It’s like those clocks on websites; the days, the hours, the minutes, the seconds are being counted down to midnight on October 31. Not a countdown to witches on broomsticks but to the moment when – officially – the tourism season ends.
The end, it has to be said, is rather more final than the start, there being little to truly distinguish April 30 from May 1. The first of November, however, and for the resorts at any rate, marks the start of the annual days of rest. For some tourism industry businesses there genuinely is rest. For many, though, there is little time to put feet up. The next season will come round soon enough, the preparations – in truth – having been ongoing for several months, for more than a year where tour operators are concerned.
Halloween brings a finality insofar as sectors within the industry feel compelled to let us know about the season’s balance. The end-of-term reports grade performance and append comments, the appraisals for many a sector this year being “could do better”. This is not because of idleness but because of a multitude of factors commonly highlighted when or if expectations have not been met. The reports to be sent to the headmasters of policy-making, negotiating and public opinion-guiding have historically come with caveats of a need to do better. This is a default position, one for playing down expectations and signalling to unions that they can’t get carried away with demands.
A problem for the industry is that expectations weren’t played down this year. This was despite some sources having warned that the post-Covid champagne effect was about to go flat. Cliché upon cliché, the bubble was bound to burst. And so it did, all things of course being relative. The hotels were in clover, but even they have found it necessary to point out that in-hotel spending, above that of the board, has fallen. The tourist spending statistics suggest otherwise, but we should all by now realise that these don’t provide an accurate picture of what is spent once tourists actually arrive.
At the same time as the end-of-season balances are weighed, so the forecasts for 2025 start to filter out. Unaccompanied by the prospect of champagne corks popping, the industry is preferring a more humble tipple, perhaps a Glühwein to ward off a chill drifting down from the Baltic and North Seas and across land mass to the Med. The German market, so we are already being warned, is catching a collective cold, the consequence of a recession pandemic.
Yes, but hadn’t there been a similar warning regarding the German market for 2024? There was. And what happened? A 12.1% increase in tourist numbers in the Balearics for the eight months of August and a 13.5% increase for Mallorca specifically. If we must, there was also an 18% increase in German spending, but let’s not dwell too long on that, except to remark that this increase surely wasn’t solely because of the increased costs of flights and accommodation, as restaurants and other sectors have been bemoaning for several months and are highlighting in their end-of-season reports.
But if it was genuinely the case that accommodation prices were primarily responsible for the spending increase (along with air fares), German spending can be expected to fall in 2025. Why? This is because hoteliers are talking in terms of price rises of just three to five per cent rather than ten per cent in order to try and ensure a volume of tourism at least on a par with 2024.
Only for the German market? Seemingly not. The second largest foreign market, the British, is not enjoying its finest hour, having lost almost almost three per cent of its Balearic tourist base up to August (one per cent in Mallorca). Perhaps the British have in fact conformed to a certain pre-season anxiety expressed because of economic and cost-of-living circumstances. Or maybe there were other factors. We all know what, the Germans seemingly having been completely unaware of people protesting for better housing and less overcrowding.
So hotel prices may not be going up as much as they did this year, while the likes of the restaurants are suggesting that they even need to find ways of lowering prices – a tough call when their costs keep rising and their profit margins have been whittled away.
Meanwhile, there are the usual calls to look to attract other markets. The Nordics, for example, suggests the restaurants association, because they supposedly have higher purchasing power. Hmm, yes well, the combination of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden posted a twelve per cent increase in Balearic tourist numbers to end-August (11.2% for Mallorca) but also a 19% decrease in spending, however this was made up. Even so, it remained true that spending – per person – was 150 euros or so higher than the British and almost 300 euros higher than the German. This said, the costs of packages have always been higher.
The season is winding down. The clock is ticking for 2025, but there is plenty of time for more forecasting that may or may not prove to be accurate.
