“All inclusive deals will never become major offer”

He added that his company was not interested in having all inclusive packages as the bulk of its programme in the Balearics, because of the wide variety of activities on offer outside the hotels.

TUI offers this service in 22 hotels in the Balearics, eight percent of its offer here. It also has 22 hotels in the Canaries (7.3 percent) and only three in the Peninsula.

However, Zamorano admitted that the company is thinking of expanding the offer in the islands “because customers are buying it.” He also commented on plans to recovert a five star hotel in Majorca into an all inclusive hotel, which would offer a wide range of products (gym, children's clubs, balneariums, restaurants), so that the client who has paid to spend the entire holiday in a hotel “will not be bored”. He said that an all inclusive package “is not acceptable” in a typical beach establishment, “a building with a pool, a bar and a normal dining room.” But he declined to predict the future of what he described as a fashion. He stressed that the current percentage is “minimal” and “should not scare anyone.” The latter was a reference to bar and restaurant owners who blame their drop in takings on the all inclusive packages.

But it is not just the all inclusive package that is revolutionising the market. The new technologies are also bringing about a change in marketing strategies.

In less than a year, bookings via internet have doubled and are expected to rise even more over the next few years.
Ignasi Esteve, deputy chairman of the Majorcan Hoteliers Federation, said that internet bookings accounted for between three and five percent of bookings, but in some hotels in the Playa de Palma, 35 percent of bookings are made this way “which gives an idea of the importance this system will have over the next few years.” The crisis which has hit the British and German markets over the past three years has led hoteliers to seek new markets.
As the graph on this page shows, Germany, Britain and Spain are still the dominant markets, but alternative markets such as France, Italy, Scandinavia, Belgium, Portugal, Ireland, Switzerland and Austria, are growing slowly.

The emerging markets which are growing rapidly are the Russian, Polish, Slovak, Czech and Hungarian.