Two Boeing 737-8AS passenger aircrafts of Ryanair airline

Will air travel prices increase? | REUTERS/Jon Nazca/File Photo

Andrew EdePalma 10/01/2025 10:03
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Over the next few weeks we will discover what the government’s sustainability pact has been all about. Entities critical of the pact’s processes have unfortunately walked away. As they speak for ‘civil society’, environmental protection and residents’ rights, a fear may be that conclusions of the pact’s twelve working parties will be too geared towards business interests. A perceived bias towards business has indeed been a reason for dissatisfaction.

From the outset, there has been a focus on a data-orientated approach. Frustration with this has given rise to its own criticisms. Solutions are staring everyone in the face. Just get on with it. What’s the need for all the data? These are understandable criticisms that have arisen because of a sustainability debate that reached a critical level in 2024. We all know the causes - the housing situation, the congested roads, the scarcity of resources.

But in defence of the pact, the principle has been, courtesy of data, to be objective. If the overall aim is to define a tourism model for a generation, is it better to be objective than subjective? Better to be detailed and complex rather than simplistic? Too much comment about Mallorca’s tourism is simplistic. Far too many subjective proposals and observations are offered, often predicated on what has been rather than what should be going forward.

It is a complicated matter. It has to be when an island economy is as dependent on tourism as Mallorca is. And it is a complicated matter in the framework of the realities of the third decade of the twenty-first century and of developments creeping up on us. One concerns transport costs. These will rise progressively. The era of cheap air travel will begin to fade. A move in this direction has already been made in Spain, with the limited introduction of sustainable aviation fuel. The airlines reckon this will cost them 234 million euros.

The sustainability pact’s proposals should arguably factor in a dual scenario of increased leisure time and higher prices for air travel. For Mallorca this is a scenario of fundamental importance, as prices will determine a preference for short-haul European travel in the coming years. The western Mediterranean will be an area with the greatest tourist pressure.

PALMA. GEOGRAFIA. José Antonio Donaire, Geógrafo y director del Insetur. Profesor de la Universitat de Girona y experto acadé
José Antonio Donaire, geographer and director of Insetur, professor at the University of Girona, and academic expert in tourism.

José Antonio Donaire has highlighted this scenario. An acknowledged tourism specialist, he has been in charge of a project in Barcelona to determine what is referred to as ‘Acceptable Carrying Limit’ (LCA to give its Spanish abbreviation). He distinguishes this from carrying capacity, which is based on the notion that there is a number (of tourists or vehicles) above which there is a problem and below which there is not. The LCA seeks to define this number according to variables applicable to individual destinations. For Barcelona there are twenty under categories of density, environmental, economic and social. These can reflect numbers of tourists and types of tourist.

Donaire is professor of geography at the University of Girona. He is an academic. Are academics always wholly objective? No, but research has to be seen to demonstrate an objectivity, even if conclusions can swing in directions determined by an individual’s perspective. In this regard, one wonders if the sustainability pact is missing a trick, made more apparent by the withdrawal of entities. There has been much talk about carrying capacities. Professor Donaire’s LCA has variables that equate precisely to the interests of groups to have walked away.

While accepting that one is not aware of the methodologies but that the pact’s findings will be detailed and complex, there might be a worry that they will be a tad simplistic in that they fail to take account of the full complexity of the subject. We’ll find out, though even once the findings are known, one can’t imagine that they will mark an end to the studies.

Meanwhile, Donaire has been the subject of a highly thought-provoking interview in Ultima Hora in which he was asked whether a study like Barcelona’s would give Mallorca and the Balearics a number that would be the tourist limit. He said that the general academic conclusion is that there are “no magic number”. Numbers respond to a “subjective criterion”. “The most important thing is that each destination decides its maximum tolerable threshold based on what it considers to be important and on the ‘price’ it is willing to pay for tourist impact. It’s not just about how many, but who, as different tourists generate different impacts.” He added: “Five-star hotel guests consume more water and energy and generate more waste than tourists with lesser means.”

This was hardly a glowing endorsement of a destination focused on a quality tourism for the rich, which in any event he doesn’t believe to be “ethically advisable”. “The democratisation of tourism seems to me to be a social achievement for the middle and working classes. To now propose that we will move towards a tourism for only a few seems like a step backwards.”

I can’t disagree, but might that scenario of ever higher transport costs ultimately undermine this democratisation? Tourism for the coming generation. This is what is at stake.