Hope Lies In The Proles

I was interviewed by the BBC the other day. The interview was about all-inclusives and was to form part of a feature for the “Fast Track” travel programme.

The background to the feature was two-fold: the announcement by First Choice that it will be only offering all-inclusive packages as from next year, and the impact that all-inclusives have on local businesses.

The location that First Choice had suggested for filming was the Holiday Village in Can Picafort. This is a fine complex. It is modern, offers a good range of services and generally speaking is well regarded when it comes to reviews on the internet. It is four-star, and herein may lie a tale.

On the First Choice website there are ten hotels which appear most prominently when you search for Mallorca. The Holiday Village heads the list. In the Alcúdia-Can Picafort conurbation, there are four hotels in all, and only the Holiday Village is four-star.

Fair enough though; why wouldn’t you pick the best that you have?

The presenter of “Fast Track”, Rajan Datar, was not overly familiar with Alcúdia and Can Picafort, so I took him for a bit of a tour one evening. A port of call was a hotel complex that had been dropped by First Choice during the 2009 season. Bellevue.

The level of all-inclusive offer at this vast resort in Alcúdia has increased substantially over the past four to five years. In 2009 it was around 50%. The word locally is that it is now 80%, though local word is often not reliable. Let’s just say that it would be a surprise had there not been an increase since 2009.

We went to a bar nearby. The owner is preparing to close at the end of this season, attributing this primarily to the impact of AI. He was happy enough to be interviewed for the feature. He was less happy when it came to the actual filming and choked up when reading from a poster that announces the closure.

A suffering bar owner is not the most objective of subjects for a report, but it can make for powerful telly. He displayed a lack of objectivity, understandable enough, when dismissing benefits that AIs might offer families on a tight budget.

For me, as I said during the interview, it’s a no-brainer. I can completely understand these families opting for AI. But you always come back to the same seemingly intractable problem; that of the effects on the wider economy and on bars and restaurants in the shadows of all-inclusives.

I don’t know what was said when the filming moved on to the Holiday Village, but I can guess. First Choice and TUI have been doing their best to put positive spin on all-inclusives, such as it being a myth that AI guests do not go off-site and do not spend outside. It is a myth, but then why do some guests find it necessary to go off-site and spend? Because the AI they have ended up at isn’t much good. Holiday Village is more the exception to the fifteen to twenty-minute rule; how long it can take to be served with a beer in a small plastic glass.

However, the spend of AI guests is low. It has been proven to be so by research conducted by the university in Palma. TUI, perhaps inadvertently, added to the proof when it revealed that only 11% of guests’ total spend found its way into the local community at a different Holiday Village, one in Turkey. And that is also a four-star.

This, the star rating, is relevant, because the higher the standard of the hotel and AI offer, then the more the myth of guests not spending off-site ceases to be a myth. I am at a loss to understand the logic as to why, if you get really good AI service, you would ever spend anything outside the hotel.

There is another reason for going off-site and that is because guests tire of what is on offer and also need a release to stop going stir crazy. And it is this which is perhaps inducing something of an AI backlash, together with a growing appreciation among many tourists as to the effects on the economy outside the hotel. There are plenty of tourists who will mock a bar owner saying hello in the hope of business by waving a wristband in his face, but there are plenty who are sympathetic. Without wishing to sound disrespectful, it’s a touch Orwellian. The hope lies in the proles.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Pile ‘Em High: Hotels

Pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap. Remember this? It’s your starter for ten. Whose phrase was it? To give you a clue, he founded a supermarket chain that in the late ’60s and early ’70s no self-respecting, middle-class housewife would be found dead in. You know who it was. Of course you do. Jack Cohen. Tesco’s.

Tesco used to be a by-word for total naffness. Back in the day it was the loon pants and platform heels of retail; the Noddy Holder and Slade of grocery. What saved it was Lord (then plain Ian) MacLaurin’s makeover of sophistication, matched by an aspirational style of marketing, as well as its product expansion; Tesco was the first supermarket to become a petrol station as well.

Pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap. Tesco as it once was (and also as it has become) is a metaphor for much of Mallorca’s hotel industry, both all-inclusive and conventional. A guest at one of Alcúdia’s all-inclusive ghettoes was telling me how he and his wife (they were grandparents) were squeezed into a room with two double beds along with their two grandchildren (girl and boy). The arrangement was not exactly satisfactory, nor was the size of the room. Barely enough space to swing a cat (and there is probably, as an aside, a fiesta event somewhere in Mallorca which involves swinging a cat; but I digress).

A correspondent of mine was telling me of the situation in a Magalluf hotel. Two-bedded rooms have increased in size by 100% in becoming four-bedded rooms. At the prices they’re being charged, the guests shouldn’t have grounds to complain, went the hotel’s explanation.

In the Alcúdia hotel, they were and are being piled in high. But are they being sold that cheap? Three grand for the four of them, I was told. Maybe this is cheap, but when you take into account their circumstances plus the time it takes to get served with a drink or to manage to get into a lift plus the cost of add-ons (this is an all-inclusive, remember), then maybe it isn’t.

More than the cost, however, is the philosophy. Pile ’em high with scant regard for any sophistication or aspiration. Some of Mallorca’s hotels are locked in a timewarp of old Tesco days, and some of them were built around the time that Tesco was reaching its early-70s, pre-MacLaurin nadir.

Tesco discovered that in order to change its entire business and marketing philosophy some of its older supermarkets had to be done away with or greatly improved. It was no use having outdated stores that didn’t stack up with the new aspirational message and which weren’t fit for purpose. And in addition to building new supermarkets, Tesco became, in effect, an all-inclusive retailer; everything from petrol to music.

The Tesco metaphor is pertinent because in terms of philosophy and bricks and mortar, a good part of Mallorca’s hotels are in precisely the same situation that Tesco once found itself. A key difference is that many moved into the all-inclusive line quite some time ago. So they attempted product expansion but did so without considering any of the rest. Or if they did consider the rest, they were unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

The result of this was, and remains in many cases, that the hotels are not fit for purpose. They were not built or designed with all-inclusive in mind. The facilities simply aren’t there. Moreover, some hotels are little more than human processing plants. A mechanistic approach, predicated on the pile ’em high philosophy, induces a mindset which is the antithesis to sophistication or aspiration.

Of course some of the market to which the hotels pander, let’s be frank, is or can be low rent. And the low-rent market perpetuates a low-rent attitude among hoteliers, even if, as the Alcúdia case suggests, the rent isn’t so low that it can truly qualify as being categorised as cheap.

The problem is that the market, be it low or higher rent, has witnessed for itself or learnt of what exists elsewhere. Mallorca’s hotels have not responded, very often because they have been unable or not allowed to respond, to the brand spanking new out-of-town, indeed out-of-Mallorca competition; that of the eastern Med and north Africa.

An expectation has therefore grown, and it is one that is more aspirational and demands greater sophistication. For this reason, plans for hotel renovation, if they ever see the light of day, or changes to use cannot come soon enough. What some of Mallorca’s hotels need is to undergo a process of Tesco-isation. The punter can’t continue to be piled high.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Groundhog Month: All-inclusives

I know it seems like it’s bad flavour of the month, but that’s partly because June is the month for all-inclusive angst. Why? Because the season is well underway and some businesses, finding that they are not thronged, have to reach out and blame someone or something. The all-inclusive. I am in all-inclusive Groundhog month. It’s been like this for years.

I seem to have spent a lifetime writing about all-inclusives. And another one reading all the familiar arguments and imagery that are used to discuss them. The poverty of the discussion, the recycling of the imagery bug me even more than all-inclusives bug me. So also does the implicit notion behind this impoverished discussion that any of this is new. Because it isn’t. But it hasn’t stopped it, once more, being the June flavour of the month.

I touched on the themes of this discussion the other day. One of them is that all-inclusives are appropriate only for remote parts of the world where no restaurants exist and where it is necessary to be holed up in a gated hotel complex because to leave it would be to risk having a machete taken to your throat. In other words, they are not appropriate for Mallorca.

We know all this. We’ve known all this for years. We’ve also known for years the imagery of resorts becoming “ghost towns” as we’ve known for years the analogy of the impact of out-of-town shopping centres on British high streets. We’ve known all this because the same imagery and analogies are used time and time again.

We’ve also known for years that it should be the job of the anonymous “authorities” to do something, when the truth is that there is nothing these authorities can do or are willing to do. We’ve known this because, without any suggestion as to how these authorities might actually do anything, they still keep being called on to do it.

Oh, sorry, there have been suggestions. Like banning all-inclusives. Ah yes, when all else fails, ban them, and bye-bye, TUI.  But there is the law. European law. All-inclusives might be considered anti-competitive (it’s been tried; Can Picafort, 2005), they might be subject to the services directive (and it’s questionable as to whether many meet it), but they are, by the same competitive token, a product of an unfettered market. And the tour operators would drive a coach and horses through any attempt to make them otherwise. Oh, and by the way, there was once an attempt at a ban. In The Gambia. It was dropped after a year because the tour operators objected and threatened to pull out.

We’ve also known for years that the hoteliers are meant to be to blame, when they are not. The president of the hoteliers’ federation has recently said that the increase in all-inclusive is out of the hotels’ hands. This is a rather disingenuous deflection of criticism, but it isn’t without some basis in truth.

So why does it all get dragged out, over and over again? Always the same points. Nothing changes, and hasn’t changed for much of the current century, with the exception that the number of all-inclusive places increases. And amidst all these same old points is the dire consequence of bars and restaurants closing.

Yet, at the end of 2010, the number of restaurants in Mallorca had increased. By 3.4%. The number of cafeterias had increased. By 6.1%. Only the number of bars had fallen. By 1%.

Of course, such catch-all statistics do not reflect precisely the circumstances of different resorts, but they are an indication. Perhaps this increase is a result of it being difficult to find alternative means of making a living or of the greater ease there now is in simply renting premises rather than paying a traspaso. Whatever the reason, though, and notwithstanding economic crisis and the onward march of the all-inclusive, there always seems to be someone willing to take somewhere on, thus continuing to spread business thinly.

The repetitious discussion and the repetitious imagery will be used again. Next June, in all likelihood. Nothing will have changed. The discussion will not have moved on beyond what have now become the clichés of the all-inclusive discourse. And it won’t have moved on, partly because there is nowhere for it to move onto. Unless the tour operators say so.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

In Jason Moore’s Shoes

I had Jason Moore’s shoes in the boot of my car. Oh, yes, you might be thinking. And how exactly did the shoes of the editor of “The Bulletin” come to be there? Why might I have had the shoes? Were they being held as ransom? I confess this did occur to me.

There is a very innocent explanation. The shoes had been left in a wardrobe at the end of a weekend break in a hotel not that far from me. Could I do a favour and pick them up? No sooner asked … .

The shoes weren’t left in a wardrobe of any old hotel. They were in a wardrobe of an all-inclusive hotel. Hang on, no, it is any old hotel. Like many. Like many an all-inclusive. But it was quite good. And the cost for a family of four was also good. Very good in fact. Jason said so.

There is something more significant to the saga of the shoes than the shoes themselves. The greater significance lies with putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Those of a tourist with a family of four.

The debate about all-inclusives that has been called for by business associations will never be more than a repetition of all that has ever been said about all-inclusives and never more than a statement of entrenched opinion. These organisations could never put themselves in tourists’ shoes and accept that all-inclusives might actually represent value for money.

It is the repetition of arguments that makes you despair. When you get someone, i.e. the head of PIMEM, trotting out the ancient reference to all-inclusives being suitable only to “South American countries”, you do have to wonder. Is this supposed to be some great revelation? Because it most certainly isn’t. This line of argument is about as old as all-inclusives in Mallorca themselves.

Actually, this isn’t quite true. And nor is the South America, Central America, Caribbean is where all-inclusives came from argument. Want to know where the all-inclusive concept was born? I’ll give you a clue. Island, begins with an “M”. Resort, begins with an “A”. Still don’t know? Mallorca. Alcúdia. 1950.

To be fair, the current-day all-inclusive is far removed from the first Club Med tents, but to hear the arguments, you would think that this current-day all-inclusive is somehow new. The first serious all-inclusives in Mallorca emerged in the 1990s. The arguments have been around ever since. Just that they have become louder as the volume of all-inclusive has increased.

A peculiarity of the all-inclusive is that it took so long for the concept to really take off. It did indeed take the lack of infrastructure in under-developed parts of the world to truly forge the concept, but once the Caribbean and elsewhere showed it to be successful, it was only a matter of time for it to be transported back to where it originally came from. To the by-now developed tourism world. Mallorca.

Mallorca is an all-inclusive victim of its own success. A mass tourism market, ripe for the flogging of a “different” product by the tour operators. A mature market whose life cycle required energising.

Just think for a moment. What would have happened had Gerard Blitz started opening up all-inclusive hotels in the 1950s and not gone off with his tents to islands elsewhere? A very, very different economy would have been created in Mallorca. It didn’t happen, partly because no one thought to make it happen and also because there was an unchallenged and seemingly natural symbiosis between hotel and outside bar and restaurant.

It has now happened. Or rather, it started to happen some fifteen years ago, and the current-day consequences could have been predicted. And now, PIMEM want a debate. Sorry to have to tell you, fellas, but you’re too late. Fifteen years too late. You can’t put the all-inclusive genie back. You can walk a mile in your shoes and debate till you’re blue in the face, regurgitate the same old arguments. But you should put yourselves in the shoes of a family of four. The debate is not about all-inclusives per se. It is about tourism in Mallorca. It is about how you live with all-inclusives, because they are not going away.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Great Non-Debate: Tourism spend

Oh no, here we go again; the headline-grabber of tourism spend being up and likely to reach record levels. Why does this garbage refuse to be ignored? It’s difficult to do so, if the statistics office and tourism ministry insist upon shoving it down people’s throats.

The facts, such as they are, are these. Tourism spend in the Balearics during April was up by 35%. For the first four months, it rose by 7%.

If you weren’t paying attention before, let me remind you how this spend statistic is arrived at. The process of information gathering is by questionnaire; some 100,000 interviews at airports, ports and border crossings across Spain being conducted annually. Just think about this for a moment, and how thinly spread the exercise is.

Of the information that is gathered, only two of its five categories actually relate to spend on things other than accommodation, transport and the tourism package. There is, for example, no specific provision for spend in shops; just for restaurants and excursions. On-the-ground spend is limited, therefore, to 40% of the overall statistic (transport can include local spend, but equally it means spend on flights).

The good-news story of the increased spend is not all it seems anyway. An average spend per tourist of 866 euros is still some way lower than what used to be a more regular figure that was quoted, of plus-900. And, as ever, there is a huge discrepancy between what the statistics suggest and the reality.

Various bodies, those representing restaurants and other sectors of the so-called complementary offer, have been quick to point out that this spend is not translating into tills rolling over. Well, it wouldn’t, if much of it is skewed towards things other than the complementary offer.

One has to be careful where the statistics that these bodies produce are concerned as well. When they say that some establishments are suffering 50% falls in revenue, this doesn’t mean that all establishments are (5% appears to be an average). Nevertheless, there has been evidence to suggest that genuine and quite dramatic declines in revenue have been experienced.

The shops are probably the worst-affected sector of the lot, especially the souvenir shops. Yes, there are too many of them, just as there are too many bars and restaurants, but time was when over-supply didn’t really matter. It isn’t only the shops flogging siurells and what have you, but also those selling “different” stuff. One shopowner I know well was suffering an 80% loss at stages of last season, and he is not someone inclined to lapsing into BS.

The blame is, of course, directed at all-inclusives. The restaurant and other bodies have called for a debate within Balearic society to be opened to consider the increase in all-inclusives and the effect they have.

What on earth have they been doing for the past ten years? The trend was clear ages ago, and what precisely would this debate achieve, other than to reiterate everything that has been said about all-inclusives, time and time again? The organisations recognise the power of the tour operators, but still they want a debate. Well, let them. It won’t do much good.

The other great power in the tourism game, the hotels, defending themselves of course, say it is better to have tourists rather than lose them altogether. Which is fair enough, but they are also complaining that tourists aren’t spending money. And why would that be, do you think?

One of the elements of the tourism spend statistic should be looked at especially closely – the tourism package. This doesn’t exclusively mean all-inclusives, but how much are they a factor in this part of the spend (and others) and how much is the on-arrival upgrade to all-inclusive a factor?

To get a handle on spend by all-inclusive tourists, you need to refer back to the research TUI have done in Turkey, the research which revealed that, behind the tour operator’s assertion as to the benefits of all-inclusives, a mere 11% of spend found its way into the local community.

For the tourism spend statistics to ever be more than irrelevant, they need to be more precise and focused, but logistics as well as political expediency will mean that they won’t be. It is the headline of 35% up that is all you are meant to know, not what the figures really represent.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

For Whose Benefit?: All-inclusives

“The benefit it brought its surrounding area.”

If you make a statement such as this, without qualifying it, you can bet your life that someone – me – will hunt for some qualification.

The quote is from a short piece on Saturday in “The Bulletin” about TUI conducting a pilot study of the effects of all-inclusive hotels.

The study was undertaken in Turkey. At the Holiday Village in Sarigerme. The news item gave no detail, so let me now do so.

The benefit that TUI claims relates to what the hotel complex spends within Turkey itself. 55% of its total outgoings. This is not, though, the complete story. The study found that only 11% of tourist spending benefited the regional economy, a mere fifth of which found its way into the pockets of businesses in the village of Sarigerme (not the village’s actual name, but let’s not worry about this) and the surrounding area. How much does this equate to? One million euros. The study would appear to have been for the 2009 season.

According to First Choice’s website, the Holiday Village has 500 rooms, sleeping up to four people. Work it out for yourselves. Over a six-to-seven month period, one million euros will be spread pretty thinly; though Sarigerme is not a huge resort, it is a resort nevertheless.

The gloss in the report about the study is the so-called benefit of spending within the country. But so what? Hotels, in all sorts of places, source stuff locally, including Mallorca and including Mallorca’s all-inclusives. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about this. And even when stuff is sourced locally, as with the local booze that is commonly served in all-inclusives, and would appear to be at the Holiday Village, it isn’t always to the punter’s delight.

TUI know full well that all-inclusives have an impact. With the release of the information about this pilot study, the company is seeking to change the bad impression of all-inclusives. “Little research has been carried out” into the effects of all-inclusives, say TUI, implying that an absence of research means that the harm caused by all-inclusives has not been proven.

It is a diversion on the part of TUI to highlight matters of sourcing and employment, as it finds it hard to make a good case for all-inclusive impact on other elements of the local business scene. It is a diversion that shields behind its much-publicised and self-aggrandising sustainable tourism, of which purchasing local produce and giving people a job are two aspects.

I don’t question TUI’s sincerity, but they aren’t being quite straight. It seems no coincidence that, a month after First Choice made the announcement that it would only offer all-inclusive packages as from next year, TUI should now wish to show how such holidays can be of benefit.

The latest announcement echoes one of the laughable bits of spin that First Choice came out with – that of excursions which will enable its guests to get a taste for their destinations and to spend some money. At the Holiday Village, the guests will be able to enjoy a “walking tour” to the local village. For God’s sake.

Don’t be fooled by any of this. The pilot study may be “research”, it might even be good and rigorous research, but it is being done in the name of public relations. TUI have a point in that the impact of all-inclusives has not been well-researched, but the body of knowledge is growing. The company may like to know that the 11% of tourist spending is below that of 20% found by research in Hawaii. It may also like to know that Mallorcan research has revealed spend by all-inclusive guests to not just be the lowest among all categories of tourist but also over a third less than the next lowest-spending group.

But there is research and there is research, and it depends on the characteristics of different markets. Mallorca is not the same as Turkey because it is a far more mature tourism destination. The impact of all-inclusives might well be greater in more mature markets; this should be a strand of research in its own right. TUI say that more studies will be done. If so, then let them come to Alcúdia or Magalluf. Better still, give me the research spec, and I’ll do it for them.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Choice Words: All-inclusives

Is this the end of tourism choice? Quite the reverse. It is the choice of the tourist and of the market that has led First Choice to limit choice. To the all-inclusive.

First Choice has made a fair old splash with its announcement that from 2012 it will only offer all-inclusive. The splash has caused waves in the British press and locally. There was even a debate on Five Live. It was one in which all the old arguments were tossed around, as though the advantages and disadvantages of all-inclusive were suddenly a new area for discussion. It is far from new. What is, is what “Travel Weekly” headlined by saying is a “bold and shrewd” move.

This bold and shrewd move is, of course, marketing-led. It is designed, in the words of TUI, to “differentiate the First Choice product from Thomson and its competitors”. First Choice becomes the first “mainstream holiday company offering a completely all-inclusive portfolio”. In other words, what TUI is doing is to create an all-inclusive brand, i.e. First Choice. It has also said that hotels which are unable (and also perhaps unwilling) to go along with the all-inclusive offer will be shifted to the Thomson programme.

This latter bit is important, because, amidst the hype and what is doubtless a gnashing of teeth in Mallorca amongst bar and restaurant owners, is the fact that hotels to which First Choice gives primacy on its website at present are mainly already all-inclusive only. There may be hotels which are not exclusive to the company that will become so and which will go the full all-inclusive route, but until one knows how many (or any) additional hotels are actually affected, it is difficult to arrive at a complete picture.

I have previously drawn into question quite how all-inclusives fit with policies of so-called tourism sustainability. TUI (and this means both First Choice and Thomson) has made much of its commitment to this vague concept. With this in mind, it is instructive to learn how TUI is spinning the First Choice move. From a press release in “Travel Weekly”, therefore, I quote:

“We have been working with experts to see how we can increase the benefits of all-inclusive to local communities and putting in practices to do this.” “We are doing a lot of work … to increase communications whilst they (tourists) are on holiday, encouraging them to use local services.” “We are also setting up excursions that will enable customers to get a real taste for the destination they are visiting.”

This verges on the risible. When all else fails, invoke some anonymous “experts”. Who are they anyway? Encouraging tourists to use local services? Of course, and so undermine the very principle of all-inclusive. Setting up excursions? This is the biggest laugh of the lot. First Choice and other tour operators sell excursions. They always have done. The real taste? What do you think? Pirates?

To be fair to First Choice, they are right when they also say that “it is a myth that people do not go out of the hotel just because they’re on an all-inclusive holiday”. Yes, but how many actually debunk this myth and what do they do once out of the hotel? All-inclusives, perversely, want people to go out, because most of the hotels can’t cope and they’ve got their money already, thanks very much.

First Choice is bigging up its new offer with the bottom-line of a five hundred pound saving. This itself is a marketing-driven myth, as it depends on how drunk and how fat you want to get, but savings can, nevertheless, be derived; and these are one of the big attractions. Yet, the spin goes on. “With differentiated product, we will move further away from customers choosing tour operators based on cost alone, which is unsustainable.” Clearly they are and clearly a five-hundred quid saving is in fact unimportant; nothing to do with cost alone.

The good news may be that the First Choice offer will not be that significant. For now. It is further down the line that counts, and whether other operators decide to follow suit. What would be nice, though, would be for the tour operators to be less obfuscatory and to not hide behind the spin of sustainability.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

We’ll Fight Them On The Beach Restaurants

So, here was an interesting little thing that caught my eye. In “The Bulletin” on Sunday. The headline was “Menorca fights all-inclusive tourist offer”. The short news item said that the “Council of Menorca” (was) fighting back against the all-inclusive offer by setting up an online scheme where(by) visitors planning to come to the island can survey local restaurants giving meals at a special price, and calculate their expenses in advance.”

What a very good idea, thought I. Visitors would also be able, the piece continued, to compare costs against that of an all-inclusive offer. Intrigued, I went in search of the website. I was intrigued not just by what seemed a good idea but also by the surprise of it. Why was I surprised? Well, would an island council, Menorca’s or any other, actually be presenting something that might be seen to undermine its hotels? Yes, it wants to boost its restaurants and other businesses, and no, the councils aren’t necessarily in cahoots with the hotels as such, but “fighting back” against AI? Was it really doing this?

Disappointingly, it isn’t doing this. On the “Menorca Full Experience” site, the introduction says that we (tourists) want to know in advance costs of various things and that we have a problem with budgeting for lunches and dinners. Nowhere is there any mention of all-inclusives. Might this be for a reason other than letting tourists make some cost comparison, as in all-inclusives will soon be a thing of the past?

The island’s tourism minister, Lázaro Criado, said, when the site was launched at the start of March, that “we understand that all-inclusive is not the agreed strategy for the long term in Menorca, although it can prove useful in the short term”. Just like Mallorca, then. If anyone can decipher what the minister means (and it is hard to believe what he appears to mean), answers on a postcard with a picture of one of the participating restaurants, assuming you can find one of them.

The idea behind the site is that restaurants are listed, along with their menus, and a discount price is offered on production of a voucher that can be printed out. Fair enough. But hardly new. A slight problem with what there is on the website at present is that there are very few restaurants participating. How many? Three. Yes, three. In the whole of Menorca. In certain sections of cuisine and in certain “urbanisations”, there are none listed. One presumes it’s all early days.

This website has nothing to do with all-inclusives, but everything to do with promoting local gastronomy, all three restaurants’ worth of it. There’s nothing wrong with such promotion, while it would indeed have been a surprise had there been some sort of cost-comparison measures being presented, which there aren’t. One can of course do one’s own cost comparison, by schlepping through all manner of websites to get to the comparison, but you won’t get it by “falling in love” with Menorca, the claim of the tourism board’s site.

Giving some advance information about what it might cost to eat out is not, in itself, a completely bad idea. It is one of the questions holidaymakers ask all the time, along with how much does a pint cost and what’s the weather like. The trouble is that the answers to them are of the string variety. How long is a piece of it? The weather you can be reasonably sure of, in July for example, but not in September. As for the costs of eating out, one man’s meat is another man’s pizza, as indeed one man’s Burger King is another man’s typical Mallorcan (or Menorcan) cuisine in a romantic, beach-side setting. It’s not comparing eggs with eggs, or a fried egg with a rasher of bacon with quail’s eggs and smoked salmon.

Calculating the holiday budget in advance, by sizing up less than a handful of restaurants’ menus, with or without discounts, does rather overlook the increasing trend for the holidaymaker to have pretty much a set budget to spend, regardless of advance price information or discounts. And while a discount here or there might be tempting, it won’t be if it means trekking across an entire island in search of it. To be of any real value, discounts have to be clustered in an area close to the holidaymaker, but if enough establishments offer them then the offer itself becomes standard and thus loses its capacity to incentivise.

As for a cost comparison between all-inclusives and a mix of accommodation and eating-out, it could well be that one can make a case for the latter working out cheaper. Again, it does all rather depend. But even this overlooks a crucial ingredient in the all-inclusive’s favour, which is its sheer convenience. Holidaymakers should be more adventurous, but many have lost the capacity for adventure-seeking because they are handed everything on a paper plate, together with the poolside, plastic knife and fork.

Menorca is not fighting back. It is not fighting the all-inclusive on the beaches, as only one of the three restaurants is indeed a beach restaurant. Criado also reckoned that “with this formula (that of the website, whatever this formula actually is) we wish to respond specifically to the demand for all-inclusive in Menorca”. If so, when why not say so. On the website. There again, all-inclusive is not for the long term, says Sr. Criado. Who’s he trying to kid?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

New For Old: The all-inclusive mixed message

“Mallorca has worked as an example of tourism development except in the case of all-inclusive.”

So says Michael Tenzer, a senior director of Thomas Cook. A different company director had suggested that the “battle for the all-inclusive” had ended. It would appear not to have; next year will witness a 10% increase in the number of places Thomas Cook offers which are all-inclusive. In the name of tourism development, one takes it, comes more all-inclusive.

When Herr Tenzer suggests all-inclusive underperformance, he is not talking solely about the volume of AI. There is also the issue of its quality. Never fear. There is always Joana Barceló and her tourism ministry quality inspectorate which has stepped up its scrutiny of the low-grade lager.

Whether the all-inclusive “battle” is over or still being waged, at the same time as Thomas Cook is announcing an increase in its AI offer, the research organisation, the Gadeso Foundation, is reporting that the so-called complementary offer (bars, restaurants etc.) appears “mortally wounded”. Every battle has its victims.

It befits a victor to be magnanimous. Thomas Cook is due to roll out a project in Santa Ponsa in 2011 which is designed to take all-inclusive out of the confines of the hotel and onto the terraces of neighbouring bars and restaurants. It sounds a good idea, but how on earth is it supposed to work?

The notion of a sort of mixed all-inclusive whereby guests could go to nearby establishments and still benefit from brandishing their wristbands was flagged up back in March this year. A “nuevo concepto” of all-inclusive was how it was being branded. I understand that such a system already operates in a limited way in Playa de Palma, but there it involves hotels and outside restaurants within the same group of ownership. In March, the reaction to the new concept from the hotel federations, the association of small- to medium-sized businesses and restaurant associations was underwhelming. They couldn’t see how it could be viable, given the complexity of administration.

Why is such a system being contemplated? The altruistic interpretation is that tour operators wish to help the mortally wounded bars and restaurants. I can break thee, but I can re-make thee. For all the lambasting of hotels that subscribe to the AI doctrine, it might be considered who have been driving it – the tour operators. One can also interpret the mixed AI as an admission of responsibility for problems that have arisen within the bar and restaurant sector.

A second interpretation is that the tour operators are acting as economic engineers, assuming leadership for establishing arrangements which benefit more than simply themselves and the hotels. Sound social responsibility perhaps, but one based on countering the endless moans of a complementary sector that has done precious little for itself in trying to combat the onward march of AI. If they, the bars and restaurants, can’t do it for themselves, i.e. forge relationships with hotels and/or new products, then someone has to do it for them.

Then, however, there is the issue of quality. Anecdotes in resorts such as the AI-abundant Alcúdia or Can Picafort are legion when it comes to holidaymakers seeking out better food and drink than that served up in many an all-inclusive hotel. Notwithstanding Sra. Barceló’s army of inspectors, perhaps there is a recognition that some hotels are simply incapable of providing good service. And this isn’t totally their fault. They have to work within the constraints of their own economics.

And then there are the guests themselves. True, there are those who are totally disinclined to shift themselves from the poolside. It’s the mentality that “Benidorm” captured so perfectly. “Why go outside, when it’s all free?” It might remain “free” under the mixed AI arrangement, but it creates an impulse to step outside the hotel walls, even if it would be to just go across the street. There are though many AI guests who don’t want to remain confined, and it is the recognition of this fact that speaks volumes for why Mallorca has not developed in terms of AI as Thomas Cook might have liked it to.

All-inclusive in Mallorca both works and doesn’t work. And it doesn’t work for the very simple reason that there is so much outside the hotel. Neither the island’s resorts nor many of its hotels are designed with AI in mind. The symbiosis between the hotels and the outside bars and restaurants and their shared living space are fundamental to the ongoing success of Mallorca. Disrupt this relationship, wound it so badly, and you cease to have resorts. The new concept of AI is something of the old concept of mutual benefit that worked well for so many years dressed up in newspeak.

How this new concept could work, whether it could work is yet to be answered. The practicalities are not insignificant, and quite what benefits the bars and restaurants would derive, and which bars and restaurants would derive them, are open to question. But the concept deserves to be given a go. The experiences in Santa Ponsa in 2011 could be very important.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

It Just Gets Worse: All-inclusive comes to Puerto Pollensa

There was a report in “The Diario” yesterday that should, despite the heat, send shivers through many in Puerto Pollensa. Hotels in the resort are admitting defeat. They have resisted all-inclusive, but can no longer do so. To not offer it could mean having to close.

The hotels don’t necessarily want AI, but the tour operators do. The report makes clear, as should be clear to those in other resorts, that AI has largely been driven by tour operator pressure. The good news may be that only a few hotels in the port will go down this route next year. That’s one view. The less good news is an alternative view that it will be more widespread and will be a necessity.

One can guess at which hotels might move to AI: those not on the “front line”. But one can also imagine certain establishments on the front that might embrace AI. Currently, as far as one is aware, only one hotel in Puerto Pollensa has some form of AI, and that is Club Sol, where it might be argued that it is appropriate, given the location. (Club Pollentia doesn’t count as it’s more Alcúdia than Puerto Pollensa, while Duva, on its website at any rate, says nothing about AI.) Whatever the current situation is, from next year, all-inclusive will, in all likelihood, not be out of town.

There is no point in revisiting the arguments for and against all-inclusive; they are well enough known. While these arguments focus on the market that AI creates and on the impact on local businesses, they don’t necessarily deal with the character of a resort. In Puerto Pollensa, the chances are that this – the character – will change, though this might merely be a continuation of a change that has been occurring for some years.

Where Puerto Pollensa is different to resorts such as Puerto Alcúdia and Can Picafort is that it has a high level of residential tourism (holiday lets in other words) relative to hotel accommodation, so all-inclusive might have less of an impact, but impact it will most certainly have. When the protest against the sorry state of affairs in the Moll took place in early June, calls for either more hotels or improvements to hotels would surely not have had AI in mind. The protesters are likely to see their wishes met. More tourists could be on their way, but not ones they might have hoped for. The target of protests may well shift, and while the town hall has it within its gift to do something about the state of the streets and rubbish collection, it has no power to prevent all-inclusives; they are for the tour operators, the hotels and the tourism ministry (now presumably the Council of Mallorca as well) to determine. And as ever, what the tour operators want, the tour operators get.

Although some hoteliers take the view that all-inclusive is just a case of good business and that they have no responsibility for what happens to local bars, restaurants and the rest, not all agree. In Puerto Alcúdia, the director of a hotel that has stood against AI and who doesn’t like AI precisely because of its effect on businesses, has become almost resigned to the fact that his hotel will have to accept the inevitable. And the inevitable can bring advantages to hotels, other than just guests. What is sometimes overlooked is that tour operators, granted longish-term contracts with certain hotels, will help financially with improvements. So long as they get something in return. And that, increasingly, means all-inclusive. Pollensa’s mayor recently suggested that hotels in Puerto Pollensa may not all be “adequate”. Those which are not may well become so. Adequate enough to stop guests patronising the local eateries.

This should not happen. But it’s going to. A bad day.

* Those of you who do the native may want to read the full article. Here’s the link: http://www.diariodemallorca.es/part-forana/2010/08/02/hoteles-port-ceden-presiones-operadores-ofertar-incluido/591491.html

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.