While protests in Majorca and the wider Balearic Islands may have had a brief short-term effect of slowing the demand for holidays, there has also been a very quick recovery in the demand for Spanish getaways.
Mabrian, a Barcelona-based data intelligence service for travel and tourism, studied the impact the overtourism protest held in Palma on May 25 and the Mallorca Platja Tour action held in Calo des Moro on June 16 had on demand for holidays.
It combined data from its Security Perception Index (PSI) and Global Tourism Perception Index (GTPI).
Although both indices showed slight falls in the days immediately following the protests, the recovery was very rapid, the service noted, which calls into question the effectiveness of the action.
“Majorca has shown a great capacity for recovery after the protests of recent weeks and the trend is moving in that direction thanks to the strength of its GTPI, a very high indicator in the case of the island, above 80 points,” said Carlos Cendra, Mabrian’s director of marketing and communications.
Following the May 25 protest, both indices returned to previous levels in nine days, while after the Calo des Moro action the recovery took just five days.
In May, a 15,000-strong crowd of protesters gathered in the streets of the capital, holding banners which read: “Salvem Mallorca, guiris arruix”, translating to “Let’s save Majorca, foreigners out”, in Catalan. “Guiri” is a term used to describe tourists who drink to excess and party hard.
A spokesperson for the group that organised the protest, Banc del Temps, warned at the time: “This is just the start of things. If measures aren’t taken, we will continue taking to the streets until we see action.”
Three weeks later, hundreds of protesters occupied one of Spain’s most popular beaches, telling tourists to “go home”. The demonstration started at 8am – and by 10am, the time at which foreign day-trippers usually arrive, over 300 people were in attendance.
Maria Pons, the mayor, had previously criticised social media influencers that visited the beach, telling a council meeting: “We have seen how some visitors change their swimwear three or four times to take different selfies and claim on their online profiles they’ve been to Caló des Moro many times”. Pons added that the beach needed a “rest” and to be “forgotten” for a season.
Mabrian also has preliminary data related to the July 21 protest in Palma, observing that the impact of this was marginal.
Data from the Palma-based B2B marketplace TravelgateX indicates that reservations for the Balearic Islands as a whole between July 22 and August 12 increased by a range of 15 to 20 percent compared with the same period last year.
Additionally, figures from the airport authority AENA showed that July saw a record number of passengers at Palma Son Sant Joan Airport – up five percent to 4.6 million (arriving and departing). The number of flights had also increased by 4.5 percent to 31,234.
In June, protestors threatened to paralyse the Palma airport. The ‘Less Tourism, More Life’ activists planned to descend on and bring it to a standstill. Those organising the protests threatened that they could “collapse” the airport – the third largest in Spain which welcomed 31.3 million passengers last year, 1.4 million more than pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
