• Tourism.The Germans who come to the Balearic Islands pilot program are not only tourists but professionals to test security.
  • Turismo.Bronca between islands for the distribution of Germans in the Balearic Islands

In the 108th minute of the 2010 Soccer World Cup final, Dutch center-back John Heitinga received his second yellow card. Eight minutes later, in Spain, we all remember what happened. But Heitinga, for example, remembers that he went through the changing room tunnel and arrived on time for his own wedding on the island of Ibiza. He was accompanied by part of the staff and dozens of journalists, who had nothing better to celebrate, and repeated successive years, unknowingly causing a turnaround in the international tourist market on the island. Of the 40,000 Dutch who visited it in 2010, it has left as many as 300,000 last summer , on the verge of surpassing the number of Germans.

The effect of Heitinga's expulsion is only comparable, according to the French sociologist Danielle Rozenberg, to what the French premiere of the film More by Barbet Schroeder had caused in 1969 for the same island . A hippy icon laden with sex and drugs that led to a box office success first, and then, of the 40,000 French people who visited the island on average in the 1960s, it went to 360,000 in 1970.

In the Balearic Islands the scenery changes in just a few nautical miles. In Ibiza half of the tourist market is English, in Mallorca it is German, and in Formentera more than 60% is Italian. But it was not always like this. After the German crisis caused by the fall of the Berlin wall, the island of Formentera was emptied of Germans and the tour operator Going took the opportunity to fill it with Italians who had been spoiled by the war on vacation in the Balkans.

"Tourism is very sensitive and capricious, and the coronavirus is something so serious and so important as to change the rules of the game again ", defends the doctor in Financial Economics and researcher of management of tourist destinations at the University of the Balearic Islands, José Ramón Cardona.

Marc Rahola, owner of the OD Group holding, which includes the OD Hotels and Ryans hotel chains, will open this Saturday in Saint Tropez (France), but his interests in Spain will be postponed to July: " France has been clearer than Spain , And the same Portugal, Croatia or Greece, and that gives confidence, the situation already raises enough doubts for the Government to generate more, which you cannot say one thing today, and another tomorrow, because in the end the planes do not have no idea where they can land. "

For Pedro Matutes Barceló, of Sirenis Hotels and former president of the Tourism Technology Platform, Thinktur, " Portugal or Greece are going to take advantage of this extra entry before in the market, and of the effect that this advertising produces on the consumer, with the risk that our loyal customers will try there, feel comfortable, and can keep them forever. "

Spain, France and Italy, three of the five countries in the world that receive more tourists a year, have been fighting for more than half a century for a cake that increasingly has more players, and that destiny has placed our country, Cardona explains, "always on the winning side". In the tourist origins, in the middle of the last century, explains the doctor in Financial Economics, "we got rid of the communist countries, which when they started to take off were involved in a war like the one in the Balkans". Portugal and Greece soon joined the north, with tourism GDP running at 20%. And in the south, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco or Tunisia, much cheaper and with much more modern facilities, began to take over the market at the beginning of the 21st century, but were neutralized by the Arab springs.

Minister Reyes Maroto echoed this week in the Senate a study carried out by the tourism intelligence tool Travelgate, based in Mallorca, and which ensured that Spain led the world ranking of tourist reservations. But something doesn't add up .

Portugal, Thanks and Croatia go ahead

Portugal, Greece and Croatia took the lead earlier this month promoting themselves as Covid free destinations. On May 20, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced that the country would open its doors to foreign tourists on July 1. Portugal counterattacked with June 15, this same Monday, which caused Greece to rectify, also anticipating this Monday. Croatia had already opened its borders on June 1 to ten countries of the European Union. All without any restriction or quarantine.

At the same time, the European Best Destinations Organization (EBD), which operates under the European Commission, gave him for publishing, earlier this month, the list of the 20 safest European destinations to travel in the post-Covid summer. Two are in Greece, three in Croatia and three in Portugal. None in Spain .

Nor does Maroto match the pace of hotel openings of our large chains with interests abroad. Barceló Hotel Group opens Greece this week. Germany and the Czech Republic have already opened, but the bulk of Andalusia, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands will have to wait "at the end of the month, beginning of the next", explains the network.

Riu has long since opened in Germany and Bulgaria , and this week Portugal and the Balearic Islands will open this Community thanks to the Government's pilot program to import Germans.

Meliá has long had hotels open in Germany, Portugal, Italy, Austria or Luxembourg, and will shortly follow with France, Bulgaria and Montenegro. In Spain, Valencia is open, and it will open another ten hotels this month, but most, around fifty, will have to wait for a "flexible and demand-based" opening in July.

Much of our competitors' hopes, and ours, are focused on the local market . Portugal did not fare badly this weekend of a holiday bridge in the Algarve, with 70% occupancy, and is now looking to create a safe corridor with the United Kingdom to save itself from quarantine. Italy, however, opened its borders on June 3 but without success, after a health crisis that triggered a tourism campaign that 'promoted' it as Covid's world capital.

The undercover rescue of tourism

Now the witness has been taken by our main issuing market, the United Kingdom, which with Germany and France represent the bulk of our tourists and competitors. They are like a covert ransom. " Tourism is a way for the northern countries to economically pull us, " warns economist Jose Ramón Cardona. Matutes describes it as "unrecognized export", because "they buy a product from us in their countries that they then consume here".

The director of Sirenis Hotels believes that the coronavirus has made the world somewhat "bigger" than it was, so that in the not too distant future we could benefit: "Before March, one could go around the world with his backpack, because the world was small and easy, until suddenly a lot of people were left waiting to be repatriated ".

Cardona believes that people will not stop traveling for fear of catching it, nor did they stop doing it after 9/11 for fear of an attack, or to a North African country for fear of a coup: "What bothers them are the controls, the queues, the discomfort, they think that to be dining in a restaurant tucked between four methacrylate screens, I'd better have dinner in my living room. "

In accordance with the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • tourism
  • Coronavirus
  • Covid 19

TourismWhy the United Kingdom excludes Spain and negotiates with Portugal and Greece its 'safe' tourist corridor

TourismThe first 5,000 tourists from Spain will arrive in the Balearic Islands 15 days before the rest and will be German

Crisis A ray of light for the tourism sector: bookings already reach 60% in July and up to 75% in August

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