ABTA, The Travel Association formerly known as the Association of British Travel Agents, will next year be returning to Mallorca after 14 years to hold its annual convention in Calvia. In the meantime, however, the travel industry at large, but in particular in Mallorca, faces a number of challenges, as the chief executive of the association, Mark Tanzer, explained to the Bulletin.
ABTA has just held this year’s annual convention in Greece, and Tanzer said that the mood was “very positive” and that the UK travel industry is “coming off the back of a good summer”. “It slowed a bit in the middle, the football may have had an impact - when we go deep into a football competition people tend to stay at home - but the bad weather encouraged people to travel late, so the late market picked up. I think that overall it’s been very positive and if we look at all our members’ turnover, we’re back towards where it was before the pandemic, so the recovery continues. And I think the season is getting longer generally. I think people are realising that there is good weather to be had later in the year, travelling outside the peak season is becoming more attractive, so I think we’re seeing the shoulders of the market widening now.
“We at ABTA think that tourism is a force for good, but that means that you can’t afford to not acknowledge the challenges that are created environmentally for residents in destinations and so forth, so those need managing. But what I’ve heard from the mayor of Calvia and Mallorcans in general is encouraging. They are trying to find that balance between the desire to welcome people and obviously the important part tourism plays in the Mallorcan economy with the fact that people who are native to the island, residents, want to live their lives as well. And it’s not just Mallorca, it’s every tourist destination which has to find its own right balance and between those two. You can’t walk away from the economic importance of tourism but it doesn’t mean it should trump every other concern,” Tanzer told the Bulletin.
Q.— This year’s anti-tourism protests have had an impact, does society need to be more engaged in tourism policymaking, making it a more hospitable industry as opposed to becoming a hostile one?
A. — Yes, very much so. There are sort of three players in this. The way I see it, there are people within the destination who want tourism, to make money from tourism and are employed by tourism and they need to have a discussion with their community about what is the right level of tourism and how the impacts can be managed locally for the residents. Then of course you’ve got us, the incoming tourists, who are the third part of that triangle and who have to behave appropriately as good guests, respect the country as well. I think when you have all three of those in balance you’ve got a really good tourism eco-system and proposition, and that’s what we want everywhere and I think Mallorca is well on the way to achieving that.
Q.— Is Mallorca, or rather the Balearics in general, still a world leading exemplary destination. What are the biggest challenges facing the Balearics moving forward?
A. — The numbers are increasing, certainly from the UK. Our data suggests that Mallorca and the Balearics are more popular than ever. So how you manage that increase in popularity and get the balance environmentally and socially is a challenge, but I think it will remain a top destination for the UK. Spain certainly is, and Mallorca within the Spanish market is seen as a very hospitable, effective and close place that we are familiar with. So, I don’t see any signs of Mallorca losing ground in terms of its offering; it’s just a question of making sure we balance all the interest groups.
Q.— At the recent ABTA convention a number of key players criticised tourist taxes in general. Are extra taxes the solution to some of the problems destinations like Mallorca face or are there others solutions to resolving the potential imbalance?
A. — It depends on what the taxes are used for. The comments made at the convention were we’re not against tourism taxes per se, it’s just that we’d like to see them applied to the kind of purposes we’ve talked about. Either investing in better tourism infrastructure or measures which reduce the strain on the domestic systems rather than going into general taxation as just another tax. Tourism is an efficient market, there’s a lot of choice and people are very price aware. You’ve got all the options on the internet, you can easily see what the costs are and the danger is you put the taxes on and the customers head somewhere else, and we don’t want that. We want them to enjoy Mallorca, enjoy Spain, so it’s more a case of how do you use those taxes to reinvest in making the proposition better not just for the guests and visitors but for the residents, which we would like to see.
Q.— Travel habits have changed, especially since the pandemic. More people are concerned about and looking at the effects of climate change, the weather, the temperature. When people are thinking about booking and looking at a destination, what is the bottom line, is it price, the experience, an adventure?
A. — It’s increasingly experience. Adventure is a kind of sub category of experience and obviously some tourists are more adventurous than others. But more people are looking for a differentiated experience and that could be because they want to experience it or show it on their social media. We’re certainly seeing a growth in those types of holiday. Escorted tours, adventure holidays are growth segments. Climate change is a big deal for the world and that includes the travel industry, and these record temperatures, hurricanes, the driest, the hottest, the strongest whatever it is, we’re getting these superlatives on a regular basis. This is something that the industry is going to have to recognise and adapt to and I am sure that in ten years time there are going to be destinations where people will have changed their programmes to reflect that. I don’t think they will want to be away in extreme heat and, of course, with that pressure on the natural resources - as a result of climate change - there could be greater competition for scarce resources like water and so forth. So the travel industry is aware of that, we’re aware or of our responsibilities. I am sure that the industry will adapt to that and will change. The detail of the industry will change as people respond to it.
Q.— Next year you will be celebrating 20 years as Chief Executive of ABTA. In those two decades what are the biggest changes you have seen in the travel industry?
A. — I suppose the internet initially and then the airlines, the low cost carriers, they’ve opened up more destinations than were available 20 years ago. There’s more flexibility with regard to getting to them, there’s more choice of when you fly and where to. So I think what’s driven the growth in tourism in the UK is that additional choice, and the recognition that there is not ‘the British customer’; there are now many, many different types of customer. There are solo travellers, there are multigenerational holidays and the industry has recognised that and has become more focused on the different needs of the customer rather than assuming there is one sort of generic holiday that everybody is going to want. So from a consumer point of view that would be the big change. Also, the shape of the market has changed. You used to have a group of people who were tour operators and a group of people who were travel agents who sold the tour operators’ products as retailers, but it’s become much more mixed now and the distribution has become more varied. And obviously we’ve sadly lost some major players that were around 20 years but are no longer. Thomas Cook comes to mind, Monarch has gone, but new companies have replaced them and that’s the nature of the industry; it does renew itself constantly.
Q.— Do you think that post-Brexit there’s too much paperwork for travelling Britons like the new hotel registration law in Spain?
A. — It is a regulated industry and for good reasons, both in terms of keeping customers and their money safe. There are regulations that exist at EU level and in the UK for protecting holidays and holidaymakers and I think they are good because they help to maintain confidence in the travel industry. If you didn’t have those regulations people might be more circumspect when they come to book or come across more problems when things don’t go according to plan. So I’m not against regulations and red tape because most of the time it’s in the best interests of the clients and the industry. But there is a point when people question why all this information is being gathered and what is going to be done with it, so we do need to keep an eye on that because people are becoming increasingly sensitive about giving away their personal data.
Q.— Would you like to see some form of easing the freedom of movement, especially for young Britons who may want to work a ski season or a summer in Mallorca?
A. — Yes, that’s something we’d very much like to see. We’ve been arguing with the previous and the current governments to expand what’s called the Youth Mobility Scheme so young people can work within the EU, get experience, learn languages and it works in both directions. Europeans can come to the UK. It would be very beneficial for the industry and actually for society. It’s very different to the border question, immigration, freedom of movement which was part of the Brexit debate and carries on. What we’re talking about doesn’t give you any long-term immigration status or right to remain, it’s purely to give young people a chance to work in and experience other countries. We have them in place for some countries and extending them to EU countries either at an EU level or on a bilateral basis would be very beneficial. So we’ll keep up the argument and hope that we can persuade the government to start moving on that.