The Seven Pillars Of Tourism Wisdom

Exceltur is the “alliance for touristic excellence”. It is a body that comprises some of Spain’s leading hotel groups (and therefore Mallorca’s hotel groups as many of them are Mallorcan) as well as travel agencies, car-rental agencies, financial services companies and more. Its remit, as you might gauge from what it stands for, is to look at how to improve and develop Spanish tourism. As part of this mission, it undertakes annual surveys of tourism competitiveness in the different regions of Spain.

The survey for 2010 (MoniTUR – very clever) has just been published. A collaboration with the consultancy group Deloitte, the new survey doesn’t make great reading for the Balearics. The islands are still in the top half of Spain’s regions, but they have slipped one place to sixth. In itself, this doesn’t sound particularly dramatic, but when you study closely the so-called “seven pillars” of competitiveness that form the basis of the survey, it is.

Of the seven regions that lost competitive value in 2010, the loss by the Balearics is greater than that of any other region. Of the seven “pillars”, a gain has been made in only two, one of which (economic and social results) is insignificant. The other gain, that in transport accessibility and connections, is significant. More of this below.

The other five measures all register a fall. The two greatest are in “diversification and categorisation of tourism products” and in “strategic marketing vision and commercial support”. This latter measure has tumbled almost ten points compared with 2009. Only one other region of Spain has performed worse – Murcia – and it is one of the least competitive parts of the country.

As with strategic vision, only one autonomous community does worse when it comes to diversification, the Basque Country. Yet, diversification has meant to have been one of the “big things”. You might remember what this entails. Golf, hiking, gastronomy, culture … . Do you really want me to go on?

Diversification and the vision thing are two sides of the same coin, a badly minted one in Balearics terms. One, diversification, leads from the other. Or at least I think this is how it’s meant to go. A problem, however, is what strategic marketing vision means. In consultancy management speak, very little usually. But we can just about suss what they’re on about: lack of leadership, lack of planning, lack of any meaningful action. In the Spanish league table of tourism competitiveness, the collective Balearics tourism officialdom has been the Avram Grant – they haven’t known what they’ve been doing.

This isn’t completely true. The disgraced ex-tourism minister Miguel Nadal knew full well what he was doing. Allegedly. Unfortunately, it wasn’t anything to do with tourism. And Nadal did have a strategy institute that he could call on at the ministry, the now defunct Inestur, up to its neck in as much alleged wrongdoing as the one-time minister.

But let’s not dwell too much on the past. A whole bright new tourism competitiveness future beckons for the Balearics, thanks to he In Whom We Trust. Unlike his predecessors, who gave the impression of not having graduated beyond the Janet and John book of tourism clichés, Carlos Delgado does seem to get it. He appears to have been on the 101 course of Strategic Marketing for New Balearics Tourism Ministers, if an observation as to how Calvia should be spoken about in marketing terms is anything to go by. Don’t call it Calvia, because no one knows where Calvia is or what it is. Do call the individual resorts Santa Ponsa, Magalluf and so on. It’s an encouraging start. Blindingly obvious to anyone other than a tourism official, but encouraging nonetheless.

And Delgado will, we hope, set in motion some diversification. Converting Mallorca into one giant theme park is an excellent idea. Not that he has actually said this, but he has given encouragement to the idea of theme parks that the enviro-lobby have hitherto so successfully managed to boot into the long grass of a finca or several.

So, next year we can look forward, with any luck, to MoniTUR giving the Balearics some better marks. But there just remains this business of transport accessibility and connections, the one area of improvement, according to the report. Which connections is it referring to exactly? Those with Germany? With Russia? Yes, both good and getting better. The UK? In winter?

Strategic marketing vision and diversification are fine. They can lead to new products and new opportunities for tourism. But they’re not much use if no one can get a flight. Or perhaps the UK isn’t part of the strategic marketing vision.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The World’s Most Popular Breakfast

The bacon must be lean; crispy but certainly not incinerated. The egg yolk should be runny but white sealed and without pools of what comes from a docker’s nose. The tomato should, on no account, be from a tin and therefore not be a tomato. The sausage should, like the bacon, be reasonably well done and not be pink inside. The beans’ sauce should not have acquired a glutenous state.

I am, you might realise, somewhat fastidious when it comes to the full English. I don’t mind confessing both that I demand high standards and that I actually eat full Englishes. They are a guilty pleasure. Firstly, because it is claimed that they aren’t necessarily good for you (I’d dispute this). Secondly, because consuming the full English is being oh so British. I should eschew the bacon ‘n’ eggs in favour of going-native breakfasting, which means the ensaïmada. Sorry, but if I’m going to have any lard, I want it with sausage and not in the form of a twirly thing with a sugar coating. The ensaïmada is rubbish. Over sweet, over hyped and over here.

It is a short pastry step from the execrable ensaïmada to the puffed-up contortion of the croissant. The two are dough to the pretentious fellow travellers of anything but the full English. And neither is any good.

The croissant is not originally French, but French it has become. Because it is French, as with anything else that can be noshed or imbibed that has a French label, the French would claim it to be superior to anything from anywhere else. Such culinary jingoism makes it the more surprising, therefore, that the French themselves have placed the full anglais in the number-one position on the breakfast chart.

A poll by Hotels.com has revealed that 19% of French people rate the full English as being number one. The survey of 2,400 travellers from more than 20 countries in all finds that the F.E. is the most popular first meal of the day.

The breakfasting habits of different nationalities can be hard to comprehend. The Dutch are arguably the maddest of all. Whatever made them think that putting little bits of chocolate onto bread and butter was a good thing? Probably the same thought process that has led them to eating raw herrings. They simply have no idea. Yet the Dutch, giants that they are, should thoroughly enjoy getting stuck into a full English. As should the Germans and the Scandinavians, and most obviously the Danes who, rather than eating Danish bacon, export most of it to the UK.

The discovery that the full English is in fact the world’s number one breakfast should come as no surprise, as it quite obviously is the best, and should cause Bar Brits across Mallorca to stop and think for a moment.

The much-spoken-of gastronomy of Mallorca is naturally enough Mallorcan, but some of it, the ensaïmada clearly, is lousy. Both the lousy and the not lousy gets itself a fair amount of the spotlight, but what of the gastronomy that isn’t Mallorcan?

One of the most bizarre reasons I have heard as to why a restaurant should not advertise was one offered by an Italian restaurant. People don’t come to Mallorca to eat Italian food was the argument. If this is so, then it begs a pretty fundamental question as to why the restaurant exists.

The argument was rubbish, because “Italian” has its own power to promote and to attract. So why not, therefore, “British” or “English”? Because of the association with Bar Brit and consequently with tattoos, bellies, white-turning-pink skin and Sky, this gastronomy is ignored. Yet, it can boast the best breakfast in the world, one that can come in different varieties. It could be, for instance, the grand full English, that which might be served at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand (nearly twenty quid for the real thing or “the ten deadly sins” to include also kidneys and bubble and squeak). It could come with accompanying Guinness – in a bottle and not out of some peculiar can with a syrup. It could be promoted as the “world’s most popular breakfast”.

Bar Brits could co-operate in pushing a gastronomy fair of their own, directed at the nationalities who come to Mallorca (and who also live here) and who are unaware of the great British fry-up. They could educate as to quite why a bean has been covered in a tomatoey sauce; advance the cause of the black pudding which isn’t, after all, that far removed from local sausages about which a song and dance is made.

The world’s most popular breakfast. Now get frying.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

What every girl dreams. If she lives in Santa Margalida. At the weekend, Francisca Oliver Fornés was chosen to be La Beata, the saint Catalina Thomàs. Requirements for being selected include having participated as an attendant in previous Beata ceremonies, being church-going, single and eighteen. To be nominated as La Beata is quite some honour. The fiesta in September is often referred to as Mallorca’s most traditional, La Beata herself acting out the refusal to be tempted by the devil.

Single, eighteen, not necessarily church-going and not necessarily inclined to turn down temptation. The contrast between a weekend ceremony to select the current-day embodiment of a saint and a weekend ceremony of unsaintliness is stark. At a similar time to Francisca’s selection, the Districte 54 party in Sa Pobla was rumbling. The mayor of Sa Pobla has been forced to apologise to the people of the town. Mess, noise, lack of respect, excessive drinking. What on earth had he expected?

The mayor had wanted the party reinstated as part of the town’s fiestas. It was largely his doing that it took place this year. It was he who had criticised the previous administration for not staging it last year. It was he who said that it brought economic benefits and a load of people from across the island.

He was not wrong in respect of the numbers attending. But the numbers, as with other fiesta parties, are swelled by those who, thanks to social networks, know full well that there’s to be a botellón. The street-drinking parties are happening everywhere. Organised through Facebook and what have you, they are creating attendances at the parties so large that villages and towns cannot cope. They are being overwhelmed by people, by drunkenness and violence. I ask again: what on earth had the mayor expected?

Districte 54, more than most of the parties, is a magnet for trouble. It’s why it was banned last year. Nevertheless, the town decided to go ahead with it again, with the result that the police had to respond to numerous complaints and the medical services were needed to treat those who were totally off their faces.

Mayor Serra says that there will not be a repetition; that if the party happens again, it won’t take place slap bang in the centre of the town. It might find a convenient finca somewhere in the countryside, which is what they have done in Maria de la Salut, and the parties there pass off without much incident.

Whether it happens again or not, the trouble at Districte 54 is further evidence of the degree to which the fiesta parties have grown in size to the point at which they are out of control. The wishes of town halls to limit street drinking botellóns, as in Pollensa, are not being met because the social networks enable people to find ways around whatever controls might be put in place. The town halls seem to have failed utterly to comprehend how modern communications work.

The traditional Mallorcan fiesta has broken down and has been taken over by DJs and cheap booze. And this breakdown in tradition isn’t simply one that can be styled as being down to the generation gap. There is a division also within generations. Which is what Francisca represents. While she was being named Santa Margalida’s Beata, the Santa Margalida herself was being defiled in Sa Pobla; Districte 54 was part of the Santa Margalida festivities.

The coincidence of this is one thing; the contrast another. Over one weekend in July, two separate happenings highlighted the way in which Mallorcan youth has split. The requirement for a Beata aspirant to demonstrate her good Catholic credentials seems almost quaint now. The church has lost much meaning for and support among the younger generation.

If you had to choose between the two, you would opt for Districte 54 and its attendant troubles as being more representative of Mallorcan youth than Francisca and La Beata. And if you do opt so, it kills, once and for all, the myth of Mallorcan (and Spanish) youth being unlike their British counterparts. You might recall that some while ago a report established that the level of alcohol intake among Spanish teenagers was as high if not higher and the frequency of drinking greater than that of British kids.

Of course, you can’t and shouldn’t tar every Mallorcan teenager and young person with the same alcoholic or violent brush, just as you shouldn’t the British youth, but what can be said with some certainty is that a societal shift isn’t underway; it has already happened. Temptation has been taken. And no amount of saintliness will put the devil back in the box.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Mapping Mallorca’s Imagination

Cartographic precociousness has left its impression on me. When a child, I drew a map of our village. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time – it wouldn’t have, as I wasn’t cognizant of such politico-arcanum – that I had created a socio-geographic representation. The higher land of the village, to its southerly side, was more than just topographically elevated. It was the domain of the grand, the villa, the church, the upper-class landowning caste.

This affluent scarp on the Surrey landscape towered over the commercial centre of the village, the High Street in other words, and the modern estate of engineers and teachers, an agglomeration of the aspirational lower to middle class with its pretensions to the acquisitiveness of late 1950s and early 1960s new consumerism.

To the northerly end, and on the wrong side of the tracks, thanks to the Aldershot to Waterloo line that sliced through the village, was the council estate, a post-war south London spillover and a place of cars jacked up on bricks and the occasional gypsy encampment.

My map showed all this. Importantly, it wasn’t simply a representation, it was a social document, one that was the basis for stories, most of them outrageous fibs of course, that I invented for the people of my village.

Maps, as maps used to be, were acts of faith. You trusted in their accuracy, as you had no way of verifying them. You could see a map, but you couldn’t see the truth of it for yourself. Maps were virtual reality before the term was invented. More than this, because maps were shorn of intimacy, they were templates for invention and imagination. They hid stories and histories.

The map, therefore, has served a dual purpose, that of practicality and that of interpretation. The imagination that was released by maps has, however, become dulled. A trend towards three-dimensionalism hastened the emergence of technologies such as exist today, the most extreme removal of imagination being the obscenity of Google Street View.

Such intimacy, such real reality makes archaic some of the most fabulous creations of the cartographer. It would be impossible for Beck to diagrammatically show the London Underground nowadays. He would be considered an idiot. Yet he achieved what should have been an impossibility – functionalism made from the abstract. And in so doing, his map added power to one of London’s most enduring stories, that of the mystery of its old tube stations and lines.

Technology has not, however, replaced the map. It has digitalised it, put it onto mobile phones, zoomed into it and out of it, but the map remains, even in its basic, non-intimate state.

The tourist coming to Mallorca is confronted with map after map after map. It is the single most useful piece of information the tourist can have. Some may indeed app a map, but most don’t. They seek the utility of something that never folds properly and that flaps in a breeze. Utility is the key, so much so that a tour operator rep once told me that he and colleagues used to have to clean up transfer coaches on which adverts that had surrounded maps handed out to the newly arrived had been discarded. The tourists would tear the ads off and keep the map. Why? Who knows.

For tourists who don’t vandalise their maps, utility is served by being able to locate Bar Brit and its steak and chips and Sky TV on the corner of Calle Ikis and Calle E-griega. An advert without a means of locating an establishment for the unknowledgeable tourist isn’t a great deal of use, yet many businesses persist in using media that fail to impart such knowledge.

The local maps, of the resorts and towns, and the maps of Mallorca are almost exclusively only used in a functional way. The other purpose of the map, the interpretation, is rarely deployed you would think. Yet take a look at a map of Mallorca and you see all manner of strangeness. The name places themselves are strange. They should conjure up enquiry, but how many do actually enquire? What is it with, say, Biniali or Bunyola or the innuendo of Búger? What are their stories?

Maps should map the imagination. A map of Mallorca should be a map of Mallorca’s imagination.

You may remember a time when maps would be put up on walls and pins would be placed on them to denote this or that. You can still stick a pin in a map. Shut your eyes, and when you’ve stuck the pin in, off you go. To wherever it might be and to whatever story the place on your map is hiding.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Getting Into An I Pad-dy: Newspapers

I Pad, U Pad, Wii Pad. We all Pad together.

Unfortunately, for Apple and for newspaper and magazine publishers, we don’t. We may in some distant future. But for now, we pad as a small minority.

The publishers are ambivalent to this future. They would happily dispense with one of their biggest cost bases – printing – but they are no nearer creating a business model that satisfactorily digitalises and monetises hard copy into oblivion. Ah but the iPad will be that model. Some might think so; some, like Steve Jobs, would hope so. But the mere newspaper-reading mortal continues to be a Steve Unjobsworthy who hasn’t become an Apple organisation man and hasn’t been commanded by the contemporary tablets of stone, the ostentatiously styled modern miracle of the iPad tablet and its peers.

There’s bad news for newspaper publishers; good news for publishers of magazines. PriceWaterhouseCoopers have reported that whereas revenue from digital magazines is set to “sky rocket”, thanks to the iPad, sales of subscriptions of newspapers in this digital form will not be sufficient to offset the fall in print sales.

The iPad is many things, but essentially, for many of its products, its newspaper products, it is merely a digital replacement of the hard copy. The hype, and that also for the iPhone, the Android and any other current-day trickery you care to mention, outstrips the reality. There are many, many users of course. But this doesn’t mean that newspapers will suddenly disappear. As pointed out by the UK firm Enders Analysis: “Ten million pay for a daily newspaper in the UK. They spend roughly 30 pounds a month each. There will not be 10 million people spending 30 pounds a month on the iPad any time soon”.

In a way, the iPad is an experiment, as is much digital and internet publishing. It is worthwhile playing with, but it is only one aspect of the digital future. Newspaper publishers who see it as the only holy grail of a prosperous non-print new world are seriously deluding themselves. Experiments need to be conducted in different ways, and one is to create a wholly new product (or products) with its own revenue stream. It’s thinking out of the box, but the fear is that publishers will be seduced into boxing themselves solely inside the iPad tablet box.

All of which brings us to the “Majorca Daily Bulletin”. It is now iPad-able, online in full. At a price. Part of a service under the non-snappy moniker of Kioskoymas, through which we are told “the most complete offer of press of quality” is available, the Bulletin is the only English paper in what is an online iPad-oriented system for Spanish newspaper and magazine publishers. A bizarre aspect of this service, were you minded to want to subscribe to the paper, is that you would need to read Spanish. Obviously you would. They’re not going to have an English version to guide you through the online registration and payment process when the service is meant to be for Spanish readers.

And subscription is a not unimportant element. Getting the punter to buy a month or more ahead does wonders for cash planning in the uncertain digital world but it runs counter to consumer psychology. Subscriptions to hard-copy newspapers have only ever been a small part of publishers’ businesses. Readers habitually buy daily, a truism for a daily publication. Why would you stump up in advance when you haven’t in the past? News International is facing this conundrum along with other more pressing matters.

A solution is an incentive. Yet from what I can make out, unless you have a multiple subscription, i.e. to at least more than one title through Kioskoymas, you pay the going rate. And unless you, as an English reader, are inclined to also read Spanish papers or even able to, then you are not going to have a multiple subscription. Moreover, a month seems to be the minimum subscription period, this being unlike other services which enable you to pay daily.

And one of these services is Orbyt. This was launched last year and features “El Mundo”, “La Razón” and other Spanish papers as well as magazines. So Kioskoymas is a rival and a less elegant one than Orbyt, if the websites of the two services are anything to go by. The competition with Orbyt is probably quite significant. The Bulletin is part of the Grupo Serra stable, of which “Ultima Hora” is its biggest-selling paper. And “Ultima Hora” is a competitor with the Balearics version of “El Mundo”. For it to have an iPad presence as a rival makes sense, and you wonder if this is the main reason why The Bulletin is now iPad-able; it has been bundled in, but it is “Ultima Hora” that really matters.

The Bulletin might gain from this service, it might not, but fundamentally it cannot be seen as the be all and end all, and this is the message for any newspaper publisher. The iPad is basically a means of cannibalising the product. It is a replacement technique more than it is a new-product technique and it is the latter that publishers need to work on.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

In The Middle Of Nowhere

It used to be a restaurant, a different type of restaurant, one that had struggled. The lady owner was pleasant to the point of being jolly, but she couldn’t disguise the problems the restaurant experienced. They decided, four years ago, to call it quits.

The restaurant remained closed. A small garden in front of its entrance, hemmed in by a low wall, gathered discarded Coke cans and beer bottles. The alcove of the entrance porch filled with detritus, and the council’s street blowers would add to it by scattering leaves into its accommodating enclosure.

Then one day there was activity. For a year, the work involved not just the old restaurant but a unit next to it, a former supermarket which, like the old restaurant, had suffered from little trade.

It hadn’t been clear what was being created, until finally the name appeared, the glass frontage became evident and the terrace was laid. It was a new restaurant. A large restaurant, one made from two previously sizeable units. It was classy. From the outside you couldn’t have known how big the kitchen was, how well-equipped and modern it was, or that the restaurant bent in an L-shape, so that there was as much again as that which was apparent if you stood in front of it.

The new owners were pleasant as well. It was unfortunate that the work had dragged on so that it hadn’t opened until half way through the summer season, but there was optimism. There was, after all, no other restaurant immediately nearby. The parking was easy. There were hotels not far away. There were plenty of holiday homes and permanent residents.

The optimism didn’t last long. By the following season pessimism had taken root. The causes were not unfamiliar: all-inclusives; the amounts folks spent nowadays; economic crisis. The redevelopment work had begun to be undertaken before the impact of crisis was apparent. Bad luck?

Not totally. The reasons for the initial optimism were also reasons for wondering as to the wisdom of the restaurant. Having no competitor nearby isn’t necessarily an advantage. Being grouped with other restaurants creates an attraction as well as an atmosphere. Isolation can mean neither. A solitary restaurant, let’s say, for sake of argument, Can Cuarassa on the bay of Pollensa between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa, can benefit. It does so through the drama of its location. But the restaurant of our story, though in a pleasant enough location, does not have the same power of landscape or place.

Of the hotels not far away, some are far away enough to be far away, and they are also strongly all-inclusive. The other hotels, which are closer by, are more chic, five-star chic. A strong market you would think. Yes, but this is a strong market which can afford to take taxis to restaurants with more dramatic locations, a clientele that prefers to venture further afield, a clientele not just with money but also with a sense of its own worth, one better catered for by the ambience and gastronomic reputations of the area’s old towns or by splendid beachside establishments or by fine finca restaurants in the island’s hinterland.

This was intelligence that was known or that could have been sought before the new restaurant was born. There was other intelligence that was known, such as the growing influence of the all-inclusive and the trend towards lower tourist spend that pre-dated the economic crisis. Some of the factors which might have been grounds for optimism were the same ones that had led to the old restaurant closing.

Yet the new one came along. And it replaced not only the old one but grafted on the adjoining unit. How much had it cost? The time alone that was taken on conversion must have meant a significant outlay.

The pessimism grew. And finally, just recently, the restaurant gave up. It is sad to see it go, but it is not a surprise. The model for its business was never there. Its market existed more in the hope than in the reality. Its size was one thing, its location another. It wasn’t in the middle of nowhere as such, but it might as well have been. Indeed had it been, it might, blessed by a more remote and more dramatic location, have been more viable.

But even with the knowledge and the market intelligence, would the mistake have been avoided and will the mistake be avoided in the future? Optimism, egotism, blind faith; they can all contribute to the heart ruling the head and making opaque what should be transparently obvious. Similar stories are yet to be told and similar mistakes will keep on being made.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Sun Always Shines On TV

“Summer arrives.” And every evening from Monday to Thursday, the Mallorcan summer and everything that is happening during it is presented by Maria Salas. The sun always shines on TV Mallorca. Until it no longer shines.

It might as well in fact rain until September, when TV Mallorca’s harvest moon may terminally wane and when the sun will no longer shine. Where once was Maria and her sunny days of a Mallorcan summer will be a blank screen of an endless Mallorcan winter.

Presidents Bauzà and Salom have decided to reach for the off switch: the permanent off switch for the channel. The closure of TV Mallorca is far from unexpected; it’s just a question as to when it closes. It has been leeching money and its purpose has been questionable throughout its four years of existence.

There have been suggestions that it could be absorbed into the other Mallorcan television channel, IB3, or that it could become a second IB3 channel – IB3-2 presumably – but neither suggestion has found favour with the hatchet wielders at the regional government and Council of Mallorca.

The decision to close TV Mallorca and to send in a lawyer as its new director-general to oversee its closure has brought forward protests. Two hundred demonstrated in the Plaza España. One might be tempted to suggest that this was the sum of its audience, but that would be unfair. Its now ex-director-general said earlier this year that the channel was watched by 77,000 people on the island, without detailing for how long they watch or how often.

All manner of groups have leapt to the defence of TV Mallorca. They read like a list of the usual suspects on the left: the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB); the Esquerra Unida (the united left); the ecology warriors of GOB (quite what this has to do with them is not clear); PSOE (Francina Armengol, the former president of the Council of Mallorca, calling the closure decision a “political, social and economic error”); the Mallorcan socialist party; and something called the Association of the Memory of Mallorca.

Amidst this little lot there is the unmistakable sound of a political point being made, one that comes back to the Catalan question, though this does rather overlook the fact that IB3 is also a Catalan station.

Questionable though the necessity for TV Mallorca is, the economic error that Armengol has referred to deserves some consideration. In addition to the loss of some one hundred or so jobs, the station costs far less to run than IB3 (its annual budget of 10.5 million euros is a sixth of that of the other station). But as important is the effect that the closure will have on the channel’s suppliers (and it should be noted that it is both a television and a radio station).

Some 2,000 employees of these suppliers – production companies and audio-visual equipment providers – are said to be likely to be affected by closing down TV Mallorca. This may not mean that they lose their jobs or that the suppliers themselves have to close, but the loss of the station is clearly not good news for them. Moreover, these suppliers have grown up on the back of both IB3 and TV Mallorca in creating an industrial cluster that shouldn’t be underestimated in terms of its significance.

The ParcBit technology park in Palma is home to a number of these audio-visual companies, and the technology park is foremost in being the impulse behind what innovation, development and economic diversification there is in Mallorca. TV Mallorca’s role in adding to this impulse may be being overstated but it is nevertheless important. It would be interesting to learn what Josep Aguiló, the regional government’s vice-president, makes of the potentially negative impact of shutting TV Mallorca down. With his finance hat on, he would probably argue that it was unavoidable, but he is also in charge of business, employment and industry; the super-ministries that Bauzá has created have the potential to raise conflicts of interest, and Aguiló’s has the most potential conflicts.

Even if it is and remains a minority-interest channel, TV Mallorca has a role that is wider than simply being a broadcaster. The government’s desire to cut costs is understandable enough, but Armengol is almost certainly right when she refers to the error being made. Unfortunately, the discourse regarding the closure has become a political one, with the inevitable (and not wholly justifiable) hints, evidenced by the support of the likes of the OCB and GOB, that TV Mallorca is a victim of alleged PP anti-Catalanism and anti-regionalism.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The State We’re In: Language

Should Mallorcan businesses get it right? Get English right? It was once put to me that it didn’t matter and that mangled English was just all part of the charm. Possibly so, but possibly it is also a case of being lazy or of mistake reinforcing mistake.

There are any number of English speakers knocking around who might help a restaurant, a shop, an event, an estate agency from making a language gaffe. Are any ever asked to give a menu, some instructions, a sign the once-over, just to be sure? Some are, but there are plenty of businesses who still manage to mangle English. All part of the charm perhaps, but there is charm and there is being professional.

Recently, we had the priceless “rules” set out by the Pollensa Music Festival, under which, among other things, it was not allowed “to enter any type of container nor devices of telephony”. We know what they were getting at, but a little bit of attention might have eliminated the potential for confusion or indeed hilarity.

There have been some wonderful mistakes that I have encountered over the years. A personal favourite remains the “flesh on the tenterhooks” of a grill restaurant. The owner said that the printers who had been responsible for the translation had insisted that they could do the English correctly. Which may be part of the problem; that of non-native speakers who fall into the language trap.

“Flesh on the tenterhooks” was, one presumed, meant to be something along the lines of tender meat, but it came out as sounding like an act of torture by the Inquisition. Tenterhooks, for the record, have nothing to do with cooking and everything to do with stretching cloth.

Making a complete balls-up has arguably been made more likely thanks to the Google translator and other machine translation systems. And when it comes to idioms and slang terms, of which there are an awful lot in English, such systems are almost completely useless.

Some mistakes, however, just keep on getting repeated. And a prime example is the “state agency”; not an agency of the state, but an estate agency. You can find many states that appear to be being traded by state agencies which should in fact be estate agencies.

A new sign appeared at one estate agency the other day, replete with the same old mistake. But why does it keep being made? Has no one ever pointed the mistake out? My guess is that “state” is so common that it is thought to be correct, not least by signmakers who will insist that it is correct as they have been in this state for years.

Proper names can also be problematic. In certain cases, they always have been. In Puerto Alcúdia, the recent fire at an apartment block caused a bit of a problem as to how it should be reported. The apartments have always lacked one letter. Who originally took the “p” out of the Mississipi (sic)? The same person possibly who didn’t see the “c” in the Picadilly (sic) bar. Has anyone ever noticed the missing “n” that means that the Britania (sic) bar doesn’t rule the waves? (The missing “p” might be put down to being Spanish, but then in Spanish there would be a missing “s” as well – twice over; Picadilly and Britania are Spanish, but their markets have been British.)

Not that these probably matter. Test your average Brit tourist and, nine times out of ten, he wouldn’t know how to spell them anyway. And it’s certainly not as though the language trap doesn’t work in reverse or that borrowing from Spanish doesn’t come into play.

Pop along to your nearest state agency, or preferably estate agency, and you might find a property that takes your fancy. However, the state agent tells you that it is in need of reform. Has it been a naughty boy? Is it to have its law changed? The widespread use of reform to mean altering a building in some way isn’t, strictly speaking, correct usage. Incorrect or not, it is a good example of a word whose meaning has been borrowed from Spanish that, because of its generality, works rather better than correct English alternatives.

And the property needing reform might well be in an urbanisation, another specific adaptation from the Spanish to mean an estate, or should it be a state? Once reformed, the property may well become “perfect”, states of perfection being more widely expressed by “perfecto” Spaniards and therefore also now by English-speaking adopters.

To answer my initial question though. Tell me. Should they get it right? Go on, tell me. I command you. The abrupt, somewhat impolite use of this imperative is something else that has passed from Spanish. “Digame”. Tell me.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

All Night Long: Fiesta parties

So there will, after all, be a party on the final night of Pollensa’s Patrona festivities. Public pressure helped to ensure this, the last town hall meeting having been packed by those in favour of it. The mayor had been criticised for not having consulted in seeking to ditch the event.

Here we go again. If it’s Pollensa, it must be a case of the town hall not consulting. There are some things it should consult about, such as the pedestrianisation plan for Puerto Pollensa that was scrapped primarily because it had failed to consult, but there is surely a limit to what it is obliged to consult about. Or perhaps, in the case of fiestas, the people’s parties if you like, there should be an obligation. There again, they didn’t consult the people of Puerto Pollensa about what has turned out to be a programme for Virgen del Carmen that is like little more than a village fete.

The night party is going ahead, but economic constraints will mean that it will finish earlier than previously, at 2.30 in the morning of 2 August. Economic constraints or something else? The deputy mayor, Malena Estrany, hopes that by ending the party a couple of hours earlier there will not be a repeat of the botellón street party and unseemliness that has been associated with the event. There remains the suspicion that cost was a secondary factor in the town hall’s wish to call the event off, and that the botellón was the primary factor.

But now, having backtracked, the town hall would wish us to believe that lopping two hours off the party will help to stop a grand old booze-up. Are they serious? The strangeness of this logic is made even stranger by the town hall’s intention to ask neighbouring towns to check that people being bussed in to the event from the likes of Sa Pobla or Alcúdia aren’t carrying drink.

This presumably means the local police in these towns being called on to search and confiscate. A question arises whether they have any right to do so. Drinking alcohol in the street may be against local laws, drinking on a bus may also be, but carrying drink? Moreover, drink can be obtained in other ways. The botellón isn’t always just a bunch of people turning up at random with a carrier-bag with a couple of cheap bottles of vino.

Elsewhere in Mallorca, one party has been scrapped precisely because of the problems that a botellón can create. In Pòrtol, following incidents last weekend, a DJ party for this coming Saturday is to be dropped and probably replaced by a dance orchestra.

But also this coming Saturday, a party which had been dropped last year and which had acquired greater notoriety than the Patrona party is to make a re-appearance. Sa Pobla is organising the Districte 54 event as part of its Santa Margalida festivities. This was banned last year on safety grounds and because of complaints about noise and the state that the town got into thanks to its accompanying botellón.

Districte 54 has been one of the biggest of the fiesta night parties. It was first launched in 2003 by the then Partido Popular administration in the town. Who is now the new mayor of Sa Pobla? Biel Serra of the Partido Popular. Last year he criticised the decision to scrap the event, pointing to its economic benefits and to the fact that it brought the whole island to Sa Pobla.

There is more than just a hint of the populist behind the decision to resurrect Districte 54, and Pollensa’s mayor may also have begun to have had second thoughts about how a decision to ban the night party might impact on his popularity, a mere month into his new term of office.

Serra’s belief that Districte 54 has economic benefits contrasts with the economic constraints said to have been influencing the Pollensa decision. Which brings you back to the question as to how well these economic benefits are measured, if at all, and to a further question therefore, which is, despite the costs of staging events, do they actually generate a sufficiently greater revenue?

Local businesses would argue that they do. And this is the nub of the issue with the botellón parties which occur at Patrona or Districte 54. Yes, they can cause unpleasantness but they are really about potentially depriving businesses of revenue; hence the measures that are being introduced to try and limit their impact. People can put up with noise and mess if the tills are turning. And you can bet that those who packed the Pollensa town hall meeting weren’t just revellers.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

For Sale: Hotel, Needs Work

The possibility that the Posibilitum investment group, the owners of Alcúdia’s Bellevue complex, might acquire the Hotasa hotels of the troubled Nueva Rumasa conglomerate should be viewed as welcome news by those running the hotels. I am told that the hotels are experiencing difficulties in providing services they should be. When the hotels opened for the season, and at one point it looked as some might not, suppliers made it clear that they would supply only on a cash-on-delivery basis.

The Hotasa hotels, which include three in Can Picafort, are an extreme case, but they are far from alone in having owners seeking buyers. Much of Mallorca’s hotel stock is up for sale. And there are very few buyers.

The accord between tourism minister Carlos Delgado and the hoteliers that should pave the way for reform of the tourism law and so facilitate hotel conversion and change of use has been sought by the hoteliers for some years. The antiquity of many hotels makes their redevelopment a pressing necessity, but even with agreement and legal reform, a question would remain. How would these conversions be funded?

Delgado has said that the days of expecting grants, especially from central government, have passed. The banks have all but turned the taps off. The markets are reassured by this summer’s rise in tourism numbers, but the leading hotel chains – and those which would be listed and more attractive to investors – have tended to look overseas for growth potential.

The hype of all the talk of hotel renovations and changes of use and the unions getting hot under the collar and threatening protests as a consequence may therefore be just that – hype. Some hotels and hotel chains are in good enough shape to effect changes, but many are not.

One reason why owners want to sell hotels and why it is proving difficult to do so and would also prove difficult to convert them is because they are that old that the cost of conversion would be nigh on prohibitive. Buyers are unlikely to take on hotels that demand significant investment in addition to what are sales tags which are too high. Like with many restaurants or bars that are for sale, the expectations of owners are unrealistic, based on past or expected performance and divorced from the circumstances that now obtain.

Bellevue, though taken on by Posibilitum, is a case in point when it comes to old stock. The complex, all 1400 apartments of it, is nearly 40 years old. Its sheer size is a constraint on renovation as is its age, but renovation is badly needed. Bellevue has acquired a more diverse market over the past few years – it isn’t the ultra-Brit complex it once was – but it tends to be hotels for the British market in the resorts of Alcúdia and Magalluf that are the oldest and which attract less profit because of the very nature of the particular market they cater for. Another reason, therefore, why prospective buyers might be wary.

A further reason is the complexity of financing arrangements and ownership issues. The travel and hotel group Orizonia had, still has as far as I am aware, a mortgage on Bellevue which was raised as a guarantee against a debt to the company run up by the previous owners, the now bust Grupo Marsans. And there is a similar story with Hotasa.

Bank funding requires security, and in the case of Hotasa, the house has well and truly been bet. The court bankruptcy proceedings relating to Nueva Rumasa have revealed the scale of the mortgages that hang over Hotasa. One hotel alone, Santa Fe in Can Picafort, has been used as a guarantee four times, to which can be added the embargo slapped on it by the Hacienda in respect of a debt of some 120,000 euros. In total, the seven Hotasa hotels in the Balearics have mortgages valued at just short of 138 million euros, three and a half times the size of the mortgage debt said to be owed to Orizonia.

The judge presiding over the proceedings has been obliged to appoint five administrators because of the sheer complexity of the hotels’ affairs. The labyrinth of different companies in addition to the various mortgages would surely make a purchaser riding to Hotasa’s aid, be it Posibilitum or any other, pause while the administrators try and unravel the affairs. Hotasa may be a specific case, but who’s to say what complexity might apply to other hotels or hotel groups and which might add to deterring prospective purchasers.

Outdated, unprofitable, underfunded, debt-ridden: the reasons why there are so few buyers for hotels and why the much-hoped-for conversions may yet never take place.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.