Protest in Palma, Mallorca calling for less tourism

A rally of around 1,000 people in Palma last October calling for less tourism. | Jaume Morey

Andrew EdePalma06/04/2024 12:23
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To our tourism brothers and sisters in Tenerife, warm greetings and sorry to hear about your little local difficulty, namely an unwelcome outbreak of tourismphobia. 'Tourist go home' slogans have been hitting the foreign media, causing the vice-president and tourism councillor at the island's council, Lope Afonso, to suggest that this dissemination has been influenced by competing destinations interested in giving Tenerife a bad name.

Competing destinations? Which ones? Perhaps we'll never know, but while I take no pleasure in pointing out this tourismphobia, it does maybe serve to highlight the fact that Mallorca isn't and never has been the only destination to suffer from this phobia. The foreign media has in the past made a nice little click earner on the back of intimating that Mallorca stands alone in this regard; it's now got another one thanks to Tenerife. There's absolutely no sense of schadenfreude where I'm concerned, but recent events plus major protests planned for April 20 on various islands do rather provide a balance.

What's brought it about? Primarily, it's the housing situation, Afonso calling for calm analysis rather than making tourism a target. He observes that owners are more interested in offering holiday rentals rather than long-term residential rentals because the legal framework can make it difficult for landlords to get their properties back from tenants.

He does have a point, but at the same time he fails to acknowledge the existence of a housing market that has been allowed to get out of whack. And saying it's unfair to target tourism and blaming left-wing agitators ignores the fact that discontent has grown in numerous destinations and can't solely be attributed to some cadre of anti-capitalists. There is a whole body of work that is now some fifty years old to explain how this discontent can manifest itself in societies, and back in the 1970s there weren't the same housing issues or the sheer weight of tourist numbers that have ratcheted up the discontent.

Meanwhile, a ravenous foreign media will be able to sink its teeth into a tourist tax on the Costa del Sol. Not that there actually is a tourist tax, I should point out, but don't let this deter some reporting to the contrary. What's happening in Andalusia is that the regional government is said to have resigned itself into at least considering a tax. This is because of pressure from major cities like Malaga and Seville.

Town hall motivations are partly due to what is felt to be inadequate municipal funding, but there are also concerns about the impact of tourist saturation, while talk of an Andalusian tax has dared to mention its potential "dissuasion" - that of tourists. Tourismphobic, one can hear the cry, and typical of all those lefties in Mallorca between 2015 and 2023 who were going around imposing a tourist tax. Well, if it is tourismphobia, it's that of the right and not the left, as the Partido Popular govern major cities and the regional government.

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The point that both Tenerife and Andalusia highlight, if one can pause for a moment and have sane reflection, is the burning issue for tourism bar none, and that is social sustainability. Which leads me to a friend of this column (Tourism Focus), Andy Stalman, aka Mr. Branding.

A branding 'guru', I recently drew attention to the contract that Sr. Stalman (who is from Argentina) has with the Council of Mallorca for a rebranding of Mallorca to take account of "social and environmental coexistence within a framework of sustainable development of tourist activity". In itself, this can sound like guru gobbledegook, but let this be forgiven, as Andy Stalman is one of the sanest voices out there in the tourism ferment.

One of the big problems when it comes to politicians and businesses rabbiting on about sustainability is that they don't always understand what it means. "It's one thing to use it (the term), it's another to understand it and yet another to apply it and live it. Unfortunately, sustainability is more in the 'greenwashing' zone than a real conviction as to the importance of establishing ambitious sustainability strategies in its three most prominent aspects - environmental, economic and perhaps the most important, social."

Stalman believes that there is a new era for tourism in which it is necessary "to unlearn". "The formulas of the past are not necessarily useful for the future. There are new demands, both from citizens and visitors. The objective for a tourism brand does not have to be about attracting more tourists. Everything is more complex than talking about quantity.

"Coexistence between residents and tourists, it's a crucial strategy for the future of tourism in Mallorca. The harmonious coexistence between residents and tourists is a fundamental pillar for the responsible development of tourism in Mallorca."

Amen, but as he says, it all comes down to the application, and this requires the unlearning, not just by politicians and others who criticise people for daring to express their discontent, but by everyone. And that most definitely includes the media.