, in particular that which town halls were meant to have input to the system, as well as poor translations. There are certain things which never get any better, and translating is one of them. What had they done? Tried putting into Google or Bing? Quite possibly.

The Balearic Tourism Agency said at the time that the information will be invaluable. It's impossible to say if it will be or it won't be. No one, apart from some ministry types and developers, has set eyes on this wonder of touristic technology. And they might not see it this year either.

This "escarparate turístico intelligente" is a system of touch screens (we are led to believe) that will give everything that could possibly be needed to be known about tourist resources in the Balearics. Where it might actually be deployed, other than at travel fairs, is another unknown. It is a project, the genesis of which was firmly with the previous government, and one goes back to 2012 when it was first being hailed as the great technological innovation of the modern tourism world.

The experience with the "escarparate" (which means showcase) might serve as something of a warning. That's because the government has this week signed an agreement for collaboration with the University of the Balearic Islands which has to do with the use of technology for tourism. Specifically, there is to be a project for the processing of "big data" in segmenting tourist product demand and individual overseas markets which provide the islands' tourists. There are also going to be multimedia projects, video projects, while market intelligence will be significantly enhanced.

If it sounds like a lot of jargon, then it probably is. But the warning should come from the fact that the "escarparate" involved, from the outset, the university. It then involved the Fundación Bit (or ParcBit, if you prefer). Which isn't to say that there aren't very good people at both the university and the technology park who can come up with some highly advanced tourism technology systems. But the fact that the "escarparate" remains a mystery requires some explaining, and it is the ministry which should be giving it. Why on earth have there been these "errors" and why has there been such a delay? Is it a case of the ministry being incapable of managing a project? Someone should say and hold up his or her hands.

Moreover, is it not about time that we heard from Biel Barceló, who is minister for innovation and research as well as for tourism, about what he's actually doing in respect of the coming-together of tourism and technology? When he appointed social media guru Benjamí Villoslada as director-general for technological development, it seemed a good move. Yet we know nothing of what Villoslada does. Indeed, apart from him being a fairly prolific user of Twitter, we never hear from him.

One element of the Fundación Bit's collaboration with the "escarparate" has been a "Twitter Report". We were first made aware of this a year ago and also made aware of the fact that tweets (almost ten million of them) had been analysed since August 2013. This is all an exercise in extracting something useful from the big data that Twitter and social media offer. But what are they doing with it? We now learn, because it has been reported this week, that a further eight million or so tweets in 2015 have been analysed. They will help to "optimise the strategy of our destination", says the director of the tourism agency, Miquel Ángel Roig. Which all sounds very impressive, but what actually is the strategy? Has it ever been elucidated?

Still, there may yet be a great deal of good to come from all of this. But it would help us all in assessing this goodness if the government were to adequately explain what it is doing with all this technological effort.

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.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.