It doesn't measure emotion, but rather the absence of complaint, the resigned acceptance of a service. A recent report by Mabrian compares the performance of Gran Canaria's hotel sector with that of its main competitors: Tenerife, Mallorca, and the Turkish region of Antalya. The analysis focuses on price estimates and customer satisfaction indexes, revealing a differentiated positioning for each destination in the peak season.
Life, as we know, is an accounting, a macabre dance of numbers that purport to explain the human soul, and tourism, which, after all, is the quintessential transaction, could not be any different. Here is a report, as sterile as an operating room, that speaks to us of prices and satisfaction, as if happiness could be measured with a ruler and the beauty of an island with the price of a room. And in this game of mirrors where truth hides behind a index, Gran Canaria presents itself to us for what it is: just another commodity in the sun's window, fighting for a niche in a soulless market.
The report puts prices on the table, those numbers that decide the destination of your vacation. We see Gran Canaria, with its five hundred-something euros for a weekend night in a five-star hotel, as if quality were an axiom from which one cannot escape. But then there's Mallorca, the wealthy sister of the Peninsula, which charges even more, as if its mere name justifies a price that borders on usury. And in the distance, the Turkish mirage of Antalya, which offers us the same blue skies and the same pools for a price that seems like a mockery, a trap for those who believe that luxury is a right. The minimum average price, they say, as if the true traveler were looking for the minimum and not, precisely, a good life.
But what's truly fascinating is this satisfaction index, this desperate attempt to quantify joy. 78,7 for five-star hotels in Gran Canaria, 77,2 for those in Tenerife, and 83,1 for those in Antalya. These are the numbers of satisfaction, of those who found the pool at the right temperature and the buffet well-stocked. We're told the index is calculated using "semantic analysis," as if a machine could understand a human's tiredness, disappointment, or true happiness.
Mallorca, with its 59,3 ratings for three-star hotels, reminds us that sometimes tourists demand less and, surprisingly, complain more. Satisfaction isn't a number; it's the silence of life, the silence that isn't seen in reports, the silence that occurs far from the noise of data, when one realizes that the sea is priceless.
