Aurelio Vázquez is a leading figure in the hotel industry in Mallorca and the Balearics. A former CEO at Iberostar, he was once the president of the Mallorca Hoteliers Federation. He has now joined the Summum Hotel Group, owned by Javier Vich, who has been mentioned as a possible successor to the current federation president, Maria Frontera.
He is taking on this new role at a time of great debate about the tourism model. He says that the key challenge is the transformation of the tourism offer. "There is a lot of talk about problems arising from tourist flows, believing that the solution lies there, but the solution is to transform the offer, quantitatively and qualitatively. Meanwhile, I am perplexed when I hear the situation described in such an alarming way using terms such as overcrowding. We have a series of problems and someone has called these overcrowding. But the problem here is a lack of political management over the last 15 years."
Transformation, he argues, will come from incentives for investment, as were facilitated by the 2012 tourism law (a Partido Popular law). "This allowed one billion euros in investment."
It has often been said over the years that Mallorca and the Balearics could die of success, but he suggests that the islands could "die of inaction". In this respect, he is supportive of the government's social and political pact for sustainability.
"What President Prohens has done is very intelligent. We are going to address the real problems by listening to everyone. The problem is not that a lot of people come here, the problem is that if you don't transform the supply, those people will continue to come. If not, how do you prevent them? Are you going to put police in their airports of origin so that they don't come? Restrict air traffic?"
Margalida Ramis of the environmentalists GOB has been critical of the pact, arguing that it is all about moving the islands in the direction of tourism of an elite. On this, Vázquez says: "We must make brave decisions. There are supply profiles that no longer have a place. The democratisation of tourism sounds great to me, but I want the tourist with high added value. And for that, we must put a product on sale that those profiles that I don't want cannot afford."
This therefore relates to price, and he is firm in a view that prices should be high. "If you have an attractive offer, that segment of demand with greater spending capacity will come. Lowering prices is not the way, because we would once again get segments of demand that do not interest us."