Promoting Mallorcan Wine

Are you an enotourist? I don't mean are you a tourist in search of a one-time member of Roxy Music, I mean eno as in wine for oenophiles. Enotourism can also be oenotourism, vinitourism or, rather more clearly, wine tourism.

If you are an enotourist, then you may well recognise yourself from this little statistic. When you are gadding around sampling wines, you are also spending in a more healthy manner than the normal tourist (insofar as there is such a thing as a normal tourist). You spend, and you will of course know this, an average of 156.60 euros a day. Moreover, you spend this over the course of 2.65 days.

Aren't statistics wonderful? Although when the Wine Routes of Spain come out with this stuff, it is rather more believable than most tourist spending stats. A wine buff wouldn't be a wine buff if he or she didn't have a reasonable amount of spare disposable to splash out. After all, the enotourist when not on tour wouldn't be picking up a bottle of plonk for 2.50 at the local supermarket. Wine purchasing would require a special trip to a bodega and a well-credited plastic card in order to fill the car boot with a case or several of something distinctly superior to the 2.50 bottle.

Strangely enough, according to the Wine Routes, only 12% of that 156.60 goes on visits to bodegas. But this is just the cost of the visit. A further 19% is coughed up for wine itself. So, slightly less than 30 euros is spent per day on wine. But for 2.65 days, the total outlay is almost 80 euros. Which, one supposes, is a reasonable amount for one tourist to be spending. The only problem is that there is no information as to how many wine tourists there are, which begs a question as to how one can determine who is a wine tourist and who is a tourist who likes wine. Or maybe it doesn't matter.

Let's just conclude, shall we, that wine is a useful niche in the overall scheme of tourism things. And on mainland Spain there are any number of wine routes that can be followed. They are to be found in different parts of the country, the majority in the north and the others down towards Valencia and others in Extremadura and Andalusia. But when one says country, there is part of Spain which doesn't feature. Any guesses?

Seven years ago, the Chamber of Commerce in Mallorca produced a highly detailed report into tourist product niches. Enotourism was one of them. Whereas the report was able to give a number of tourists for many of these niches, enotourism was not among them.

Being able to identify and quantify any niche does help with the marketing, but with wine it is perhaps the case that the tourist is something of all-rounder. One only has to look at what else that 156.60 per day is spent on: bars and restaurants attract the highest spend, while there is also shopping, visits to museum and a sundry amount for "others". Most enotourists don't classify themselves as wine buffs. Wine, one might conclude therefore, is a tourism hook rather than being the sole tourism purpose.

This isn't altogether surprising. A different niche, and a more identifiable and quantifiable one, is the golfing tourist. And he or she spends more on the likes of restaurants than on golf. Which goes to prove perhaps that alternative low-season tourism is one that operates on the basis of a menu of options. Even cyclists, who are erroneously considered as a stereotype, spend money on gastronomy and other interests.

In the case of wine, though, it goes to the core of the government's agrarian slant to so-called sustainable tourism. Wine production is one of the most profitable if not the most profitable use of land. But just how well marketed is wine as a tourism niche? And how much support is there for it from the government? Although Mallorca doesn't feature among the Wine Routes of Spain, there are routes and there are companies dedicated to wine tourism. The government, though, seems to treat wine as it does most other niches. It lumps them together, talks vaguely about tackling seasonality and that's about that.

Wine tourism is important to the wine trade in Mallorca. It is known that it helps to boost wine exports, with Germany the biggest market. Yet the actual contribution to exports is modest, and the price of wine is staggeringly high compared to those regions where there are wine routes on the mainland - almost nine euros per litre, a price not helped by the high cost of grapes. Production will never be at the level on the mainland, bodegas will for the most part be boutique but they form part of an industry that could do with some more coherent promotion.

Sport For All (Except Mallorca)

The World Travel Market in London takes place from 8 to 11 November. What is described as "the premier global event for the travel industry" will this year be devoting considerable attention to sports tourism. Which is why the Balearics will be concentrating on promoting wine.

At the WTM a report on sports tourism will be launched, one that will present a "road map for lucrative opportunities within the sports tourism industry". According to the WTM organisation, sports tourism is flourishing where traditional tourism is in decline. It goes on to say that tourism boards need "to be more proactive in identifying events and activities which (will) attract visitors and promote their destination to a wider audience".

Sports tourism falls into two categories - spectator events and participation. The reporting of the WTM in November has focussed on the first, with particular attention being given to the "legacy" and "minefield" of major sporting events. For Mallorca, this is something of an irrelevance. There have been attempts, unsuccessful ones, at staging major events - well, one, the America's Cup - but otherwise they have been pipe dreams, such as Formula 1 in the streets of Palma. This was the brainwave of former president Jaume Matas. A trip he made to Valencia as part of this idea is just one of the many items that has cropped up in the list of allegations he faces.

Unfortunately, anything that smacks of something even vaguely "major" ends up smelling less than rosy. Another great Matas venture, the Palma Arena velodrome, was the prime cause of all the allegations that started to flow in his direction. The velodrome itself has hardly been a huge success. The Mallorca Classic golf tournament, from which the current government pulled the financing some three years ago, even managed to find itself caught up in corruption investigations when the police paid the Pula golf course a visit earlier this summer. Then there were the ambitions for Real Mallorca, further pipe dreams, those of the man with the piping business, Paul Davidson. All those tourists flocking to watch the team - so he had hoped. Last heard of, Davidson, having been removed from the board of his own company, was in the US looking to flog a gadget that plugs oil leaks. Shame he couldn't have come up with something that plugs leaks in a football club's finances.

When it comes to the "lucrative opportunities" of sports tourism, Mallorca probably has to settle for less of the lucre through participation rather than events. Which brings us inevitably to the familiar themes: golf, cycling, canoeing, Nordic walking. Stifle that yawn.

If only the promotion of this tourism was done effectively, there might be grounds for some optimism. But it isn't. Take golf. In 2008 a promotional campaign was devised under the bizarre slogan of "much more than golf". What was this supposed to mean? It is probably as well that the tourism promotion agency IBATUR has been scrapped. Not because it was allegedly up to its neck in corruption, but because it was useless.

At least we can console ourselves that the bay of Alcúdia "Bienestar Activo" brand of canoeing, hiking etc., etc. has been revived, albeit with far less money. I say console ourselves, not that it is any clearer what it all entails than it was when it was ditched in September because of lack of central funding.

The WTM organisation very kindly points out that sports tourism "will post record profits and contribute an astonishing 14% of overall travel and tourism receipts by the end of 2010". There's a nice thought. For someone. Somewhere other than Mallorca. But if not sports tourism, then how about a bit of sacred-sites tourism? At the WTM there will also be sessions on what is a fast-growing sector of tourism - visits to ancient places of worship. Well, I suppose there is always Palma's cathedral.

Sports tourism. Sacred-sites tourism. It sounds like things will be a bit slow for Mallorca and the Balearics at this year's WTM. Just as well there's all that vino for them to get stuck into and to promote. And all those thousands of wine-buff tourists to anticipate. If only.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.