Celestí Alomar: "We cannot be subjected to the dictatorship of tourism"

PalmaCelestí Alomar (Llubí, 1949) ponders the future of tourism from the Majorcan Col·lectiu Alternatives, previously he did so from the Administration. He looks at it from the Islands, which historically anticipate what will happen to the Spanish sector as a whole, and with the experience of having been Director General of Tourism Strategy for Felipe González and of having had a portfolio in the Pacte de Progrés that created the pioneering ecotax.

Has the tourism sector done its homework during the crisis?

— There are two very concrete facts. What the pandemic did was eliminate the short term. The halt in tourism was absolute. The prospect of uncertainty was so great that there was no possibility of planning. The short term did not exist. It was transformed into an action by the State to rescue the sector through ERTOs, injecting money into companies or liquidity through credits, and this intervention is still ongoing. It is a matter that is constantly debated. It was skillful and forceful, which had never happened in other crises. With the one in 2008, the opposite happened entirely. In this sense, the homework has been done, it must be recognized.

And in the long term?

— The homework is to be done. The market will change, and so will the form of knowledge and the way of perceiving the market. The statistics that macro figures give us will no longer be useful; another type of market knowledge will be needed; people's behavior, why some buy and others don't, why one hotel lowers prices and another doesn't, etc. We must go into detail and move towards indicators that integrate different ecological, social, market, economic concepts, etc. Furthermore, there is a certain tendency to expect everything to return to where it was. It is a disproportionate error. The market by itself does not have the capacity to return to the previous situation. Both times there has been a reopening of activity, predictable symptoms have been shown, such as people with few family responsibilities traveling. In the Islands, the bet has been Magaluf and student trips, lowering the prices of tourist accommodations. This shows that we have learned nothing. We have not acted accordingly or with perspective. Whenever prices have been lowered and this tourism has been stretched, it has not been possible to recover. We have not learned the lesson.

What could have been done?

— Solidarity is lacking and all factors are needed to move towards another model. There is no real perspective because the diversification of the economy is not yet seen as necessary; the tourism sector has shown that it is very weak in the face of the eventualities that will arise from now on. Clear proposals are not yet visible and all social actors must participate in diversification.

Can the sun and beach model be changed to quality tourism?

— We are talking about a debate that has been approached incorrectly. It is dangerous to talk about quality tourism because we think of tourism for the rich, and that is not the case. It is an activity that has a broad social character. In the Islands, the holidays for which European workers fought after the Second World War were born. For the recovery of Europe, we were as important as the man who worked in the Volkswagen factory. When we talk about quality, we talk about environmental, service, cultural, or social concepts. It's not just about being on a magnificent beach, but about the man who serves having a reasonable salary and way of life. Quality is a whole, and it implies a change of mentality within the industry. To do this, tourist places must be reduced.  

— A transition process must be fulfilled. Everyone is set in their own ways. If someone thinks that, for example, in the Balearic Islands we can continue to have 14 million tourists every year, they are making a colossal mistake. People will not want to travel by plane, but by train. They will not want to go to certain establishments or consume certain dishes due to the ecological footprint. Within the transition process, it is impossible to continue maintaining these figures and depleting resources with constant mass tourism. The system has no capacity for regeneration, there is a model stress.

How should it be transformed?

— We cannot think of a five-year plan type of planning from the Soviet Union. This planning implies logic within a reduced space and it is evident that we have too many positions. Obsolete infrastructures must be transformed, which is not done in a day. It must be done over time because it implies eliminating jobs and at the same time creating pathways for people to go to work in other sectors.

What role should administrations play?

— The transition business must be shared. There must be public-private collaboration; otherwise, it cannot exist. The process is difficult, because the system of opening a hotel and filling it has always worked. We must ask for help from the European Union because it owes us. With the money that arrives, the model must be transformed according to the will of the people and the territory. We cannot be subjected to the dictatorship of tourism.

What will future tourism be like?

— It is necessary to investigate integral indicators. If a design were to be made, it should be done with the values of quality and environmental issues. Travel, valuing it by hotel stars will become obsolete. In the future, they will be valued by the ecological footprint they produce. In the Balearic Islands, we have to be sharp. Because we depend on air tourism. We will have to counteract this fact with political pressure and we will have to propose an alternative that compensates for this impact. Future tourism planning will change completely.