Fancy A Beer?

Cut along to your nearest Bar Brit and what beers do you find? Tetleys, Carling, Fosters, and perhaps some Saint Mick or Cruzcampo that will also be on tap in your nearest Spanish bar. What you will not find are rarer beers. There is the odd beer house which has exotic beers from far-flung parts of the globe, but it is hardly common. Beer is very much a standard commodity.

Go back some forty years and a British pub would serve the most God awful rubbish. The names themselves are sufficient to still send a shudder through any self-respecting beer drinker: Double Diamond, Red Barrel and the worst, by far the worst, Watneys Starlight, a beer that bad that you were tempted to think that the landlord must have vomited into the pipes before serving it and before you promptly threw up yourself.

Salvation, of sorts, was at hand in the form of real ale and CAMRA. Men with beards started appearing in pubs across England, earnestly discussing the hop content and specific gravities of obscure ales and marking them off in a book as though they were trainspotters (which some of them probably were).

The tyranny of real ale was that powerful that you were in fact forced to drink it. After some years of Fullers, Youngs, Thwaites, Jennings, Marstons, Mitchells and Sam Smiths, I came to the realisation, together with not infrequent heartburn and flatulence, that real ale was as bad as what had gone before. It wasn’t in the same class as Starlight, which occupied a unique position as a crime against beer humanity, but in one respect it was worse; it was snobbish.

It was a relief when lagers and lager-ish beers began to claw back the right for real keg and for bottled beers. Where previously one might have been looked upon as a traitor to the beer cause for imbibing a cold, light-coloured lager on a summer’s evening, there was now an acceptance, if not by the men with beards.

The colour of lager is all important. It is not dark. It looks what it should be and is; refreshing. Dark ales are nothing of the sort. The colour is wrong, whether from a cask or a keg; it is impossible for something that is dark brown to refresh, unless it’s Coke or Pepsi. On a chilly winter’s evening, the colour is appropriate, but there aren’t many chilly winter’s evenings during a Mallorcan summer; hence, with the exception of the Tetleys of a Mallorcan Bar Brit world, you don’t get darker-coloured beers.

However. The Spanish and indeed the Mallorcans have discovered the micro-brewery, a phenomenon of the British beer-drinking classes who are the offspring of the men with beards (those, that is, who were socially adept enough to consider indulging in procreation or hadn’t succumbed to the “droop”).

The micro-brewery, Spanish style, sounds ominous. Its artisan beer is light but also dark. Some of the beers come with all manner of weird and wonderful tastes that make you wonder why they don’t just pour some lime in, give a lager a blackcurrant top and have done with it.

But hang on, things aren’t quite as bad as they sound; in fact, most certainly not. For starters, the beards tend to just grow rather than their being cultivated as a beer-drinking fashion accessory to be left with a crusty tidemark. There isn’t the self-regarding snobbishness that attaches itself to English beers and leaves its mark on the beards. It is altogether more flamboyant and more redolent of a tradition, in Mallorca at any rate, of the type of experimentation and innovation which hitherto had been reserved for the liqueur and “hierbas” industry.

At the recent fiesta in Maria de la Salut a number of artisan beers were exhibited.  In Palma there is a micro-brewery, beer house and restaurant, S’Escorxador, which has a tradition of producing both light and dark beers of its own. In Selva there is a micro-brewery, Tramuntana Cerveza Artesanal de Mallorca, that has recently started up, producing a light beer, a “red” beer akin to a bitter and a dark beer.

The darker beers are likely to be more popular in the cooler Mallorcan winter, but this follows a pattern with wine whereby “tinto” is for the winter and “blanco” for the summer. Whether the darker beers can gain much of a market among a local population used to the light beer remains to be seen, but the advent of a more diverse beer industry is to be applauded.

Would any of these beers make it into a Bar Brit rather than the usual Tetleys? It would be nice to think that they might. But just think; it could be so much worse. You might still be able to get Starlight.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Tourismophobia

In research into Mallorca’s tourism, no one finding has struck me more powerfully than that from the early ’90s which suggested that some 10% of the island’s tourism amounted to a net loss. It cost more to accommodate this very low-spend category of tourist than was gained. The cost was an approximation of resources etc. that were required to support it, but if one accepts the finding and that this 10% is now likely to be greater, then are there grounds also for accepting that such non-contribution promotes the existence of “tourismophobia”, a hatred of tourism and of tourists?

A socio-ethical dimension inherent to all forms of tourism has been made more evident by all-inclusive tourism. Tour operators blather on about sustainable tourism and disingenuously refer to the sourcing of local produce and provision of local employment that all-inclusives offer (as though other types of hotel don’t) but never confront the ethics of what is, for the most part, low-rent tourism and, even where it is higher worth, is a form of foreign occupation that avails itself of a destination while at the same time thumbing its nose at the destination.

The ethics of tourism have long been debated; the economic advantages always outweighing other considerations. However, when a destination becomes like a social-services repository for people transported in with little or no intention of adding to the general economic welfare of a destination, over and above the relatively small welfare created by their package holiday, the ethics debate takes a different turn.

Resources, be they human (and not always well paid), be they natural (the sun, the sea, the water, the environment in general) or be they artificial are drawn upon in satisfying the new mass of tourism, housed in ghettoes, divorced from the local communities and contributing comparatively little to them. The debate, from the point of view of a native of the destination, becomes a question: we give you all this, and what do you give us in return?

Tourism has operated under a system of reciprocity. It is one under which a destination opens its doors, accepts there will be changes if not damage to the environment, culture and way of life, but expects some compensation. Where an equilibrium has existed, as it has (or did) in many of Mallorca’s resorts, then any underlying social tensions caused by tourism have been minimal.

The balance has altered, though. More difficult economic times have exacerbated the shifts caused by a market change (that of all-inclusive). They have fuelled a growth in a social phenomenon that is being covered by the Spanish tourism press and which is being taken increasingly seriously – that of “turismofobia”.

To the economic argument, one can add a political and an idealistic element. In Mallorca, it is one of a small but vociferous group within mainly the younger generation who adhere to what might be styled Catalano-Luddism, essentially a turning back of the clock to a pre-tourism age and a rejection of a Spanish (Francoist) development, that of mass tourism, which was foisted onto Mallorca in the sixties.

If one ever takes a look at internet comments appended to Spanish press articles about the excesses of tourists in Mallorca, one gets a flavour of some of this phobia. It isn’t just that people decry drunkenness, violence or diving from hotel balconies; comments are replete with references to a lack of respect, be it for the environment, the culture or whatever.

“Hosteltur”, the Spanish tourism magazine and website, has been tracking this phenomenon for some time. At the end of last year it published a report which, while noting that this phobia was very much one held by a minority, revealed efforts designed to combat its growth. It looked at how in the Canary Islands a “social divorce” in respect of tourism had occurred and at how, in Tenerife in particular, efforts have been made to involve local people in tourism and its promotion and in communicating the benefits of tourism. In Barcelona, a major campaign has been waging to combat negative attitudes.

In Mallorca and the Balearics, however, nothing similar has been attempted, save for a forgotten and ill-funded campaign five years ago which featured a song (yes, seriously, a song) for tourism. No one can remember it. There is an acceptance, though, that the message has to be put across that tourism equates with prosperity.

The problem is, however, and as a consequence of market changes, that tourism is perceived as bringing prosperity to ever fewer numbers. “Tourismophobia” may be a minority social phenomenon, but don’t count against it becoming more widespread.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Needing Sympathy?: Hotels

Hotels full, record numbers of passengers passing through Palma airport. Oh what a summer. A great summer for the numbers-games players, especially the regional government, which loves the numbers more than most.

The hotels bursting at the seams, and so how do the hotels respond? They intend to put their prices up by 6% next year. It’s cashing-in, payback time. A few years of keeping prices down and of seeing margins squeezed, the hotels want their money back.

Whether they get it is another matter. The tour operators, as ever, will have something to say about it. This summer of relative fortune has presumably seduced the hotels into believing that 2012 will be a golden summer as well, so they sense the opportunity to harvest some of the gold for themselves; the only problem is that north Africa will probably bite back and will be pricing competitively.

The hoteliers will argue that, having held prices down and despite the high levels of occupancy, their profitability has either plateaued or gone down. They, like bar and restaurant owners, complain about a lack of in-resort spend by tourists. But put prices up, either of direct sales or through a tour operator’s package, and what do they think will happen? The tourist mentality is firmly and primarily wedded to the cost of the holiday itself; spend in-resort comes a poor second in the budgeting process, hence the attractions of the all-inclusive.

Should, though, one feel any sympathy for the hotels? They bring a lack of it on themselves. The constant attack on the residential tourism market and the at-times failures to deliver what it says on the tin and contemptuous attitudes make it hard for anyone to be sympathetic.

This is unfair on those hotels that play fair and treat their customers with respect, but as a body the hotels attract little compassion. The bad apples have the bad experiences they give their guests (or those who might have been guests had they not been turned away and sent elsewhere) plastered all over Trip Advisor, giving themselves a bad name together with resorts and the island as a whole.

Yet the bad experiences are not necessarily all down to failures on behalf of hotels; they can be a reflection of arrangements with tour operators, some of which can change in between holidays being booked and being realised.

The hotels, one cannot emphasise enough, form part of a distribution network in which they are independent of tour operators but also highly dependent on them. This network has four heads: the tour operators, the airlines, the travel agencies and the hotels. In certain cases, three of them are one and the same thing. Guess which one isn’t.

Common ownership of three of the key elements in the network is all good business integration stuff, facilitating the regular mantra of “customer demand” to be put into good practice. However, there is another side to it.

Let me cite you the example of holidaymakers who wished to book a particular hotel. They went along to their local travel agency which informed them that the hotel in question was fully booked. This was for a holiday in May. The holidaymakers were offered and accepted an alternative hotel, one that is exclusive to the tour operator, the same tour operator that owns the travel agency. Once on holiday they went to the hotel which they had wished to book in the first place and spoke to people there. The hotel had of course been nothing like fully booked.

The point of this example is that, unless the relationship between hotel and tour operator and therefore travel agency is that strong, hotels can find themselves losing out. So what do they do? Put their prices up in order to compensate?

The hotels with the stronger relationships, which usually means exclusivity, have at least been guaranteed their sales and their money. Or have they?

There have been reports this summer of hotels being unable to meet monthly salary payments because they haven’t been paid by tour operators. Which could well be hotels that, prepared to take a tour operator’s shilling exclusively, have pared back prices to the bone.

It’s hardly surprising therefore that the hotels might want to put their prices up. They can try, but whether they succeed is another matter. And even if they do succeed, getting paid on time is another issue entirely.

Do they deserve any sympathy? Through partially gritted teeth, I’m prepared to say that they do.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Mayoral Wonga

How much should a mayor be paid do you suppose? To answer the question you have to know what he or she does exactly, which admittedly isn’t easy to get a handle on. A mayor does a lot of signing of things, puts in any number of appearances around and about, shakes a fair number of hands, chairs a few meetings, gets his or her photo taken pretty much every day.

There is a bit more to it than this and the mayor, more or less, is responsible for however many lives there are on his or her manor. It might be said, therefore, that a mayor should command a decent pay packet.

The question as to the mayoral salary has become an issue in Sa Pobla. Here the new mayor, Gabriel Serra, admitted a while back that the town hall was to, all intents and purposes, bust. Against this background and a further admission that the town hall will invest in no building works at all other than to perform urgent maintenance, the opposition’s claim in early July that the mayor was going to be trousering nearly 4,400 euros a month did cause a slight rumpus. Assuming this entails 14 monthly payments, as is the wont locally, then Serra was due to be on over 60 grand a year.

Sa Pobla, it might be noted, is a smaller municipality than its neighbour Alcúdia, a tourism town where the town hall and therefore the mayor’s remit is somewhat greater than a place that exists for little more than agriculture. The lady mayor of Alcúdia, Coloma Terrasa, will receive a salary the same as her predecessor – 2,100 euros net per month. On the face of it, there is something of a discrepancy with what Serra was said to have been going to be earning.

Said to be, because Serra has published his pay slip. It shows he’s getting 2,137 euros net, quite a deal less than the opposition had claimed, and pretty much identical to the salary of Alcúdia’s mayor. How the amount has come down by 50%, assuming it was ever intended to be nearly 4,400, one doesn’t quite know, but down it has indeed come.

In Pollensa the mayor is getting 2,914 euros a month gross, which puts his take-home at roughly the same as Serra’s. So the mayors of the three towns are now all making the same as each other; gross salaries, amended to take account of the two extra months in the year, of something over 40 grand.

Is this a fair amount? Is it too much, or is it too low? Who knows?

A full-time post in public service, and in the cases of Alcúdia, Pollensa and Sa Pobla, this means running towns with 19,000, 17,000 and 13,000 people respectively, should be reasonably well paid, especially if it is the only source of income. But this isn’t necessarily the case of course. Many a town hall official, mayor or otherwise, tends to have business interests as well. A prime example was Muro’s one-time mayor, Miguel Ramis. His interests? Well, there was the small matter of the Grupotel chain that he founded.

Ultimately, whether a mayor is worth his or her salary cheque depends on how well he or she performs, and performance can mean whatever you want it to, especially when the mayoral office is a political appointment and can count on the support of the relevant party (or parties) to ensure that performance is spun as being effective.

Yet the town halls are in financial crisis, not solely due to current economic hard times. Their tardiness in making payments to suppliers is the stuff of legend, and pre-dates economic crisis. But this should surely be a key measure of how well a town hall is being run or not. Alcúdia and Pollensa, for example, have been shown to typically take up to six months to make payments; you will hear of examples where payment has been much later (if at all).

It is when companies are faced with cash-flow crises of their own, thanks in no small part to being unpaid by municipalities, that one can understand there being some disquiet as to salaries that are paid to mayors, and not just to mayors. Full-time officials other than a mayor can expect to receive 1,800 euros per month net. And then you have the costs of town halls’ personnel, which have gone through the roof since the start of the century.

A mayor can in theory be held to account. But widespread concerns exist as to a lack of transparency at town halls. Mayors, and other officials, should be made to show that they earn their money. It’s a performance age, but performance as a measure has been slow to catch on in Mallorcan local government. The town halls and the mayors need to publish what they are doing, when and why they are doing whatever it is they are doing, and what they expect the results to be. Then at least we might be able to judge whether they are worth the money. And you never know, maybe this might show that they are worth more.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Twisted Firestarter

There are a number of things you can do in order to have a good laugh. Kicking a shop window in, for instance. Giving someone a good kicking. What hoots. The only drawback with these is that they aren’t spectaculars. There is though one way you can have a really good laugh and create a really good scene into the bargain. Set fire to something. Buildings? Not bad, but for maximum amusement, why not try entire forests? Now you’re talking. One little match, some dry scrub, plenty of trees around, no obvious fire breaks, a good wind. Whoosh!

The outbreak of three fires on one day at roughly the same time and in similar positions, near to highways, is a bit of a coincidence. The Balearic Government’s environment minister believes they were more than just a coincidence. Firestarters. Twisted firestarters. Yep, more than just one of them.

Mallorca’s burning, Mallorca’s burning, fetch the engines, fetch the engines. Pour on water, pour on water. And water is poured on from a not so great height by the helicopter bombers (an apt Anglicism given that the Catalan for firefighter is “bomber”) and the Canadair.

Canadair. The word has rich resonance. The name itself, not so much in Mallorca or Spain, but in France and especially Corsica, conjures up an image of heroism.

In 1983 Corsica was ablaze. Much of the island was being torched. Deliberately. It just so happened that I was there on holiday at the height of the fires.

The geography of Corsica is quite different to that of Mallorca. A single range of mountains runs more or less the length of the island, the tallest peak being twice as high as Mallorca’s Puig Major. The forests are denser, and good parts of the island are pretty much inaccessible. Combine this geography with the Mistral wind and people with boxes of matches, and you got what occurred in 1983.

The fires were that bad that tourists had to be evacuated to beaches. In Propriano where I was staying, the fires reached the hills above the resort. One night the flames were clearly visible. Local people were rounded up to go and help fight the fires.

News reports on local television were full of talk of “pyromaniacs”. There were two or three in particular, all German, who the police suspected of having started many of the fires. It might have seemed like a bad time to have been a tourist in Corsica, especially as foreigners were being blamed for the conflagrations, but it was the opposite. Tourists, as outraged as the Corsicans, became involved. Some would have volunteered to help with the firefighting (we would have done), but were deterred by the police. And then there was the involvement with the Canadair.

Whenever a plane landed in the bay and took off, and this would happen for hour after hour most days, tourists joined with the locals in cheering and applauding. Sight of a Canadair produced excited pointing and chatter among children. The Canadair pilots were considered heroes; the planes themselves were heroic. The strength of the name “Canadair” has never left me.

Flying into dense woodland and dense smoke required remarkable courage. You could count the Canadair out, but you couldn’t always count them back in. Cables were the greatest threats; cables that couldn’t be seen by the pilots.

We were taken at one point to see the extent of the damage caused by one fire. What seemed like an entire mountainside was ash. 1983 was an ecological disaster, and it was man-made.

It takes years for forest to recover. With its burning go also the fauna and their habitats. Mallorca is called the paradise island and Corsica is the island of beauty; not though when they are on fire.

Mallorca has been spared the sort of infernos that engulfed Corsica. Because of the island’s geography, the potential for massive destruction isn’t as great. But this is small comfort. The fires this summer, which are likely to make 2011 one of the worst years ever, have not all been deliberate. Earlier in the summer fires near Santa Margalida and Artà were attributed to sparks from farm machinery or cars; to negligence rather than to anything pre-meditated. The later ones, however, seem more sinister, such as the three on one day and their very similar circumstances. The environmental investigation division of the Guardia Civil believes that a third of the fires this summer have been deliberate.

Why do it? Why set fire to scrub, woods or forests? Who knows the mentality of a pyromaniac, of a twisted firestarter? Just having a laugh? Go tell an heroic Canadair pilot and see if he shares the joke.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Loud, Louder, Loudest

Human speech at a distance of one metre is normally around 50 decibels. 80 to 85 decibels is the level for shouting. An auctioneer was once charged with noise pollution for speaking at a volume which exceeded 80 decibels. In the US, if you speak too loudly in public places, the cops will be called.

The total decibel level on an average Mallorcan beach at peak times in the summer would presumably, were one minded to make an issue of it, break any noise regulation you might care to mention. Cumulative decibels don’t matter though. What does matter is the level of individuals in your vicinity. There are those who are considerably louder than others; those in the 80-85 decibel range. Any guesses as to who they might be?

One afternoon on the beach there was a woman who managed to combine the irritation of playing wooden-racket paddle tennis (dock, dock, dock) with a monologue that lasted for getting on for half an hour. With a following wind, the sound was coming right in my direction (and she was of course further than one metre away from her companion). After five minutes I had, as I imagine had this companion, got her drift; all to do with the hours she was expected to work, the money she was being paid, blah, blah, blah.

Twenty-five minutes later and after she should have been disqualified for repetition – many times – I was considering whether there might have been some handy portable nuclear warhead and missile launcher lying in the scrub at the back of the beach. In the absence of one, there was no alternative other than to beat a retreat, leaving the lady in question rabbiting on. As far as I know, she still is.

The loudness of different nations is accentuated when they gather together. It does become very much easier to discern those who make more noise than others. With this in mind, I have developed the following equation:

L = x multiplied by y adjusted by D, where L equals “national loudness”, x is one person, y is however many are in one household, and D is the distance of the household from nearby households.

This could, therefore, become L = 6 adjusted by ten metres times ten, depending on the number of (usually) relatives in the immediate neighbourhood.

The equation is one with an historical element and is largely based on local experience. Loudness, Spanish loudness, for which therefore read also Mallorcan loudness, can be generally attributed to having had to shout to be heard over all the other people in the house (of which there would have been many) and shouting as a means of communicating with the parents next door, the aunt next door to them, the grandparents on the other side, the cousins round the corner, the cousins twice removed a bit down the road … .

Spanish loudness is inbred, a conditioning over many centuries. The equation can be amended to include what might be the PI co-efficient, where PI stands for parental indulgence.

Needless to say, the woman who was conducting the beach monologue was Spanish. No other nation quite comes near to the Spanish in terms of the sheer racket they make. In the specific case of the Mallorcans, there is an extra element, the L modified if you like, where the modification is one of the additional volume and screech akin to a cat having a potato inserted into its rear end. Not, I hasten to add, that I’ve ever personally tried doing this.

Doubtless there will be those who seek to claim for other nations the mantle of European loudness champions. The Germans for example. It is not a claim without some merit, one born out of an historical Junker mentality of barking orders with a monotone guttural intonation. It is a loudness, however, that grates rather than assaults the ears with the kind of lavish hyper-accentuation that the Spanish are capable of, while, as a rule, the Germans don’t appear to be conducting a football commentary; speaking incessantly, in other words.

The British can’t compete. As a nation the British do whatever they can to avoid drawing attention to themselves through speech. The British are the only people who whisper, even on a beach, as though they were in a doctor’s surgery.

It was, however, a British auctioneer who was done for noise pollution, which says much for British attitudes to personal noise. It would be hard to imagine Spaniards being done in the same way, even if at a normal 80 decibels they should come with a health warning.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

What’s Going On: Tribute acts

For the tribute act there are certain truisms of the art which, according to how many can be said to apply, will tend to determine the success or otherwise of the act. It does help to begin with if the trib act can sing, unless he or she is on the lowest rung of all tourist resort entertainment – the playback rung. Secondly, having a recognisable body of work is essential; recognisable preferably to all age groups, thus ensuring fun (possibly) for all the family.

Less essential but handy is that the trib act looks vaguely like his or her subject. Sometimes non-lookaliking can be compensated for with the judicious use of props. Get a blonde wig, for example, and an Agnetha is Abba-ed up; a full set, and Benny’s your uncle. Very occasionally the lookaliking is so real that it can offer someone like the truly remarkable Rud Stewart; he not only looks more like Rod than Rod, he even sounds more like Rod than Rod.

The most tributed of all acts is Elvis. For the Elvises there are additional benefits, such as the stage gestures and vocal idiosyncrasies that allow the trib to become like an all-round song and dance man. The Elvises also have an advantage in that the younger generation know the Elvis oeuvre inside out; and they know this thanks to the sheer number of Elvises rather than their ever having actually heard an Elvis record.

Elvis is hugely worthy of tribute, and it is this – whether the subject is genuinely worthy – that draws into question the suitability of some subjects for tributing and asks another as to why certain artists are not tributed.

There is a distinction between artists of the past and those of the present or near present. Of those from the past, and from the early Elvis days of modern popular music up to around the start of the seventies, there were arguably only four acts to which one could assign the badge of true greatness: Elvis, The Beatles, Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys (Brian Wilson).

Of these, a tribute Dylan wouldn’t exactly go down a storm one imagines at the evening entertainment in a Mallorcan hotel. The Beach Boys would probably be largely unknown to a younger audience, while the sheer complexity and precision of their harmonies would tend to preclude them as a suitable subject for the trib act for whom simplicity is preferable.

If greatness is a necessity for tributing, then Tamla Motown as a collective would also qualify. However, Motown didn’t produce true individual greats; with one notable exception, and before Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson went on to become true greats.

Forty years ago the greatest album ever made was released. It was a record that came completely out of the blue. It was unlike anything else; certainly anything else that Motown had put out. A black man’s album, it wasn’t black music per se; its messages and its musical styles resonated across cultures.

The “hey, what’s happenin’?” chatter of Detroit Lions American footballers, the congas in an echo chamber and the sax at the start of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” introduced an album that totally changed the perception of Gaye himself, of Motown and of black commercial music. Motown, for all its success and for all that it was admired and was influential, was still looked upon as churning out formulaic pop, sanitised for a white audience.

Marvin Gaye made a musically original and brilliant album that combined protest against war, environmental damage and social injustice and which succeeded in suddenly making black music hip to those with all sorts of musical tastes. For example, a “progressive” music fan, one more inclined to searching for the meaning from a Pink Floyd record cover, could now openly admit to liking a Motown record.

But Marvin Gaye would never be the subject for a local trib act. Yet, in addition to “What’s Going On”, there was what came before and afterwards, while he suffered a fate that might in fact be another requirement for the trib act – an untimely and, in his case, violent end.

Trib acts are, for the most part, a bit of fun and a bit of froth. Not all, but most. True greatness isn’t a pre-requisite. If it were, then Dylan, Brian Wilson and Marvin Gaye would find themselves being tributed rather than, let’s say, Girls Aloud. Perhaps it’s as well. The greatest tribute to the greatest album ever made is that no one in their right mind would even attempt to emulate it.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Join Our Club: Youth tourism market

Lloret de Mar is a Spanish resort synonymous with the growth of mass and packaged tourism. It occupies a place in tourism history alongside Torremolinos, Benidorm and Arenal (Playa de Palma) as being where it all really took off. In the late sixties, when my family swapped Hastings and Bournemouth for the newly exotic and cheap Spanish resorts, it was Arenal and Lloret that, probably through the pages of a Clarkson brochure, offered promises of a holiday experience alien to that of the south-coast end-of-the-pier variety.

Lloret has never shaken off its image. Try as it might have done, and like other resorts in Spain and Mallorca, it is still considered to be essentially naff. What it has also acquired is an image for trouble, one that it shares with resorts such as Magalluf.

This summer there has been disquiet among hoteliers, businesses and town hall representatives regarding the portrayal of Magalluf on Spanish national television channels, and specifically what goes on along the “strip”. The head of the tourist businesses association Acotur has voiced his concern that Magalluf has been depicted as a lawless town.

Magalluf has had its share of trouble this summer; even a US marine managed to get himself hauled in following a fight. It has not been alone. In Arenal a bunch of German skinheads engaged in a spot of what was quite clearly racially motivated bother.

But the trouble in both resorts has been nothing compared with that in Lloret.

Earlier this month there was a battle involving some 400 tourists, French and Italian. A couple of nights later there were further incidents and twenty arrests, none of them, by the way, of British people.

The indignation felt by businesses in Lloret has led them to go further than those in Magalluf. The federation representing businesses offering recreational musical activities (which, one assumes, partly or totally means clubs) is considering asking a judge to look at whether tour operator publicity has in some way contributed to the incidents. The federation considers that this publicity, and also that of “intermediary agencies”, has branded Lloret as a destination for drunken tourism.

It is not clear which tour operators or intermediary agencies the federation has in mind, as it is also not clear what charge might actually be levelled against them, but if it is the case that tour operators have in some way contributed, then what does this say about their responsibilities?

If you are going to pitch a resort to a youthful market, you are unlikely to portray it as tranquil and sedate. Which doesn’t mean to say you have to describe it as somewhere you can go out, get off your face and have a good old bundle.

The tour operators do, when it comes to the youth tourism market, tread a fine line. It would be a strange tour operator indeed who didn’t know what the priorities for a goodly part of this market would be, and these don’t include “doses of local culture and scenery that gives you that serene feeling”. Don’t take my word for it, as these are the words of First Choice on its 2wentys holidays to Magalluf page: “not that we’re really interested in that side of things”.

Further down the page is a list of what things cost. Four items. A full English but otherwise a pint of beer, spirit and mixer and a bottle of wine. The 2wentys section on the website is headed with the advice to “join 2wentys for some serious party antics, with bar crawls, booze cruises and more …”. No suggestions of any drinking there then. And none at all on its Facebook page; apologies, Magalluf, but Gumbet in Turkey is apparently the place to get totally off of it this summer.

But what does anyone expect? What indeed do the good people of Lloret expect? They might not expect pitched battles with 400 tourists, but if your resort has a clubbing and youthful reputation, then I’m sorry but you are going to get people who like the odd cold drink or a hundred.

Ever since Club 18-30 first burst on the scene – its initial destination in its old, very much less raucous Horizon days was in fact Lloret – there have been “issues” surrounding the youthful, clubbing market. Yes, the tour operators do have to assume some responsibility, but they have also been responsible for a growth in resort supply, such as the clubs. In Lloret, to which neither 2wentys nor Thomas Cook’s Club 18-30 go, why exactly is there a federation representing clubs? Who are these clubs for? Senior citizens?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Is The Customer Satisfied?

The Balearics received 11% more international visitors in the first seven months of this year than last. Let joy be unconfined. Put out the bunting.

5.75 million people up to the end of July, but have they been happy? Loads of people doesn’t automatically mean loads of satisfied people or indeed loadsamoney. At the same time as the statistics of joy are being sung about arrivals into the airports and ports, the latest tourism satisfaction survey compiled by the research organisation Gadeso offers a less upbeat tempo.

The overall index of satisfaction where Mallorca is concerned is down. Only fractionally, but down nevertheless. Of the four key measures of satisfaction, only the quality of the environment shows a slight upward trend. Satisfaction with public services is unchanged from 2010, while satisfaction with both accommodation and the so-called complementary offer (bars, restaurants etc.) is down.

A caveat in all this is that the results are based on a mere 400 interviews, and these 400 have been conducted across the Balearics. There have been more in Mallorca than anywhere else, but the number still isn’t great, and there is no indication as to the backgrounds of those interviewed. So, is the survey of any use?

Its value does rather depend upon whether you believe that results from a limited survey can be extrapolated into painting an accurate picture of attitudes more generally. Tourists are a highly diverse bunch with a highly diverse set of expectations, and when a survey asks for making a ranking between one and ten, the decision of the person being surveyed can be fairly arbitrary.

What you get, at best, is an indication. No more. You can choose to use the results as evidence or not. If, however, you are inclined to take them as evidence, then certain findings do rather jump out at you. One in particular. That of the satisfaction with the price-quality ratio of the bars and restaurants. It has the lowest rating of any factor in the survey – 3.4 – which is the same as last year and down from 4.0 since 2009. It is the one factor that Gadeso describes as “deficient”.

If one interprets this as meaning that prices are too high and quality is too low, then the bars and restaurants of Mallorca are not performing well. One suspects the ratio is, in the minds of those surveyed, skewed more by price than it is by quality; that the assessment is an assessment of price as opposed to what actually appears on a plate. Why might one suspect this? Because prices are known. Quality is intangible. Providing a ratio between the known and the unknown will place a greater emphasis on what is known. Simple.

Consequently, can we assume that prices are too high? Anecdotally they are said to be. But what are the benchmarks? One also suspects that a benchmark is an historical recollection of what things cost in the good old days or is a completely unrealistic expectation that because Mallorca is “foreign” it should automatically be cheap. Prices vary so markedly that is almost impossible to come to a conclusion. How, for instance, does one reconcile the fact that in Puerto Pollensa you can pay three euros for a coffee and a bacon sandwich in one establishment, then go to another and pay 4.50 for the coffee alone? Yes, the quality element kicks in, but if you go solely on price then a reconciliation cannot be made, other than the fact that one place is cheap and the other isn’t.

The singling out of price, be it by anecdote or by survey result, is a headline maker because price is arguably the most important issue to the tourist. Indeed the Gadeso survey reinforces this, but in doing so it raises an apparent contradiction. Since 2009 price as a motivation for tourists choosing Mallorca has shot up by over 12 percentage points. 61.8% of those surveyed said it was the main motivation. So, how does this square with the finding regarding the price-quality ratio?

Perhaps it is a reflection of what tourists expect of Mallorca and is also a reflection, as noted by the survey, of low-cost travel. It may also represent expectations of first-time visitors, those who opted for Mallorca this year because of problems elsewhere in the Mediterranean region. The percentage of those who had previously been to Mallorca is down quite significantly, while the percentage of those saying they would return is also down.

Surveys are notorious for enabling whatever interpretation you want to put on them, but the message from this one is that price is the overriding factor in coming to Mallorca in the first place, and that price, once on the island, is not quite as was expected.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet: Complaints

You would have thought that the complaints would have stopped. Having seen the back of the old mayor, the source of much of the discontent, the businesses of Puerto Pollensa still aren’t content. New town hall boss, same as the old town hall boss. Or something like that.

There is always something to complain about in Puerto Pollensa. Over the past few months we have had streets being dug up and the renewal of utilities in the square dragging on longer than they should have, the beach management fiasco and now we have overflowing litter bins, lack of parking and a twice-weekly mini-market.

To make matters worse, or so it is being said, the port is being allowed to go to the dogs (and usually to their output) and is coming in a poor second, third or fourth behind other resorts in the north of the island. While this jockeying for the minor places suggests that comparisons are being made with Muro and Can Picafort, it is really only a comparison with the immediate neighbour Alcúdia, for years looked down upon as though it were something unpleasant on the sole of a well-heeled Pollensan shoe. It’s a bit hard to continue to do so when you’ve just stepped in something unpleasant left under a pine tree on Puerto Pollensa’s walk of pines.

The comparison with Alcúdia is worth entertaining not because of what might be considered the neighbour having assumed the lofty position of number one in the northerly rankings but because of the nature of the complaining. Puerto Pollensa does this, complaining, very much better than anywhere else. It has more moaners per square metre than any place in Mallorca.

Complaint has perpetuated complaint to the point where the complaining has become almost institutionalised and complaining for the sake of complaining. This is not to let the town hall off the hook, especially not the previous administration, but the new one has yet to complete its first hundred days in office. The new administration should be given a break.

The latest bout of complaining needs some analysis. The lack of parking is an old chestnut. Notwithstanding some talk of an area on the edge of the resort being made available for parking, quite how the town hall is supposed to suddenly magic up whole parking lots is something of a mystery. The additional mini-markets were in fact requested by local restaurants as a way of creating some ambience, even if shops aren’t too enamoured of them. The overflowing litter bins? Well, maybe there is a point with this, but the mayor, somewhat mischievously avoiding the criticism, has said that these are evidence of a flourishing resort with hotels also overflowing.

The businesses to the fore in this current round of complaining have dragged in the president of Acotur, the tourist businesses’ association. He has been a busy chap, and his busyness needs to be considered by those who might feel that Alcúdia is a total paragon of tourism resort virtue and who might also overlook the fact that Alcúdia is two distinct resorts – the port and the Mile.

He met recently with Alcúdia’s lady mayor along with businesses around the Mile. The complaints here are of a different order to those in Puerto Pollensa: all-inclusives, the proliferation of lookies and illegal street selling, robberies and lack of maintenance. The main thing to come out of the meeting with the mayor was that the bridge along the Mile will be painted for the first time in a generation.

While the complaints were different to those in Puerto Pollensa, there is a further difference to the complaining: Alcúdia’s isn’t organised. It’s not as if there haven’t been things to complain about, but there is nothing like the well-oiled propaganda machine that exists in Pollensa and which regularly fills column inches in the local press.

The greatest single problem for businesses in Alcúdia, especially for those around the Mile, is that of all-inclusives; it is a far greater problem than any of those experienced in Puerto Pollensa. But even a proposed day of action in September when businesses would close in protest at the impact of all-inclusive probably won’t happen because of the absence of organisation and the presence of self-interest and indifference.

The latest complaining in Puerto Pollensa smacks more of casting around for something to blame on behalf of some businesses which might not be benefiting from the mayor’s overflowing hotels. It might also be better to keep the complaining powder dry. With the town halls in such dire financial situations, the complaining will be matched by the despairing and a general wailing and gnashing of businesses’ teeth. You ain’t heard nothing yet.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.