The sun and the beaches are still Mallorca's biggest attractions. | Majorca Daily Bulletin reporter

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A new report by Braintrust has warned of the high seasonality of Spanish sun and beach destinations, such as Mallorca and the Balearics, as they account for 69.8% of spending between July and September, far ahead of other types of tourism such as culture, shopping, sport and gastronomy. The consultancy firm points out that this model, “without ceasing to be important because of its weight”, makes activity precarious and prevents the deseasonalisation that “is so detrimental to some mature destinations, not only in Spain, but worldwide”.

In its analysis, Braintrust has developed a seasonality index of national tourists and their spending by type of tourism, identifying those that have the greatest potential for economic sustainability and employability. This index is calculated by taking into account the expenditure that originates in high season, comparing it with the expenditure that is made outside this period, resulting in a seasonality indicator, which is then categorised into three types of risk: high when the activity is mainly concentrated in the summer months, medium when it is usually grouped between summer and spring, and low when it is distributed throughout all the months of the year on a more regular basis.

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Nature tourism, on the other hand, also has a high indicator of seasonality, with the summer period also being the one that most agglutinates the volume of tourist expenditure. Other models do have a lower risk of seasonality, such as culture, although it is in the medium risk position, followed by three others that do have a low risk, such as shopping, sports and gastronomy.

For the director of Braintrust, Ángel García Butragueño, “in Spain we continue to exploit the sun and beach model, when we have excellent other markets to promote, other niches are increasingly important, such as culture, sport, shopping and nature”.

He stressed that the demonstrations against tourism call for the model to be “much more sustainable” and benefit the resident with tourism that is “much more diversified, deseasonalised, respectful, and that returns greater benefits to the destination”. Braintrust has also analysed the different types of niche tourism, reaching some “significant” conclusions when it comes to personalising the value proposition. They state that sun and beach tourism tends to be mostly with the family, with 49.1%, while culture shows different results, with a significant percentage of 65.1% for couples, 29.8% for friends in sport, and shopping is the niche with the highest percentage of solo visitors (12.5%).