The time of the marketing magicians is at hand. In every sphere of business and across the broadest horizon of misinformation, the cancer that is corporate/governmental collusion consumes us all. In tourism, the propaganda is layered so thick it would take a nuclear blast to dig up any truth. And now new words like hypertourism are being disallowed.
Take Susanna Sciacovelli, Director at the Majorca Tourism Board, responsible for promoting the Majorca tourism brand as a prime example of everything that is wrong. In a recent interview with TTG on the sidelines of London’s WTM, Sciacovelli chastised journalists for using the term “hypertourism” in reporting on protests in Majorca. You read that correctly.
Hyperdependence
The person in charge of the Majorca brand wants the media to sugarcoat the fact that thousands of people in Mallorca are demanding fewer tourists and better lives as a protest against overtourism. She told TTG:
We live from tourism, but we have to do this responsibly. Almost 50% of our GDP depends on tourism.
She contends that terms like “hyper tourism” suggest there are too many tourists visiting Majorca. The former VP of international sales for Airberlin, which went insolvent at the end of her time there, also blames the locals for putting pressure on Majorca’s infrastructure. Regarding making friends and positive PR, Sciacovelli is now battling the press; the locals swamped by tourists, and the tourists whose expectations may be shattered soon.
What a public relations nightmare! Sciacovelli says the problems in Majorca are far more complex than the term hypertourism reflects. She’s worried the news using these words will hurt tourism. Well, duh! So does herding as many budget or luxury travelers to your islands as you can fit into planes and boats can take on a “hyper” connotation.
Let’s look at reality and not the sales fluff. The organizers of the marches at the peak of the tourist season say that uncontrolled (synonym: rampant) tourist numbers have caused a drop in wages, the loss of quality of life, and out-of-control housing pricing.
More than 100 organizations joined the ‘Less Tourism, More Life’ organizers demanding set limits on tourism. Here’s the bigger story from Euronews, which did not use the term hypertourism.
Hyperobtuse
Thank goodness Ms. is not Greece’s tourism boss, or ekathimerini reporter Giorgos Lialios would have to tone down his vocabulary from the title “Islands buckling under burden of hypertourism” to something softer. He could have written a story about Santorini sinking under the weight of too many tourists, titled “Santorini Welcomes Hyperhappy Travelers—More and More.”
No. No, all you tourism salespeople out there. We must go with the words and definitions already set or that most closely reflect reality. For instance, the Cambridge Dictionary defines the new word hypertourism as a noun meaning:
The situation when a considerable number of people visit a place on holiday so that the place is spoiled and life is made very difficult for the people who live there
Majorca is experiencing the same problems places like Barcelona, Venice, and most Greek islands are plagued by. The bottom line is that it is not always the number of tourists, but the fact that those visitors spend less. Moneytourism.gr reports on restaurant and bar owners suffering from sagging revenues even though there are droves of tourists. Look, in 2023, Majorca welcomed almost 12.5 million tourists. In August 2024, overnight hotel stays increased by 2.6% compared with the same month in 2023, exceeding 47.8 million, the highest figure since records began. This data is from the Spanish government, so it is not as if officials there do not know the situation. No, officials, there are beckoning still more tourists and telling Majorca residents and reporters to STFU.
Meanwhile, remarkable places like Caló Des Moro (Instagram above) cannot withstand this unbridled tourism growth.
Hyperadvertising
This is it in a nutshell. Interestingly, a Skift report reveals that the Tourism Board commissioned a survey of some 1,000 Americans to see if the demonstrations negatively affected their vacations. And get this (from an insider): Skift does not usually “just” peck out articles for free, at least not since I was in PR and marketing. The giveaway is Sciacovelli being quoted saying:
“The information about the protests hasn’t really reached that much. Those who were already paying attention to news about Spain or Mallorca may be more aware than the general U.S. public.”
This is hypertourism damage control by Sciacovelli, and another well-done Skift visibility (propaganda) piece by Dawit Habtemariam, who really should change his LinkedIn accomplishments for Skift and omit (don’t bother; I took a screenshot):
Crafted and published five high-quality, SEO-optimized articles weekly, driving audience engagement and improving search visibility.
Now that I’ve cracked open some cans of worms, I wonder who the Spain Tourism Board sponsors. My old colleague Glenn Fogel of Bookings.com (#4 in Skift’s Power Rankings) is a speaker at the upcoming Skift event. Recent sponsors included Visit Puerto Rico, the Department of Culture and Tourism in Abu Dhabi, plus the custom content section for these forums. Anyhow, I won’t bore you with more media strategies for driving business; just pretend I’ve either dealt with or have worked for dozens and dozens.
I’ll give credit where credit is due. Susanna Sciacovelli seems to have done an excellent job of controlling damage during the protests and muzzling reporters intent on using accurate terms like “hypertourism.” You won’t see any references to this term in the first SERP results if you Google Majorca. Ms SCiacovelli should perhaps refocus on the article from yesterday by the Majorca Daily Bulletin, which created the term neo-tourism, defined as an action taken to turn residents from 2nd-class citizens into 3rd-class citizens. Oh my. That goes in my title.
Stay tuned. This is one to follow on all fronts.