Future Scenarios for Spanish Tourism: Discussion and Wild Cards

At a recent conference on scenario planning for the tourist sector in Spain, I presented the following Key Uncertainties and Wild Cards:

	1. Empty stores are hardly an uncertainty anymore in cities in Northern Europe. Changing comsumer behaviour, combined with the current crisis, will undoubtedly have an impact on inner cities in Southern Europe and on their attractiveness to visitors.
	2. Climate changes may affect tourism to Southern Spain, especially water-intensive tourism (such as golf tourism). Water distribution may even become a source of increasing regional and violent conflict.
	3. A Euro-crisis will have an enormous impact on price sensitive mass tourism, as we find thoughout the Mediterranean. If a country were to abandon the Euro-zone, and would (re-) introduce its own currency, beach tourism would immediately start to flow to the lowest point. (Image: Post in German Bild Zeitung, TUI is already calculating in Drachmae).
	4. The Arab Spring was a protest generated by rising food prices, at least as much as an expression of the desire for freedom and civil rights. It is therefore not hard to imagine that the 'Arab Spring' may spread to (European) countries with a population facing similar problems. Greece? (Image: Fast Company, Let Them Eat … What? High Food Commodity Prices Could Cause A Global Revolution).
	5. Population Decline apparently has ceased to be just a steady (albeit dramatic) change in birth rates, and may be turning into a desastrous, crisis-driven exodus. Ironically, some superficial populism welcomes emigration as an answer to mass unemployment, whereas in fact mass emigration is a phenomenon indicating a steeper crisis curve. (Image: El País, 580.000 People are leaving Spain. Note: This is the size of the entire population of Málaga).
	6. Youth depending on Parents: this is actually a chicken-and-egg phenomenon. In the poorer south of Europe people have traditionally been obliged to live with their parents during their studies and early professional career, for economic reasons. The paradoxical consequence of this tradition is that young adults in the North learn to cope with adverse financial conditions, whereas their southern counterparts may postpone their autonomy until they are able to live under the same standards as before. Thus, they may have developed weaker defense mechanisms for times of crisis. (Image: blogpost Mummies’ boys – the number 1 variable for predicting Eurozone sovereign stress?!, M and G Investments).
	7. Gastronomy becomes unfashionable: This is a more specific, profession-related wild card. In recent decades, many businesses but also many educational institutes have focused heavily on high-end gastronomy, not necessarily a traditional phenomenon in Spain. It may well be that this "Gastronomy as Art" has been closely related to the years of (EU- and speculation-fed) opulence, and that it may therefore again be on the decline. Not that people will stop enjoying food; but they may no longer be interested in self-actualization through cooking.

Conference: Escenarios de futuro para el turismo, Centro Superior de Hostelería de Galicia, November 12, 2011.

Where is the trip going? (Wohin geht die Reise?)

"On May 17th 2011 Jeroen Oskam and Gaby Seemann were invited by the project group 'Netzwerk Toekomst' to take a glimpse into the future. Oskam not just highlighted the importance of being prepared for the future but elaborated why the ETFI rather works with uncertain factors and scenario planning than with common forecasts. Ongoing developments such as a decline in out of home expenditure and increase in investments in energy and living rather than food and tourism shape tomorrow's tourism. A decrease in income and increasing costs for tourism due to higher energy costs will change the tourism pattern. Moreover, in house gaming and online communities such as Facebook and Twitter make the current and future generation of children rather stay inside and not meet or play outside which will drastically change their way of travelling and leisure behaviour in the future."

From the Ems-Dollard Regio Magazine:

Open publication - Free publishing - More etfi

International Tourism Futures Conference

Panel discussion: the Future of Tourism and the Future of Tourism Education

From November 2-5, 2011, the European Tourism Futures Institute organized the 'Tourism Futures' conference at Stenden University, as a meeting for international futurologists, tourism researchers and professionals with the objective to find and discuss answers to the situations tourism will face in the next decades. Conference topics were the hotel of the future, creative cities/city-sumers, slow marketing and the global shift of political power. As keynotes the programme featured Márcio Favilla, as Director of Competitiveness at UNWTO and dr. Katharina Grünberg, from the scenario team at Shell, about their organisations’ tourism future study and scenario studies in general, respectively. Ari Björkqvist presented Haaga-Helia’s project on the future of hotels and conference centers, while Ian Yeoman looked at the hotel of the future from the perspective of the future of sleep.

The international conference was combined with the regionally oriented Fryske Toerisme Kongresdei.

Conference website: http://www.etfi.eu/conference.
Conference presentations can be downloaded from http://www.etfi.eu/conference/programme .

Stenden university claims a leading role in Tourism Research

Article in Science Guide, November 16, 2011:

16 november 2011 - Stenden Hogeschool wil een leidende rol in het Europees toerisme onderzoek. Op het Future Tourism Congres (FTG) is besloten een grote samenwerking aan te gaan met verschillende grote Europese universiteiten. Belangrijkste doel is het gelijktrekken van de dataverzameling in Europa.

Nuns

Conservatives refer to a ‘moral crisis’ when they see how changes in our social order affect human behaviour. This crisis would include phenomena as diverse as abortion or the London riots.

I see different signs of a moral crisis. This is the crisis of generations no longer capable of formulating collective answers to the current appearance of social contradictions; unable to imagine an alternative to the situations they question. Turning to guidelines which do not address contemporary questions – but escapist questions – is a sign of moral desolation. Clueless protests, young women becoming nuns and massive Catholic manifestations are all symptoms of such desolation.

We should be careful when drawing conclusions though. Is the number of nuns really growing, or is it just that we have become more interested in the phenomenon? Is the Catholic movement growing, or has it become more aggressive? We need data, not propaganda.

(Update, April 2012: Here are your data. Researchers at the University of Chicago find that the belief in God is in decline).

BBC News: 'The growing number of young women becoming nuns', October 24, 2011.

Don’t give them fish – rent them fishing rods. The ethics of private education

Cardinal Rouco Varela and Archbishop Manuel Ureña preside the Opening of the Academic Year at a private university (2011)

Spain’s development of parallel public and private university systems is not similar to trends in higher education elsewhere. The ownership, motivation and goals of private universities determine their approach:

• A strict regulation imposes on all universities a strict design for their study plans, with elements considered obsolete elsewhere. Universities cannot differentiate themselves in content.
• Private universities do not distinguish themselves through their faculty, on the contrary: due to differences in salary and other conditions (job security), there is a constant leakage of experienced teaching staff to public universities.
• A year’s tuition in public universities will add up to € 1.000 as opposed to close to € 10.000 in private universities. Now, what is the incentive for a candidate student for choosing a private rather than a public university, if the product is similar? In many cases, the motivation will be the minimum entry grades.
• Despite the quality of their student intake, private universities aim for a maximum drop-out rate of 2%, for obvious reasons. The percentage of students abandoning their studies may be closer to 25 elsewhere.

Private universities in general offer similar programmes, with less qualified faculty, to wealthy students that have hardly been selected on academic criteria – and will be allowed to complete their studies without exams becoming effectively selective. The degrees awarded by these universities constitute a certification of upper class origin, rather than an academic qualification.

Spain’s private universities are normally non-profit organisations promoted by the Catholic Church. An auto-financing socialisation tool.

Future or Futures?

(Opening of the Academic Year 2011-12)



Today I have been asked to give an extremely short presentation about the European Tourism Futures Institute. I believe that time will be sufficient to concentrate only on one single letter in the name of the institute: that will be the S that turns future into a plural futures.
When this name was first launched, we were asked whether this was a mistake: can you speak of multiple futures, while everyone knows there is just one future? This is a deliberate choice of our institute, that is crucial for our research strategy.

Leeuwarden in search of tomorrow's tourist

Newspaper article (Leeuwarder Courant, April 28, 2011) on a workshop organized by Stenden's European Tourism Futures Institute and delivered by dr. Ian Yeoman, at the local City Hall:

Anatomy of a moment

Last summer I received a message from the Dutch translator of Javier Cercas' latest book Anatomía de un momento, on Tejero's failed coup d'état of 1981 (February 23, or 23-F). The book had a reference to my PhD. dissertation, and the translator had questions about the links between the military and civil society; in particular, the "think tank", "discussion club", or however we should call it (this was in fact one of the translator's questions) Club Siglo XXI.

I had not even read the book yet (the usual confusion between urgent and important tasks).In spite of its popularity, it is sometimes hard to find (I had to buy several copies to give it to friends) because bookstores tend to classify this well documented history book as a novel. The reason must be, besides some personal notes, that it is extremely well written. Therefore, it reads like a thriller that perfectly conveys the tension and uncertainty of the moment.

From a historical perspective, documenting this uncertainty may be one of the most important contributions of this study. While it is unknown which political forces backed the military coup, and if these forces involved decided to back out in the evening of the 23d, how and why, no doubt that in a few decades mainstream historiography will claim to know an unquestionable truth, which will also be the most comfortable one: that all democrats were heroic, and that those who were not heroic went to jail.

The coup's failure meant the end of the democratic transition in Spain, which since then is considered to be a mature democratic society. It is, in the sense that there is a peaceful alternation of governing political forces. It is not, though, if we consider the mentality by which this alternation is seen as an usurpation of power claimed by traditional social forces.

Besides those interested in recent Spanish history, this book should be read by history students because of its research approach and style.