TAKEAWAYS FROM THE WORLD’S LARGEST TOURISM FAIR
Responsible tourism in a Mallorcan style, Fitur was informed, “includes a new conception of tourism, integrating sustainability, coexistence and respect for the natural environment”.
The Fitur international tourism fair in Madrid is now the world’s largest in terms of attendance 250,000 last week plus some 7,000 members of the media. The one-time smallest of the big three fairs has leapt above Berlin’s ITB and London’s World Travel Market. Reasons for this include Brexit, in the case of WTM, and the fact that there were Fitur fairs during the pandemic while Berlin and London didn’t have theirs. If you cast your mind back, you may recall that it was the announcement of the cancellation of ITB in March 2020 a fortnight before Spain’s state of alarm (lockdown) which suddenly made everyone sit up and be aware of the serious threat that coronavirus could pose to tourism.
Thanks to being held in January, perhaps Fitur got lucky in stealing a pandemic-influenced march. But whatever the reasons why the Madrid fair has assumed number-one spot, this was arguably the biggest takeaway of the lot from last week. With record tourist numbers in 2023, largely thanks to the increase in tourists in the Balearics, Fitur was further reason for Spain to be able to bask in the glory of tourism success.
Yet there were of course the caveats and the negatives. Among the former was an explanation for the attractiveness of Spain versus a couple of notable competitors Egypt and Turkey. Holidaymakers from western Europe have been preferring not to go to either because they are likely to run into Russians. Less novel was an avoidance because of proximity to conflict zones, even if those zones are a fair old distance away.
As ever, there were those who wished to have their say and who were invited to have their say. A standout was an interview in the Palma-based Hosteltur magazine with the Jet2 CEO, Steve
Heapy. He was one to hint that holidaymakers
will choose the western Mediterranean in 2024 because of perceptions of the eastern Mediterranean. But more than this were, for instance, some truly telling remarks he had to make about the holiday rentals debate.
This was right up the agenda at Fitur, the hoteliers pressing the case for getting to grips with the “uncontrolled” growth of holiday letting - illegal primarily, but not neglecting the legal either. Heapy absolutely acknowledged the problems. Local communities will become ever angrier, but he directed the blame fairly and squarely at the politicians and indeed others. “Many people, many companies, many governments, many politicians have made a lot of money from
tourism and have never invested in local communities. Now they’re rushing to do something and looking for someone to blame.”
He agreed with the concerns about overtourism and the impact of tourism on destinations. However, this is all a debate that has been going on for years without anything effective having been done. Local communities need to be better served by the politicians who are elected to lead them. “But politicians don’t. They’ve been talking about this for years. Years and years. And they haven’t done anything.”
Amen. Sustainability, naturally, was another key item on the agenda, the Balearics having been transformational in shifting the discourse towards responsibility; similar to sustainability but with added ‘pledge’ on behalf of both tourists and institutions (and perhaps even businesses as well). There was commitment to responsible tourism through, inter alia, the purchase of local products for tourist consumption.
Responsible tourism in a Mallorcan style, Fitur was informed, “includes a new conception of tourism, integrating sustainability, coexistence and respect for the natural environment”. In this regard, special prominence is apparently to be given to “zero-kilometre gastronomic product”. Excellent, but as has been noted often enough in the past, Mallorca has a highly finite local product resource which means that the vast bulk of what is consumed is imported. It is one thing for Michelin Star chefs to conjure up highly expensive zero-kilometre dishes - and two chefs were on hand it’s a rather different matter to fill the stomachs of upwards of twelve million tourists per annum.
How virtuous this new conception all is, something which didn’t escape the attention of environmentalists GOB. They don’t attend fairs like Fitur - Heavens, no though they did once pitch up in Berlin to cause a bit of disruption some years ago. Observers of events in Madrid, their response was summed up by their president, Margalida Ramis, who felt that the messaging made those attending sound like they were at a meeting of environmentalists. An implication of comments she has had to make was that it was an exercise in cynicism. They, e.g. hoteliers and politicians, can see that tourism is generating unrest. “So they are adopting a social discourse ..., when what it’s about is expressing it in a different way. It’s a clear strategy to quell opposition.”
The world’s largest tourism fair over for this year, the fair caravan will roll on to Berlin in
March, assuming that another pandemic doesn’t intervene.
And what will they be discussing? Hmm, let’s think. Problems with holiday letting, sustainability and responsible tourism by any chance?
So, off to Berlin it is. “Bis bald,“as they say in Germany.
One of the big debates taking place in the United Kingdom over the past week or so had nothing to do with either Rishi Sunak's deeply divided rabble of a political party now clinging on to power, or indeed fans of Taylor Swift - otherwise known as Swifty's, to those of us in the know! Anyway I digress, because none of these two issues have got a look in recently as the British nation has been taken up with excited talk regarding the reintroduction of National Service last witnessed in 1960. Indeed, just a few days ago, General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of the British Army, said a “citizen army” should be trained for a future land battle and a bit of unpleasantness (if it should come to it) with the usual subjects. The call has come it seems as the army can only boast about 70,000 men and I believe the recruitment rates for the navy are even worse it seems. In fact if you look around the world at military numbers, we British might talk a good game, but when it comes to action in this regard we are somewhat - how do you say it? Yes, missing in inaction! Could it be that as a nation we have gone soft on military service of any kind and that waiting for numbers to rise in accordance with our defensive needs we are hopelessly unprepared - so what to do? Might it be that modern generations such as X, Y, and Z just don't fancy the thought of marching up-and-down with somebody shouting at them any more? Perhaps the very idea of being told ‘what to do and when to do it' has somewhat gone out of fashion recently along with sharing a room with twenty or thirty ugly and smelly chaps is rather an unpleasant thought don't you think? So it seems that to get recruitment figures at least to the point of respectability, something will need to be done as it is becoming a little embarrassing when you think that Finland with a population of 5.5million souls has a fully mobilised force of 280,000 reservist soldiers universally made up of men and women between the ages of 18 and 25. Now, I do know that some of our little darlings (and their mothers) would have a fit at such a thought, whilst it has to be said that many senior military men are also dead-set against the idea of universal recruitment. However, it does have to be said that a person such as myself, at my rime of life, is always a
lot keener on military service when it won't affected them rather than a freshfaced late teenager who would rather do other things with their lives such as lie in bed or play endlessly with their thingamajig online, or whatever. There is also the rather cynical view that being a nuclear power, why get ourselves all upset with soldierly recruitment and all that malarkey? An argument that would rightly horrify the very people who don't even like the thought of a properly maintained and recruited military through some sort of national service. I wonder if this debate has been triggered in some way by US Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has let it be known that with almost every NATO country failing to meet the agreed 2% GDP (apart from the USA itself ) target for defence spending (including
Spain) he would have no qualms at all at the USA leaving NATO's mutual defence family. If that should happen, then some manner of national service might follow very quickly indeed, like it or not.
So it seems that to get recruitment figures at least to the point of respectability, something will need to be done.
“Shoulders back lovely boy” - is it time for national service?