“Holiday housing contributes notoriously to the tourist saturation of Mallorca”

What is your assessment of the season today in your hotel establishment?

Not yet over, the season from the point of view of occupancy can be classified as very good, since we are in records for 2019. In recent years, we have found that vacation home clients stay at our hotel for a few days , until that contracted house is available. This fact implies for us that the average stay of the clientele has decreased: we have gone from 10 days to four or four and a half days. Before we could have a dozen outings a day and now we have around 25 or 30. And we must consider that to prepare a room a maid requires 20 minutes, while for one outing it takes 60 minutes, which means more time and more investment in personnel. On the other hand, as in hotels there are difficulties in finding staff, a supplement is offered to professionals, which also increases the cost. To this we have to add that the price of electricity, gas and raw materials has skyrocketed in an incredible way. It should be considered that in the agreement with the tour operators the prices are signed a year and a half or two before the start of the season, with which it is difficult to measure them exactly with that advance. What do I mean by that? That the occupation of this season will be similar to that of 2019; having increased the prices of accommodation, but with costs that have increased well above that rise. The conclusion is that the benefits of the season, with an increase in billing of the order of 12% compared to those registered in 2019, will be lower than usual due to the increase in costs.

Have they hung up the full sign?

Practically. As every year in the months of June, July, August and September, the occupancy rate of the Hotel Bonsol is around 90% due to specific gaps that occur: sometimes we find clients who want the same room in which they have stayed in previous years and that implies that she has to be free when she arrives, even if it means not having her occupied for two or three days. By nationality, our main customer is the British (40%) followed by German (25%). The rest are Scandinavian, French and other countries. National tourists, on the other hand, we have very few. Beyond nationality, we have various customer profiles. On the one hand, the client who visits us at various times of the year; He is usually over 50 years old and is a frequent traveler. On the other, in the months of July and August we have many families with children and, finally, we also have honeymoon clients. It is a type of customer not given to loyalty: a couple can come to the hotel for their wedding trip and not return until they celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. We have many cases with that circumstance.

Through which channels do customers reach you?

50% of our clientele comes to us through tour operators -we currently operate with eight British and three German tour operators-, and the other 50%, through booking and direct customer management. The form of contracting depends essentially on the age of the client. At 20 or 30 years old, one has no problem hiring directly through the Internet, assessing different offers and possibilities, but at 70 years old one doesn’t want trouble, but usually talks to their travel agent so that they manage everything and take care of eventual contingencies. We have had customers for 30 years who come through tour operators. For an independent hotel like ours, the tour operator is very important because the travel agent can recommend a new client based on the type of stay they want.

Mallorca has lived for a few years, with the parenthesis of the pandemic, a situation of certain saturation. How concerned are you?

In Mallorca we have had tourism for 60 or 70 years, and no one, until the last six or seven years, had ever spoken of tourist saturation. In recent years, saturation comes from vacation homes and cruise ships. If three cruise ships of 5,000 people arrive in Palma in the same day, we can easily find that 10,000 or 15,000 of these people want to go out to the city to walk or shop. As for vacation homes, they have the opposite drawback of the reviled all-inclusive, which was argued to prevent the client from leaving the hotel; What happens now is that the client of the holiday home, in general, does not stay in it, but goes out to the beaches, restaurants and supermarkets where the Mallorcan residents are. In the case of Alcudia, for example, with its magnificent beaches, it is verified that the clients of the first-line hotels do not go to them, but tend to stay with all the comfort in the world -their drinks and their sun lounger- on the swimming pool of the hotel itself. In other words, the client of the holiday home shares the majority of the resident’s offer and this contributes notoriously to the commented tourist saturation in Mallorca.

Is the image of a saturated Mallorca worrying in relation to the issuing markets?

It is not beneficial. But above all, what is worrying is that it creates a negative attitude among Mallorcans towards tourism and tourists, who, on the other hand, are the ones who feed us. It is enough to go to the few islands in the Mediterranean without too many tourists – I am thinking of Corsica and Sardinia – and see that they are several decades behind the evolution that we have experienced. You have to be careful with the anti-tourism demonstrations that are currently taking place.

Have the especially high temperatures registered this summer led to a decrease in European clientele who have preferred other less hot destinations?

Not at all. Climate change is always worrisome, but if you are looking for beaches in Europe where it is less hot than here, you can think, for example, of the French Atlantic Coast, but it should be remembered that in Bilbao they have reached 44 degrees this August, with which in Biarritz might have been at 42 or 43. And if you want to go on vacation to England, they have had daily rain there for a month and a half. So, if you have to choose between a beach holding an umbrella in the rain or a beach in the sun and an umbrella, the choice is obvious.

What are your differential elements as a hotel establishment?

For us, the key is that the staff is happy, especially those who work in the dining room, who are the ones who interact with the customers. My father used to say that my most important job as a hotel manager would always be to keep the staff happy because it also makes the clientele happy. This is a maxim for us and the praiseworthy comments from customers for the good treatment provided are very pleasing to us and justify our work. In our establishment, for every two clients we have an employee. The humane treatment is what the client values ​​the most, which, for us, is king. In this sense, I formulate the following question: why did Mallorca experience the tourist boom so much more accentuated than other destinations? Because in Majorca there are Majorcans. I am not referring to full-blooded Mallorcans -I myself am half from Extremadura-, but to people who value work, with an affable character and welcoming to foreigners, who make visitors feel welcome. Another aspect that sets us apart from most four-star or more-star hotels is that most of our clients -between 80% and 85%- have hired us for half board or full board, when the most usual in the rest of the hotels it is contracting accommodation and breakfast.

What changes have taken place in the hotel in terms of logistics and service after covid-19?

One measure that we implemented after the covid, in June 2021, was the implementation of dinner reservations for hotel guests, in order to avoid crowds in the two dining rooms. But what was to be a provisional measure has become permanent, given its good results and the fact, among other advantages, that it facilitates and regulates work in the kitchen and in the canteens themselves. It should also be noted that, in general, in the hotel sector during the pandemic, significant losses amounted to millions of euros. Who more, who less, in Mallorca, contracted debts to meet the expenses of that dark period, debts that must be paid. Therefore, this year in our case there will be no distribution of profits, but compensation of losses from previous years.

Related news

How do you assess the difficulty in finding labor in the service sector?

I will say from the outset that most of our staff are foreigners, we have few Spaniards. Working in the hospitality industry involves doing it on weekends and throughout the day, and there are many who prefer other more comfortable professions in this regard. The political authorities, to date, have considered tourism work as second-rate, when for me working in the hotel industry is the most wonderful job there can be, because there is nothing more beautiful and grateful than giving happiness to people, which is what it pursues in our sector. Salaries? I would say that in the hospitality industry today they are quite reasonable. A waiter earns around 1,800 euros gross per month, with 14 payments per year, a month of vacation… I also believe that, apart from other considerations, one of the problems in hiring labor is that the staff cannot find housing at reasonable prices to rent, since the prices are very high as a consequence, also, of the vacation rental.