A posting ban becomes a topic in Mallorca

In high season, many beaches on the Balearic island of Mallorca are completely overcrowded. «There are more people than grains of sand on our beaches in summer», writes an employee of the Mallorcan communications agency La Indis on Instagram. The main reason for this is posts on social media, which attract many people to hidden bays thanks to their high reach.

As the newspaper «Heute» reports, the promotion of popular, but also previously hidden places on social media is now to come to an end: La Indis has created a slogan that calls on locals not to share beautiful places on social media. The bright red lettering with the call «Don't tag that beach, b*tch» is to be used primarily as a sticker.

«The sticker can be stuck on your car, in your office or anywhere else in popular places», suggests La Indis Creative Director Virginia Moll. Moll, however, understands the tourists’ motivation and doesn’t attribute the problem of mass-tourism to holiday-makers alone.

«We believe that tourists may rightly feel cheated when they visit a supposed paradise because a photo has been edited or cropped by locals to get likes», says Moll.

You then find yourself in a place with throngs of other tourists. It could, therefore, be argued that the locals themselves have caused the problem. «With this entertaining and fresh slogan, we want to become sympathisers of the islanders.»

The aim of the campaign is to encourage visitors to Mallorca to discover the island without the use of internet services and GPS, to protect the environment and to reduce crowds. «We are getting a lot of support, and one town hall has even asked us to design slogans for one of its beaches», says Moll.