The July tourism statistics, published on Monday, showed a ten per cent year-on-year fall in UK tourism in the Balearics. Whether this decrease can be attributed in whole, in part or not at all to the protests - and the reporting of these protests - is open to debate. But prior to the figures being released, the Balearic government's AETIB tourism strategy agency was in contact with its marketing communications agency in the UK, Lotus, regarding a media campaign designed to mitigate possible negative effects of the protests.
Communications have therefore been sent to the media as well as to tour operators and travel agencies. These are intended to convey messages of reassurance that tourists are most certainly welcome on the islands and shouldn't fear a hostile reception or displays of 'tourismphobia'.
AETIB gives an example of how the foreign media can have a distorted impression of the situation. A journalist from the Sunday Times recently met the tourism minister Jaume Bauzá, having arrived in Mallorca anticipating hostility. Although encountering a general awareness of the need to tackle issues caused by overtourism, the journalist found that an anti-tourism image was wholly wrong. This was from speaking to people on the streets, to taxi drivers and others.
While the tourism industry in the Balearics has welcomed the media campaign, one source from the holiday rentals sector expresses doubts about its effectiveness: "No matter how much they tell them that everything is fine, if potential visitors see an image on television with a slogan saying kill a tourist, they will think twice."
AETIB has also been in contact with its PR agency in Germany, GCE. Communications with the same messages have been sent to the German media and tour operators. But Germany, as far as the July tourist figures are concerned, showed a different picture to that of the UK - tourist numbers were up 12%. Of smaller markets than the UK and Germany, France was up 22% and Italy down 11%. The Spanish market was down 13%, but foreign tourism overall rose by 4.3%.
On the UK market, since April the monthly figures indicate a 0.3% increase (in April), a 5.9% fall in May, and a 2.4% rise in June prior to the July drop of 10% to 559,040 tourists.