Enjoy Your Trip: Review websites

Do you use TripAdvisor? Do you post reviews to it? Do you take notice of reviews on the site? Do you put reviews on other sites or are you guided by what others might say? Are your reviews potentially defamatory? Do you know that, in the UK at any rate, you might end up facing legal action if you do so?

The fight back has started. At a so-called “masterclass” in London, arranged by TripAdvisor with the intention of showing hotel and restaurant owners how they can make the most of the website, the whole thing turned into something of a fiasco – those owners expressing their anger as to how TripAdvisor goes about its business.

In fact the fight back started some while ago. In the UK, since 2008, misleading reviews, i.e. those which, for example, come from a hotel itself and masquerade as independent opinion, can be subject to naming and shaming by trading standards or even court action. It hasn’t helped that much. There are PR companies who will sort out good reviews, there are hotel or restaurant businesses who will give “incentives” to get good reviews. There can also be a whole load of family and friends only too happy to oblige. Users of sites – consumers, travellers – are being taken in.

Then there are the negative reviews. TripAdvisor says that it has ways of combatting them and it points out that has its “owners centre” through which responses can be made to negative comments, but this hasn’t satisfied owners who have seen their businesses’ reputations being dragged through the mud of cyberspace. The anger has given rise to the anti-TripAdvisor site – ihatetripadvisor.org.uk. The power of the negative review is such that owners can be subject to blackmail in order to stop bad comments.

TripAdvisor is singled out because it is the biggest and best-known of the review sites. It isn’t the only one of course. Far from it. There are so many reviews, opinions and comments plastered across Lord knows how many websites, it is a wonder that anyone has the time to ever go to a restaurant or take a holiday as they are spending so much of it on reading what can be misleading, malicious, ill-informed, gushing, potentially fraudulent. The wonder is that anyone takes any notice of any of it, given how unreliable it seems.

Recommendations from “real” people can be hugely powerful, as indeed can criticisms. This is why so much prominence is granted to sites such as TripAdvisor. The Spanish director of the site revealed earlier this year that a well-known but unnamed hotelier places more importance on the opinions expressed rather than the categorisation system that TripAdvisor has.

But the potential for abuse is enormous. Which is why a group of 700 businesses is considering a group defamation action against TripAdvisor, and why individuals can be liable to action against themselves if they’re not careful.

There is now advice being given to site users so that they can try and sort out the reliable and honest wheat from the ill-formed or misleading chaff. One piece of advice is that if several reviews all make similar observations, then the information should be ok. Maybe so, but there is an undeniable tendency to the me-too about much that is posted. It is the curious psychology of online communities, one of reinforcement. One person slags off or praises to the hilt and others follow my leader; they don’t want to be left out. And the reverse psychology, as it were, occurs when someone takes umbrage at this groupthink, which can then have the effect of reinforcing even further the initial line of argument. How dare anyone disagree?

I have recently seen a particular restaurant coming in for some harsh comment. As it so happened I was at another restaurant, two doors down from the one in the spotlight. I mentioned to someone who works there that the restaurant more or less next door has got a poor reputation. “Really? I like it. Food’s always good. It’s always packed. People wait on the street to get a table.” And this was from someone who is a chef in a rival establishment. Go figure.

The worst aspect of all this isn’t that a business can be brought to the point of ruin by bad reviews, deliberately arranged or just because, well, the place is no good or, for whatever reason, people don’t like it. This is bad enough. But more than this is the fact that we now seem incapable of making choices of our own. Everything is decided for us. By people we have never met, who don’t know what we really like, but in whom we invest colossal and utterly ludicrous amounts of credibility. Which country we might go to, which resort in a country, which hotel in a particular resort, which restaurant or bar, which this, that or the next thing.

Why bother going on holiday any longer? You can just stay at home and spend your week or fortnight reading the reviews. About as exciting as being on holiday, given that the spirit of adventure or the unknown has been lost. And even if you do go on holiday, how do you spend your time? Must tell everyone how good/bad it is. Go to sites x, y and z. “Hotel’s brilliant/rubbish. Restaurant’s outstanding/awful. Resort is fantastic/dreadful.”

Once upon a time holidays were there to be enjoyed. Of course there were bad experiences. So you never went back. Of course travellers and consumers did not have the “empowerment” of the internet to voice their discontent or their praise. Fair enough, but behind any comment, good or bad, can you be really sure as to its authenticity, as to how accurate it might be, as to how simply nasty it might be? You can’t. Information isn’t everything, and nor is having the whole trip advised.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Empire Of The Sun: German and British tourism

The sunbeds’ battle has been won. The question is how long the war will drag on. Some hoteliers are preparing for the withdrawal of the vanquished, accepting the dominant hotel occupancy force. Sunbedsraum. Peace in our time. The resorts quietening to the sound of retreating Tommies now whistling in the distance and drowning in the horizon where the sun goes down on a modern empire.

From the mid-70s to the mid-80s, at the height of imperial might, the British represented 40% of the foreign tourism market on Mallorca’s beaches. It was a tourism army that, in its numbers, eclipsed that of Germany. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century the percentages have been more than just reversed. German tourism, at around 50% of the total, is double that from Britain.

It is indeed the case that some hotels are adapting to a weaker British market or are contemplating the previously unthinkable – a post-British market. This may all be in response to the short-term shock of the past couple of years and the collapse of the pound, but as alternative tourism markets emerge for the hotels and tour operators to sink their teeth into, could it be we that we are witnessing the end of Mallorca’s Britannic tourism industry?

Chances are that we are not. Talk of the apocalyptic demise of British tourism – not now, but some time – is an absurd exaggeration. These things have a habit of going in cycles. German tourism itself has not always enjoyed a completely harmonious relationship with Mallorca, despite a love affair between Germany and the island that goes back half a century. Not so long ago, Mallorca had to repair a rupture caused by a perception that German tourists were somehow unwelcome. Repaired it was, and the relationship has been given new life.

But the relationship with Germany has always seemed, even during the period of British dominance, to be stronger. And the relationship goes deeper than just tourism. It can be seen on the high streets, such as they are – Lidl, Schlecker, Müller and, at some point, Media Markt. Two of the best-known estate agencies are of German origin – Kühn & Partner and Engel & Völkers. TUI is bigger than its rival Thomas Cook, a company which has reclaimed its “Britishness” since the MyTravel merger, but which retains a strong German flavour. Air Berlin is more than simply an airline shuttling German tourists to and from the island; its local boss has headed the Mallorca Tourism Board.

It is a relationship, therefore, which has appeared to be altogether more “serious”. “Real” business rather than just the bar. Not that there aren’t of course German-run bars. There are. But it’s an oddity that even in a place like Alcúdia, which is not as “British” as some might have you believe, the German bar is thin on the ground, almost to the point of non-existence.

This “seriousness” may all have to do with the nature of the relationship and a competing historical perception of Mallorca. For years, many a Brit would look down his or her nose at Mallorca, the consequence of an image problem that was only partly accurate. Notwithstanding the emergence of a beer, sausage and oompah German tourism culture in the likes of Arenal, Mallorca did not suffer to anything like the same degree from being viewed negatively in Germany.

The Germans have bought into the whole “paradise island” deal in a way that the British have never done. Clichéd it is, but the Germans use the expression quite unashamedly. For Mallorca and its tourism at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, it is just as well that they do. TUI says that its winter tourism to Mallorca from Germany has started with “much dynamism” and that next summer there will be a growth in the numbers of German tourists.

The Germans are still very much in love with Mallorca, but even with the Germans, the signs are there. More tourists next year, but more in all-inclusives. Hotel prices have been lowered while those in other destinations have increased. And the Germans are being tempted into a different affair, that with Turkey. TUI in Germany now takes more tourists to Turkey than it does to Mallorca.

The battle in Mallorca may have been won, but the eastern front has been well and truly breached. And that is a war Mallorca is in danger of losing, if indeed it hasn’t already lost it.

“We lived an adventure. Love in the summer.”
“Lie in the sand and visualise. Like it’s ’75 again.”

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Not The Same: Ensaïmadas

Say sweetbreads to me and I’ll come out in a cold sweat. It’s all to do with the memory of a meal in the Dordogne. The dish looked appetising enough, until I was told what “ris de veau” actually meant. I had mistaken the “ris” bit to be rice. Tucking into pancreas isn’t at the top of my list of culinary experiences to be repeated. Nor, come to that, is sweet bread.

Sweet bread is making an appearance in the US. The separation of bread from sweet presumably overcomes the connotation with offal, making it more a waffle, or maybe the Americans don’t know what sweetbreads are. Whatever. Sweet bread is available in Starbucks. Mallorcan Sweet Bread, aka the ensaïmada (so long as the aka is not used, it would seem). The Americans can lard their asses even more, courtesy of Mallorcan lard. Or can they?

The key ingredient of the ensaïmada is pork lard – “saïm”. The word is derived from the Latin for fat. An unfathomable peculiarity of an otherwise healthy Mallorcan Mediterranean diet is that they go and wreck it by shovelling lard and sugar down their necks. What on earth are they thinking of?

The reverence shown to the ensaïmada baffles me. It has its own “day”. It gets hauled off in boxes by passengers from the airport, intent on inflicting it on unsuspecting relatives and friends on the mainland. It has been 15 metres in diameter, such as at Inca’s Dijous Bo a couple of years back. It has been, according to a press reader survey in February 2009, the seventh wonder of Mallorca (at least it wasn’t the first).

The ensaïmada has also been a victim of recession and of rival Mallorcan products. Production and sales have fallen.

According to Starbucks’ US website, one of its Mallorca Sweet Breads contains a mere 60% of your daily saturated fat intake; indeed it has 39% of total fat intake for the day. The site bigs up the bun by saying that (in Mallorca) “one wouldn’t dream of starting the day without a coffee and this traditional sweet bread”. Ah yes, you wake up and the first thing that comes to mind is to get off to the bakers or the local café and give yourself a sugary moustache.

Going through the lengthy list of the sweet bread’s ingredients on the website, there seems to be no mention of “saïm”. Maybe the pork lard is covered by something else, but if not, then it isn’t, strictly speaking, the saïm thing. Were it to be, then who knows how high the fat content would be.

The Mallorcan ensaïmada is a registered “brand”, but the president of the ensaïmada regulatory council, which has faced its own financing issues, reckons that there isn’t a lot to prevent Starbucks from promoting the bread. It is promotion, after all. But the name “ensaïmada” isn’t actually being used, albeit that the website gives a brief background to what is “called ensaïmada in Spanish”. The president also points out – most important this – that the Starbucks’ bread has been coiled in the wrong direction. And yes, there is a right direction. To the right. Clockwise.

The ensaïmada isn’t only to be found in Mallorca. It is not uncommon in, say, the Philippines or Latin America, but the pork lard ingredient is what makes it distinctively Mallorcan. It would be telling porkies to claim that the ensaïmadas of the world, without a dash of pig, are really ensaïmadas.

As for my own personal less than great regard for the ensaïmada, don’t take this as some holier-than-thou health assault on pastry or cake in general. Not at all. I can have my cake and eat it, too. Many times over, thanks very much. Just that the ensaïmada, rather like another hugely over-rated breakfast bread, the croissant, is terminally dull. And it confirms that the Mallorcans, like the French, don’t understand breakfast. Mind you, neither are as mad as the Dutch who put chocolate bits on bread and butter.

No, it’s nothing to do with health or the presence of pork lard. It’s everything to do with breakfast. Bacon and sausages a-sizzling. And an egg being fried. Preferably in lard. The ensaïmada? Doesn’t even get near.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

These Words: The Pope and Spanish secularism

The Pope’s favourite two words. Aggressive and secularism. Combined, they come out like a knocking-copy comparative advertising slogan. Marketing people know of the dangers of knocking the competition. The Pope should know of the dangers as well.

The Pope levelled the aggressive secularism charge against Britain. He has now done so as well in Spain. It’s one that carries more weight in a Catholic country, more so than it did in Britain where it should have been shrugged off with a so-what.

The charge carries weight and danger because it is an overtly political statement, one that is explicit in its criticism of the socially liberal, anti-Church policies of the current Zapatero government. The danger is immense. While it may be a reassuring message for a moderate Catholic right, there exist more extreme elements. The added danger of the Pope’s words can be seen in the context of his expression of contemporary secularism. He compared this to the “strong and aggressive (that word again) anti-clericalism” of the 1930s.

Playing the ’30s card resonates with all manner of alarm bells. The anti-clericalism of that time was just one factor that contributed to the rise of Nationalism and of Franco. And strict Catholic orthodoxy was to become an important strand of Francoism.

The Pope is referring to the efforts of the Second Republic from 1931 to undermine the privileged position of the Catholic Church and to introduce reforms such as secular education. The circumstances are nowadays quite different, with regard especially to education. They also differ dramatically in another way. The Republic attempted to address social problems and issues in the first part of the 1930s, but did so against a background of what was a shaky political structure. This is not the case today.

It was the apparent persecution of the Church by Republican constitutional change that was to become a theme of the political and then military struggles of the 1930s. To draw a comparison with anti-clericalism and secularism then and now is not completely without foundation, given the emergence of policies related to abortion, divorce and homosexuality. But the dynamics are very different, as indeed are the issues.

A generation or more has grown up knowing both increased secularism and democratic stability. The Church’s influence has been reduced significantly in a country where only around a seventh of the population now attends mass regularly. And education, one of the battlegrounds of the ’30s, is a further factor in a society that now enjoys better standards of education than before. The Pope might reflect on the fact that the reinstatement of the Jesuits under the Nationalists, alongside the Falange’s control of universities, did not contribute to making a population that much better educated than it was in the ’30s. It certainly did nothing for anything that might have approximated to a liberal educational tradition. Which was really the point of the Church’s opposition to anti-clericalism under the Republicans. And remains so today.

One of the great ironies of Spain and of all the problems it faced from the nineteenth century until Franco died is that Spain gave the world the concept of liberalism. It has taken an enormously long time from its inception as an ideal in the early 1800s for it to have finally taken hold in Spain. The word and the concept have come to be wrongly abused, hijacked by a right wing that has misappropriated it through – further irony – its own politically correct dogma. In today’s Spain liberalism is portrayed, by the Catholic right, as the creation of what it sees as social evils. But this is a stance unshared by and rejected by a majority of the population.

For the Pope, there is more history. It is that of Spain at the end of the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth, when Spain was the perfect example of a Catholic “state” and, moreover, was crucial to Catholic imperialism. For the Vatican, there is much riding on Spain’s ongoing Catholicism, but much which is historical symbolism. The danger in what the Pope has said lies in stirring up that symbolism and giving it political succour. Whether aggressive or not, secularism – and liberalism – have come to define Spanish society. That of today. And it’s only taken a couple of hundred years for it to get there.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Alphabet Soup: Surnames and spelling

Revolution. Reform. Not quite. A bit of a change more like. Change which, to the British, will seem distinctly peculiar.

The “revolution” applies to Spanish surnames; the reform to some language use. That there are bodies which adjudicate on such matters, form laws or conventions to cover them might strike you as somewhat bizarre. Not so to the Spanish, however. Such as in the case of names.

The Spanish find the British concept of the “middle” name, i.e. the second, third or fourth Christian name, distinctly odd, notwithstanding the existence of a Juan Antonio here or a José Maria there. But these aren’t examples of middle names, as they’re first names, both of them. Use your British-given middle name in official documents and you will, in all likelihood, be called by it, as in Señor or Señora (Middle Name). If you are a woman and your middle name is Joan, in Mallorca you will be addressed as and pronounced as Senyora (as in the Catalan) Joanne. A man’s name dressed up as a woman’s. It does get dreadfully confusing.

Personally, I find it quite amusing. My middle name, Colin, crops up on all sorts of things. Medical card, for example. I am, where a receptionist, nurse or doctor is concerned, “Señor Colin”. Not that I’m that bothered. Quite the opposite. It’s just one letter away from Colon, which thus makes me – nearly – a descendant of Columbus. Possibly. They’ve not asked me for my DNA yet though in the attempt to establish that the old Italian came from Felanitx.

The revolution in surnames, coming on the back of greater acceptance of “new” Christian names, which has seen Kevins (for example) becoming more common, as well as Mohameds, will be one by which the paternal surname will not automatically be the first surname. First surname, you ask? Yes, first surname. There are always two, unless there are more. But the more is usually only because of some long, drawn-out, pompously aristocratic styling, especially if the surname isn’t particularly distinguished.

The current norm, under birth registration laws, is for the father’s surname to come first, the mother’s second. Which means their first surnames, because they of course have two. Maybe. But you can swap them around, if you want, just to add to the confusion. And you can also choose to be known by your second surname, if you so wish. President Zapatero is an example. His first surname is in fact Rodríguez, but Zapatero is less common. He wishes to stand out from the Rodríguez crowd, even if he has acquired a further surname – Bean. Picasso was another who went maternal. He was paternally a Ruiz.

Under the new law, the alphabet rule will apply. Picasso would have been Picasso after all. But not if the parents decide otherwise. As ever, there will be an exception to the Raúl. Apparently this will all be more equal, says the ruling PSOE socialist party, not that everyone is in favour. Let the alphabet decide and those surnames towards the end of the alphabetic chain will slowly die out. No more Zapateros, for example.

Oh, and by the way, if you were thinking of becoming a Spanish citizen, you would have to find a second surname, assuming you didn’t already have one. That’s the rule, and it often leads to double-barrelled repetition. Imagine it. Potato Head is transferred to Real Madrid and decides to become Spanish. Two Wayne Rooneys. There are only two Wayne Rooneys. Wayne Rooney Rooney.

While the politicians have been looking to establish a new order in surnames, the Real Academia Española, which sets out rules for language, has been hard at work preparing its new official spelling publication. It will be out in time for Christmas. Get your orders in now! It’s not, says the co-ordinator Gutiérrez Ordónez (first name Salvador, or is it Salvador Gutiérrez?), revolutionary or a reform. But it will make things simpler. Allegedly.

Among the changes are those to the alphabet. If you weren’t aware, “ch” and “ll” are parts of the alphabet. Not any longer, according to the new “Ortografía”. Moreover, “i griega”, which is a considerable mouthful for “y”, will become obsolete and hereafter be merely “ye”. And there will be all sorts of other useful spellings for you to learn and digest. Planning a trip to Qatar, for example? Well, you can still plan the trip, but you will be going to Catar. Or maybe you want to go there four or five times. Hitherto, had you wished to do so, you would have written “or” as “o” with an accent – “ó”. Why? To avoid confusion of course with the or “o” without an accent, which is how it is normally spelt, when you are creating emphasis between one number or another. But no more. The accent is to be dispensed with. Far less confusing. Just like the order of surnames of which there are only two – ó three ó four.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Only The Lonely

I was in a bit of a hurry. But I wasn’t in that much of a hurry. I could have stopped, spent fifteen or thirty minutes. He’d suggested a coffee. Sorry, got to get off, work to do; that sort of thing.

He’s not someone I really know. The sort of person you see around, bump into now and then. It was only as I was driving off that I realised I should have hung around. What’s the scale, do you suppose, of loneliness in Mallorca?

Many years ago now, my mother once confided in me that she was lonely. Initially I was surprised. She was outgoing, a life and soul of the party East End girl; we used to duet in the local pub when I was a kid. But then I became less surprised. Moved house, family gone, a not unusual tale of social breakdown.

That was in England though, where the familiar surrounds you, where things are easy. They can be easy enough in Mallorca, but there isn’t quite the same familiarity. A while ago, before she moved back to England, someone who had lived on the island for some years, told me that it wasn’t quite the same. Yes, you had friends, but they weren’t friends like the old ones. There is a convenience of friendship, she was implying. Those you know wouldn’t necessarily be ones you would really choose. But isn’t this true of anywhere that you might move to?

The point is though, I guess, that you can know people and still be lonely. And there is a sense in which expat communities are indeed a convenience. Without them, the potential for loneliness would be increased through exclusion by language and culture. But where this convenience exists, there is the risk of the sort of superficiality that the “Daily Mail” sought to expose a couple of years ago (in Portals), one based on what is an erroneous perception of expat lifestyle centred on doing lunch and yacht parties – erroneous where most are concerned, but not all.

In April last year, The Royal British Legion published an outstanding report – “Caring In Spain”. (The full report and the accompanying “knowledge bank” are available online at http://www.britishlegion.org.uk.) While primarily this looked at health care, the report also dealt with issues such as the importance of social networks and of clubs. Convenience maybe, but what came through, clearly enough, was that without clubs and associations the lives of many would be intolerable.

However, not everyone is “clubbable”. The most obvious club is ESRA. It does much by way of good works, but it also comes in, with the greatest respect, for criticism. It has an image problem that turns people off. Perhaps the fault lies with its being seen as being too “expat”. I really can’t put my finger on it. But maybe some research into what this image problem is might not go amiss, as it has the power for immense good, along with the expansion of the efforts by Age Concern España.

The issue of loneliness, though, is not exclusively one that might affect the elderly. It can be seen around and about. Just one stereotype is the person clutching a drink at a bar. When the TV critic of “The Sunday Times”, A.A. Gill, savaged the dead Keith Floyd, he did so by referring to the sadness of the expat in a Costas bar in mid-morning – and staying there for several hours. Paul Whitehouse’s cringingly embarrassing Archie is not too far removed from a type you might be unfortunate enough to encounter. Alcohol dependence and being the bar bore are, nevertheless, or can be, symptomatic of a state of loneliness.

And loneliness can be a step away from more serious conditions. The Legion’s report looked also at psychological problems, of which depression or suicidal tendencies can be a part. As far as I am aware, there is no Samaritans service in Mallorca, but there is on the mainland, on the Costa Blanca (http://www.costablancasamaritans.com). The presence of the Samaritans in Mallorca might well be something to be explored. One wonders how well depression is tackled, even where it might be admitted, when the potential for language problems with a local doctor is concerned.

This might all sound as though I am overstating the issue. Perhaps so. But I come back to the question I posed. What’s the scale of loneliness in Mallorca? I have no idea as to the answer. Under a Mallorcan sun, however, there are social issues that seem as though they can’t or shouldn’t exist. They do. And under a Mallorcan sun is a sparsely populated karaoke bar. Up steps a performer to the confessional mike. Behind the dark glasses. Only the lonely.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Kissing With Confidence: Embracing Facebook

The Pope is to be confronted by a kiss-in – a “queer kissing flashmob” – when he turns up in Barcelona on Sunday. A gay and lesbian demonstration will involve two minutes of slobbering. “Avert your eyes, Holy Father. They’re using tongues and all.”

This is part of what is an ongoing collapse of Catholicism in Spain. The rearguard, die-hard Catholics are said to be outraged. Which is presumably part of the reason for the kiss protest. What the Pope thinks about it, who knows. Not that keen, one would imagine. He probably won’t be videoing it all on his mobile and then posting it on YouTube. Does the Pope do the internet in this way, do you suppose? Doubtful. It’s unlikely that he tweets or has a Facebook page. If he did, then he might have been invited to the kiss-in or been asked whether he liked it or to have even been asked to become a “friend”. The notion of the Pope being poked by some gay activists is really not something one should devote too much time thinking about.

The demo has been arranged through Facebook. Ah yes, Facebook. Where would we be without it? With a lot more time on our hands to do something more productive, like lying down or watching the telly. We would also be a whole lot less likely to be invited to demos or to partake in some action, gay, lesbian or otherwise.

In recent times, Facebook has been used locally to try and arrange an alternative to the Can Picafort night party during the summer fiesta (i.e. staging it on the beach where it used to be held); to call to arms supporters of live ducks being thrown into the sea (also in Can Picafort, and a movement which furthermore featured a YouTube video with, coincidentally, a “Pope” enticing some Donalds from the Son Bauló torrent); and to post pictures of rubbish, graffiti and general unpleasantness in Pollensa and its port. I daresay there have been many others. Were I to spend my life hooked up to Facebook, I might be able to tell you about them, but I don’t. I am ambivalent towards it.

A touch of citizen participation agitprop seems a pretty good application of Facebook. I am all in favour. There are plenty of other benefits. What I don’t like is the controlling nature of Facebook, the control on time and the sheer impulse to use it. This stems from an irrational further dislike, that of having been steered in its direction by some nerdy geek who wasn’t much good at getting his leg over. I can at least take satisfaction in the knowledge that a time will come when we all hate Mark Zuckerberg as much as we now hate Bill Gates.

The rotten thing about Facebook is that it can be so useful. And not just to the summer-employed population of Mallorca, now with so much free time that they can to go into Facebook overdrive when not standing in the “paro” queues. No, it’s more useful than this and more useful than appealing to the agitating duck-fanciers of Can Picafort.

It has occurred to me to wonder quite why so many resources, mainly money, are piled into the creation of governmental and local authority tourism websites, especially as most of them are completely useless or are embarrassing in their use of English. Facebook’s free. And there are all manner of people knocking around who do pages which serve a similar sort of purpose. Like myself. At least I was doing so until I started to get bored with it all towards the end of the season.

But with the Facebooks and indeed websites that are privately operated, there is an enormous resource that basically does the job of the tourism authorities for them. Moreover, they often speak to the audience in a far more comprehensible and helpful fashion than the “official” sites.

Of course, these alternatives would never be sanctioned as being real mouthpieces because they might – and do – say things that the authorities do not care for. You are more likely to get information and opinion, warts and all. This doesn’t square with the default mode of websites and their descriptions of everything as “beautiful” or “paradise”, the sea as “turquoise” or the natives as “welcoming and friendly”. And you might also get, because this is the nature of Facebook, pages that are friends with or who like gays kissing in front of the Pope or illegally live ducks quacking in the sea off Can Picafort. Tut, tut, that would never do.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Double Fault: Nadal and celebrity advertising

Rafael Nadal has played his last match as the promotional face of the Balearics. An amicable parting of the ways between the Manacor muscle and the tourism ministry means that the latter will not have to cough up for the final part of its contract, some two million euros.

Is this a case of seeing sense that Nadal’s celebrity amounted to buying a pig in a poke when it came to the islands’ promotion? Actually not. There is an altogether different reason. The tourism ministry is technically bankrupt. It owes 47 million euros, much of the debt being in the form of repayments to financial institutions. The regional government has had to step in and find around 20 million to help the ministry out. The remaining 27 million will need to be recouped from what Joana Barceló terms a “stability plan”.

Stability and the tourism ministry. Chance would be a fine thing. One has to have some sympathy for the minister Barceló, only the fifth incumbent in the post since the current administration took office in 2007. We have come to appreciate, thanks to the various corruption charges and hearings, that the ministry, via its agencies, was out of control. We hadn’t appreciated, until now, just how much out of control it was. The ministry’s debt equates to 70% of its entire budget.

Some months ago, I spoke to Antoni Munar the new director-general of tourism development. Pleasant chap, Sr. Munar, jocularly telling me that there wasn’t any money. I knew about all the problems, he asked. Yes, I joshed in return. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Munar and Barceló face one hell of a challenge.

The first challenge is knowing where on earth the money’s coming from for promotion. The second is knowing on what to spend it. Wisely. And the celebrity promotion has been anything but wise: Douglas, Schiffer, de Lucia, Kournikova (Kournikova for heaven’s sake!) and Nadal – where has any of it led to?

The casting of celebrities has, to an extent, been understandable, assuming, that is, you adhere to the principle of celebrity obsession. In no small part, the use of celebrities reflects the perception, of some, that Mallorca is a celebrity island. Perhaps it is, but such a perception creates a falsehood of shallowness and an image that is unrelated to the lives of many who live in Mallorca and, more importantly, who come to Mallorca on holiday.

Just one of the problems with celebrity advertising, and indeed much of the tourism advertising full stop, is that it treats its market as being one. This is a nonsense. There is no one tourism market, be it in terms of geography, age, income, and any other distinction you care to mention. It treats its market as one, but in reality speaks to hardly any of it. Nadal might have seemed appropriate, but he is also immensely wealthy and he was careering around on a luxury boat.

As a consequence, the advertising excludes the “ordinary” tourist. There may be an element of aspiration, but this is meaningless to an altogether more savvy and cost-conscious tourist than might once have been the case. Turn the celebrity image around, if you will, and imagine someone more “ordinary”. For sake of argument, an actor such as Philip Glenister, one with some Mallorcan connection. Ordinary bloke. Believable enough. But ordinary blokes mean ordinary tourists. And this is exactly the point. Extraordinary celebrities mean extraordinary tourists, and they alone. Extraordinary tourists do not mean tourism in a Mallorcan style.

There were also logisitical and branding problems with the Nadal promotion. Adverts either not appearing or doing so at strange times of the night or on obscure channels. Nadal promoting a brand which doesn’t exist – the Balearics – as opposed to those which do, the Mallorcan brand or those of the other islands.

It is not as though this latter aspect and the need to differentiate between different groups of tourist are not understood. Looking back at the 2009 season, in an interview with “abcmallorca” given by the then director of IBATUR Susanna Sciacovelli, she said that “we want to address customers by areas of interest” and that “every island needs its very own brand image”. So what was with the Nadal promotion, then?

Celebrity advertising is well-established, but its effectiveness is very much open to debate. In India, cricketers are paid huge sums to endorse products. An article from rediff.com of September 2003 by Madhukar Sabnavis, the Ogilvy & Mather agency’s country manager, pointed to advantages, such as the attention-grabbing nature of such advertising, but also to negatives. Take these. “Celebrity advertising is seen as a substitute for absence of ideas.” “(The client) feels that the presence of a well-known face is an easy way out” (when a better alternative can’t be thought of). “Few agencies actually present celebrity advertising as a solution to client problems.”

Nadal was probably an easy way out. Mallorcan, famous, successful. He’ll do. Here’s Sciacovelli again: “TV advertisements featuring him … in the UK and Germany … are (were) highly effective.” They were? And they and Nadal cost a fair wedge. Money that is no longer available, if it ever was. Joana Barceló is hinting that, though there is a hope that Nadal can still perform a promotional function, the days of celebrity advertising are over.

With less money around, let us hope that what there is will be spent wisely, but don’t discount the celebrity making a return. Sabnavis also said that a further reason for celebrity advertising was “a desire to rub shoulders with the glitterati”. And such a desire is the fault not just of those who commission such advertising. It is the double fault of an element of local society that is in thrall to celebrity. Be very careful what you wish for.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

On The Dunes: Can Picafort and Playa de Muro

I am looking at some old photos of Can Picafort. Circa 1960. Two people are walking along what is recognisable as a road but which has no tarmac. It is made of sand. It became the Via Suiza. In the distance you can’t make out the sea. Not because of buildings, because there aren’t any, but because of something else that is obscuring the view. In another photo there is a boy sitting on a deckchair on the beach. You might expect to be able to see, in the background, the Via Suiza from a different angle. But you can’t. Because there is something in the way. Dunes.

Can Picafort, in keeping with much of the bay of Alcúdia and with other stretches of Mallorcan coastline, is made up of dunes. Or rather, it used to be. The only dunes now are at the resort’s eastern Son Bauló end, extending into what is the “rustic” coast past the Son Real finca. The dunes in Can Picafort can no longer be seen. Because they are no longer there.

The loss of the dunes along the bay is evident in Alcúdia. But here the beach is wide. Nothing sits on top of the sea. Nor does it in much of adjoining Playa de Muro. Only once past the canal that connects Albufera with the sea does the beach start to become appreciably narrower. This is what has now been lovingly signposted as “Sector 2”. The resort as military installation.

Where the hotels in Playa de Muro finish there is a stretch of some two kilometres of rustic beach, backed by dunes and forest. There are no buildings. They only re-emerge as you come into Can Picafort. The dunes end abruptly. Can Picafort is built on dunes.

The creation of the resort was not so much environmental vandalism as environmental rape and pillage. The dunes were levelled and what was formed was a generally charmless front line of barn-style restaurants only a short distance from the shoreline. The restaurants, for the most part, are unremarkable. And there is probably a good reason. Being so close to the sea and being so undefended, in winter sand and water encroach. Until recently, before some new drainage, there used to be regular and damaging floods. Why create something of beauty if it’s going to be ravaged by nature.

Behind the front line is a town. Shops and hotel after hotel. The dunes and what lay behind them were destroyed in constructing an urban development.

One of the points of contention surrounding the Costas demarcation plan for Playa de Muro is Can Picafort. With no small amount of justification, the murers point to what happened to what was once hardly even a village, just a bit of a fishing harbour and the old fincas of Sr. Picafort. In Playa de Muro, where the environmental destruction has been less extreme, it might just be that the destruction is reversible. In Can Picafort, it can’t be reversed. But the targeting of Playa de Muro by the Costas strikes many as supremely unfair when compared with the wholesale degradation of the natural environment just a few kilometres away.

The language and the actions of the Costas in Playa de Muro have been ratcheted up since the demonstration against the demarcation took place. Celestí Alomar, the boss of the Costas in the Balearics, talks of there being “many people and organisations without any sort of consideration”. He has taken particular exception to the fact that gardens have been created and that volleyball is played on the dunes. But note the words. On the dunes. They are still there. They may be subject to what Alomar calls “degradation”, but they haven’t all been taken away. Unlike in Can Picafort.

Meanwhile, Alomar has been suggesting that the holiday homes of Ses Casetes des Capellans could have a reprieve by their being ceded to Muro town hall and escaping any threat of demolition. Good news perhaps, and aimed at the ordinary people of Muro who own the bungalows. But it smacks of politicking, driving a wedge between the holiday-home owners and the businesses and residents of the resort.

Alomar wants an improvement to the beach in Playa de Muro, one that will create “tourism of more quality” and one that, with greater respect for nature, will offset the seasonality that local hoteliers bemoan. Who is he trying to kid? The nature is now just something to admire from a distance. The Costas has made and is making the dunes no-go areas in Playa de Muro. There may be sound environmental reasons for doing so, but what they are becoming are things to just look at. You can no longer wander in the forest and dunes areas in the way you used to be able to. Yet isn’t this public land? Isn’t there meant to be public access? It’s contradictory, just as much as a short walk along the beach from where dunes do still exist confirms that there is a place where they no longer do.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Over And Over Again: Too many hotel beds

Over-regulation and over-supply. Over and over we go. And so do Mallorca’s hotels.

At the conference into tourism law and rights that was held last week, the hoteliers pleaded for less regulation while also admitting that they were part of the problem of Mallorca’s tourism industry because they create too many places.

It seems an extraordinary admission, but it was one backed by the national secretary-general for tourism, the Mallorcan Joan Mesquida. The hotels spoke of the need for “legal formulae” to enable both investment in the hotel sector and the departure from the market of establishments with no business future. A cynical, but probably accurate view, is that the latter – the departure – has to do with finding a convenient way of re-classifying the real estate for different usage.

The admission isn’t so extraordinary, however, when you take into consideration the age of some hotel stock (and the cost of renovating it), the drive towards higher standards led by the regional government, tour operators and indeed customers, the lower margins caused by the over-supply in alliance with other destination competition, and the unprofitability of a goodly percentage of tourists.

The over-supply hypothesis is not simply a case of hotels generating superior profits, it is one that goes to the heart of a strategic vision of Mallorca’s tourism that successive governments have spoken about but have singularly failed to come up with. One reason for this failure is because it requires facing up to something which few politicians wish to – reduced numbers of tourists.

There are all manner of reasons why politicians wouldn’t wish this. Employment is one. Unfortunately, however, there is employment in Mallorca which exists solely for the purpose of serving an element of the tourist market that does not pay for it. Over-supply? There most certainly is. And it is made up of that percentage which contributes zilch.

For years there has been a desire in Mallorca for higher “quality” tourism. It is a term that I detest, mainly because of the pejorative that it implies: tourists without money are of no value. Detest it I may do, on the grounds of egalitarianism that anyone, regardless of income or socioeconomics, is free to come and vomit into an all-inclusive pool, but I am of course being ruled by the heart. Tourism is, or should be, about the head.

The “head” of tourism strategy has ruled, but it has been the wrong head. The numbers game is all that has mattered. The hoteliers have finally fingered the culprit of the cause of some of Mallorca’s tourism malaise, but they are doing so in an entirely disingenuous fashion. They do this because they like to believe, and make governments similarly believe, that they are the only game in town.

Let’s take a town, shall we? Puerto Pollensa. This is a town, a resort, in which there has been considerable talk of the need for more hotels. The notion seems utterly contrary, given what is now being said. But it isn’t because of the strategy of tourism based on hotel accommodation.

Puerto Pollensa doesn’t have that many hotels, and only one that might be considered “big”. It is a resort that is quite different to many, such as its neighbours Alcúdia and Can Picafort. Considerable snobbery emanates from Puerto Pollensa, but not without good reason. It isn’t like other resorts because its profile is also unlike others: its tourism market is geared towards residential tourism as much, if not more, than hotels. It is a profile, therefore, which is more inclined to spend money than that of resorts with an over-supply of hotels.

But such a profile runs up against the hotel dogma and the hotel lobby, one that would rather the holiday-let market was cast adrift in the bay of Pollensa and elsewhere on the island. The hoteliers then display more disingenuousness by criticising what they call a “lack of homogeneity” as being one impediment to tourism. In other words, they would rather that everything was the same. The same, presumably, on their terms.

Over-supply there is, for sure, and in resorts which – and the hoteliers are wrong – do conform to homogeneity, resorts for which there has been little or no strategic vision in terms of their image, their inherent qualities and differences. This is the failure. Puerto Pollensa isn’t like this. It has its own image and there is no over-supply. But perhaps there is an under-supply of the type of accommodation the hoteliers would resent. Or would they? They’re not stupid. And that brings us back to the departure from the market. What do you do with old hotels that are no longer any use?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.