All Night Long: Bar noise and music

Various municipalities across Mallorca share a similar problem, a similar “dilemma”, that of balancing night-time bars and entertainment with the need for some peace and quiet. “The Diario” yesterday looked at the situation in places such as Manacor and Andratx. It could as easily have gone to other towns and resorts.

The dilemma has existed for as long as there have been night-time bars. It is not just the bars and clubs, it is also hotels, though in the case of the latter the issue is straightforward enough. Noise ceases by midnight and is often self-regulating, as it is in Playa de Muro where there are not the same impositions in terms of limiters as there are elsewhere; the hotels act with responsibility without being dictated to. Playa de Muro is also, when it comes to other forms of evening or late-night music, a rather different case to many other resorts; there just simply aren’t the establishments.

The noise issue is at its most extreme in Magaluf where residents have been complaining for years and where the complaints have been getting louder. Nearby, in Son Caliu, there is an almighty row regarding the Pacha disco in what is essentially a residential zone, where the club would be open to early morning. On the other hand, the Mallorca Rocks hotel venue, which kicked off last night, keeps to the midnight curfew; The Kooks were due to have finished by 11.30, giving half an hour for those leaving to hopefully disperse.

It is the noise of people leaving (or arriving at) bars that is generally the issue. In Puerto Alcúdia, in the main tourist centre, one hears little by way of complaint, except about the shouting and whatever at three, four in the morning or later from those making their way from the likes of Cheers or Bells. Otherwise, the noise inside the establishments is contained; the midnight closure of terraces and doors is complied with.

The problem is far greater in the towns. Resort Puerto Pollensa may be, as indeed the port area of Puerto Alcúdia is also a “resort”, but both are also towns. Complaints about noise are more likely to come from residents than from tourists; residents who live in the towns. But again, it is not the music from inside that creates the problem, which is why it is so difficult to understand Pollensa town hall’s absurd stance on live music in bars in Puerto Pollensa, especially if this finishes by midnight.

There is no real solution, short of prohibiting anything beyond midnight, which would be a mistake and would be contrary to a culture of tourism (for some) and to a local culture which treats midnight as a starting-point not an ending-point for a night’s entertainment. It is unfair, though, to say to people living by bars that they have to just lump it. Unfortunately, however, this is probably what they have to do.

Noise is a facet of holiday life and of Mallorcan life. The best thing is to go and live in the country. Or at least choose streets in towns where there are no bars. Problem is, someone has to live in the streets that do have them. Not easy.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Bras And Skinny Fits: Mulligans and Hornblower

What is it about women’s clothes? They seem to follow me around, or maybe I’m following them around. And by them, I use them not in the personal sense but in the plural it sense. Let me just make that very clear.

Mulligans. Bar of the Puerto Pollensa parish. I’ll be honest, I’d never set foot in the place until two days ago. Don’t know why, just hadn’t. Years ago, my then managing director, more of him below, used to refer to certain pubs as being “pubby pubs”, as in they were very much like pubs, which was probably as well, given that they were. But I knew what he meant. They weren’t sheds or post-modernist un-pubs. Mulligans is a pubby pub. It looks like a pub, feels like a pub, smells like a pub, it is a pub. I like the place.

It is under new ownership. Dave and Julie. Very talkative, Julie. It was she who got me onto bras. Bras were what she used to do. Essensual. I think that was the name. Marks and Sparks supplier and all that. I think. I did get a bit lost, probably as I was being unjournalistic and making all manner of interjections of an innuendo style. But swapping a bra for a bar seems opportune. Three letters, the same letters, just in a different order.

And then there is skinny fit clothing for the younger female. Brand name of Skinnifit. There were posters on the walls of the transferred-to-Puerto-Alcúdia Hornblower Embroidery. Shouldn’t be allowed, I suggested, meaning quite the opposite, as I admired the posters while talking to Jan and then Les, they who are the hornblowers.

It was the opening do. The new place is in the Alcudiamar, otherwise known as just the marina. Seems sensible, given that the market is predominantly yachtie. Anyway, there was some talk of how the process of embroidering, Hornblower style, works. Shove it in a machine, press a button, that sort of technical detail. Made eminent sense to me. But beyond this, and it is remarkable (well it is to me) the tangents on which one’s discussions go. Or maybe it’s just me. The Hornblower series, I explained. A good mate of mine was the producer. Used to regale me of stories of filming in the Ukraine, Mallorca and wherever. And somehow we got onto the naming of children. Les had suggested the name of Scarlett for their daughter (their surname is O’Hara). It was vetoed. Graeme, from “Talk Of The North”, mentioned that his sister was up for being named Ruth. Ruth Ellis. Not such a good idea. Last woman to be hanged in Britain. My old managing director was an eminent crime author. Pubby pubs were one thing. He also wrote one of the most important books about Ruth Ellis.

Talk, talk. And you never quite know where the talk will go. Bras, skinny fits, Ruth Ellis and, oh, Albert Pierrepoint. And who was he?

And nearly forgot. What nice folk. Mulligans and Hornblower. The one for the family album shows Les, Bonita and Jan, plus others, at the new Hornblower.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Match Of The Day: Floods and Match Point

First the volcano, then the floods. What next? Plague of locusts, anyone?

To say that the first working day of the season was a damp squib would be an understatement. It was horrific. The coast road from Puerto Pollensa to Alcudia was bad enough, but the bypass at the back of Bellevue. Man alive. Waterfalls cascading like giant bathroom overflows down the side of the Sant Marti mountain, bringing with them detritus, mud and water, water and more water. When finally I reached the haven of close to home, I abandoned the car because my road was impassable, and trudged back with what felt like several inches of water inside my shoes, past the poor suckers who have garages below ground. They must now appreciate that such garages are in the class of being a completely crap idea.

And so to why I had been in Puerto Pollensa. Well, one port of call was a place that has, open for barely a couple of days, already shot to the top of the local controversy charts. It’s called Match Point. Pub and sports bar. Raul from Eolo. Nice chap. Very enthusiastic. Why the controversy? It’s hard to understand, to be honest, but it has gone in with a bullet at number one, toppling Bony and the entire Boulevard Group from their normal positions, which takes some doing.

The pub is on two floors, it will have an inner terrace once the debris is removed and it will boast multi-screens for different sports. The upper floor in particular is impressive, and will be even more so once everything is installed. The pub looks towards the nautical club and is thus in a great location. But it is this which seems, as much as anything, to have caused the unrest, as in it shouldn’t be there. And what the place looks like. Which is? A pub. Heaven forbid. Around the old resort of Puerto Pollensa, the jungle drums of discontent were beating yesterday.

Look, one has to be sensitive to cherished impressions and memories of Puerto Pollensa. It would be fantastic had the place had a preservation order slapped onto it and had it been kept in some quaint time-warp of the Illa D’Or and Sis Pins (which is rather charmingly of course boarded up). I would have applauded such a move. But it has not been subject to any such preservation. Witness the mish-mash of architectural styles dotted around the resort. Unlike the old town, which has this sort of order (not that this is to everyone’s liking), the resort is an altogether different beast. It is a commercial centre, and the fact is that it has changed. To the physical change can be added shifting demographics, both tourist and local.

Into this change come new businesses. Some people don’t like them, and they have every right not to. Yet these businesses demonstrate at least the application of ideas, and Raul is not short of them. Some would rather they kept their ideas to themselves. This is not going to happen.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

This Is My Four-Leaf Clover: Internet advertising

I find myself increasingly and variously intrigued and infuriated by internet advertising.

Let’s take the infuriation first, if we may: the invasive pop-ups or the things that somehow float across the screen or some video demanding to take me away from what it is I actually want to look at. I’ll give you a good example. The “Diario de Mallorca”. Good paper and pretty good website. Better than its main Mallorca-based competitor, “Ultima Hora”. It’s easier to navigate and is better laid-out. However, it has this regular tendency, once you’ve clicked on whatever it is you want to read, to take you to an advert – often for some Seat or Peugeot you have absolutely no interest in. This obliges you to either unclick it or wait till it goes away.

There does of course have to be advertising, which opens up the whole discussion about newspapers, their ad revenues from the web and whether they should be free online or not. But this is not something for here. There is advertising, which is a business necessity for a website to function, and there is advertising – of the intrusive variety. To what extent is this intrusive advertising counter-productive? Out of principle, I refuse to click on it, and only have done so by mistake. Out of principle, I would never buy a Seat, if it’s being forced onto me when I have something better to do, like reading about what shenanigans such-and-such a local politician has been up to. And when it takes an age to load a page because of the damn floating ads, or whatever they are, there is further counter-productivity. I go somewhere else. I may not like “Ultima Hora” as much, but it doesn’t hack me off.

You have to presume that this intrusion doesn’t come cheap and also to presume that it works, even if referrals may be a low percentage and actual conversion (assuming this can in fact be measured) far less. But the potential to alienate readers cannot be underestimated, and then there are those, like myself, who form a negative image of a brand because it’s getting my back up.

Web advertising is a curiosity because it is an experimental work-in-progress. Unlike TV advertising, the model of which has remained pretty much unaltered since the first days of commercial television (in the UK at any rate) in the mid-1950s, advertising on the net has been in a constant state of flux since it was first realised that here was the brave new world of promotional opportunity. The cost can be high, but it all depends what is being advertised and how. The “how” is arguably the most interesting aspect, especially since the inception of social networking. Facebook and the rest may not be for everyone, but its potential – cheap promotional potential – is significant.

In Alcudia there is a bar, Shamrock. Facebook has transformed not only the bar in terms of its income and profitability, it has transformed the bar completely – in terms of its market and product. Yes, there have been, and are, other promotional tactics, but it is Facebook that has driven the change. I’m not going into detail, this may be for another time or place, but if there is such a thing at Harvard Business School as case studies on the role of social networking in marketing, then Shamrock might well form one of them. To emphasise – not just greater success but also a change in the business itself, all stemming from Facebook. It’s fascinating stuff.

The essential ingredient with the Facebook approach is that it is a form of push marketing – or poke marketing if you prefer. It is proactive and can create a rapid response. But this proactivity isn’t aggressive, as with so much unwished-for promotion, because of the very nature of social networks and their built-in likemindedness. Moreover, Facebook is without pretension in its marketing style. Some advertisers, or so it has appeared to me, have a kudos mentality that demands they pay fairly substantial amounts to appear on a particularly grand site. This may be beneficial to them, or it may not be, but for many, a complementary approach using social networks would almost certainly be beneficial, if not more beneficial. It does rather depend on how broad the marketing scope needs to be and therefore how much the initial contact or interest via the internet needs to be made, which is where paid-for representation can be, and often is, important.

What we’re moving towards is businesses adopting a bundling approach, of different types of site, with different styles. The only fear with the likes of Facebook is that its success, and that of those who use it creatively, will result in the sort of intrusive advertising that can deter. I, for one, hope not.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Bar Bar Bar – How To Become The Best Bar

The controversy may have receded into the depths of early-season crisis and socially-networked speculation, but the which-are-the-best-bars debate can always be relied upon to raise its parlour-game head, be it in columnar Nelsonian form talking of the north locally or in the pages of “The Sunday Times”. For there, yesterday, was a double-page spread on the world’s best bars. No need for any guesswork as to the authors; they are named and some of their mugshots appear. We know who you are; we even know what some of you look like, even if we have never heard of you. What though of all the thousands, probably millions of bars everywhere that are not included in this vox-pop from a member of Blur and nightlife queens? What will they make of their exclusion? And specifically, what of all bars in Palma, save for somewhere called Bar Abaco, the choice of a co-author of “Miller’s Antiques Price Guides”? This happens to be one of the best bars in the world, or so says Martin Miller, whoever he is; well, I’ve just told you. So, there’s no need – barpersons of Palma or the rest of Mallorca, including Alcúdia – for a who-the-hell-is-Martin-Miller. Just find where he lives, and give him a slap.

To become a best bar, it seems, the bar needs to serve gin cocktails and offer “great people-watching opportunities”. These are some of the attributes of the bar in Palma. People-watching is also important at a beachside restaurant in Formentera called Juan y Andrea, or so says a Michelin-starred chef by the name of Tom Aikens. So, there you have it, the two best bars in the whole of the Balearics, and clearly there are only two, and it’s all down to looking at the passers-by. Oh, and in the case of the place in Formentera, it’s also because of its “cool crowd”. Ah yes, “cool”. Not probably a word you would associate with many an Alcúdia bar, though I confess I’m not sure as to what constitutes a cool crowd, and so would be unlikely to recognise one even were it to be standing around the likes of Paco’s Bugs Bunny. (And I do apologise for naming only one bar; I’ll desist.)

It’s all of course a question of how pretentious or not you may be. Assuming none of you reading this are “movers and cocktail shakers”, as the paper dubs those nominating the world’s best watering establishments, then qualification as to best bar probably comes down to rather more basic requirements – Sky, the size of the full English and how cheap it is to get off your face. And so with that in mind … yep, you know, I reckon there’s a good deal of scope to this best-bar malarkey. I can feel another book idea coming on …

Shut That Door!

Now, here’s a potential little treat, courtesy of the Spanish Government. Once again, thanks to Ben for giving me the heads up on what, this time, might just have some important ramifications for bars and shops. I say might because, as ever with some law in Spain or Mallorca, things are not exactly transparent. Maybe they are just not reported well, or maybe no-one really knows. Anyway, to cut to the chase. 

As part of its broader law on a “sustainable economy”, the cabinet agreed a measure at the end of last week that would impose certain temperature and humidity requirements on establishments such as bars. Moreover, this measure would also mean that doors which open on to the street (and presumably also a terrace) cannot be left open. This would require the installation of automatic doors that open and shut as customers and staff pass through. The point of this would be to maintain mandatory temperatures inside, and these are – no higher than 21 degrees in winter and no lower than 26 degrees in summer. 

Firstly, just read those temperatures again. The winter one seems ok, but the summer one? 26 is 79 in old money. That is fairly warm. Clearly, this all seems designed to cut back on air-conditioning use. While this measure would not make AC units obsolete, the investment that may have gone into them would now be open to question. And what is meant by summer? If the temperature inside is below the 26 degrees – naturally – in, say, May, do they have to crank the heating up? There are also any number of bars and restaurants that make a virtue of air-conditioning as part of their publicity. Not at 26 degrees they won’t be.

The confusion about what this all might mean is not helped by different references in reports. There is one suggestion that it may only apply in certain instances – administrative centres and cultural venues have been mentioned – but “El País”, for example, refers to the splendidly vague concept of “public spaces”, which can be interpreted as meaning anything and anywhere. There is also the reference to opening onto a street, so does this include terraces or doesn’t it?

If one assumes that this is intended to apply across the board, terraces, streets, whatever, you can begin to imagine the implications. Surely the government does not plan to have every single bar operating automatic doors. Or does it? Bars have enough on their plate without having to fork out for such systems. And then there is the ambience angle, ironically, as the measure is all designed to control ambient temperatures. Bars, restaurants, shops want their doors open. It shows that they – the bars – are open and that the interior and exterior are seamless.

Just think about the practicalities. Imagine a bar packed with sweaty boozers during a big football match. Doors closed, the temperature at least 26. They’ve got to be kidding. Maybe they really don’t mean every bar and in every situation, but you can’t be sure they don’t, and you can’t be sure that, in the pursuit of saving the planet and meeting a 20% target of reduced carbon emissions, they don’t intend it. But one has got used to legislation which is not as it may seem. The definition of evenings and noise in Mallorca, that law from the summer; well that seemed to mean one thing and then they said it didn’t, or more likely someone realised it was absurd and so they quietly put it to one side.

This measure does not yet have royal assent, but that’s a formality. As to when it might be implemented, don’t know. But if it is as broadly based as it might be, then I think you will be hearing quite a bit more about it.

Don’t Stand So Close To Me

There is this thing about Mitchell and Webb in this week’s “Sunday Times”. It deals, among other things, with what constitutes an “annoyed” type of person. There are any number of annoyed people, many of whom you are likely to be confronted with in a local bar. More than anything else, the bar is the sanctity-from-home lounge of the annoyed and also of what one might call the betrayed by caveat or conditional type, and of the nauseatingly boastful who doesn’t even try not to be sort. 

 

But to explain the Mitchell and Webb angle. A sure sign of an annoyed type is one who starts off: “If there’s one thing I can’t stand …”. The natural corollary to this is that this type can’t stand most things. I know a number of annoyed people in this case. One in particular can’t stand Americans, women, Jonathan Ross and of course the Welsh, yet when proclaiming his lack of standing there will always be a “one” inserted. It’s a truism. Try it yourself next time you’re in a bar, and the chances are that you will strike lucky and find a mutually annoyed fellow drinker who will be unable to stand more things than you can’t stand. 

 

There are any number of these conditionals and caveats that should alert all of us who might be tempted to hang around in bars to be extremely wary. Unlikely though it is that Tony Blair would sidle up to you in a bar on Alcúdia’s Mile, were he or anyone else to do so and to declare himself a “regular kind of a guy”, then be prepared for an avalanche of lies and a dissertation nicked from the internet that would follow. But the caveat is no more apparent than with the “I’m not a (insert as appropriate) but …”. This is the domain of what we should call the “caveat emptier”, the one who empties a bar as quickly as you can say “I’m not a racist but”. And the list of other possible inserts after the “I’m not a” is long and varied. Holocaust-denier, mass-murderer, member of the local English-speaking association are but three common ones that should make you extremely worried and drink up rapidly and seek safe haven in an alternative bar where you can announce that if there’s one thing you can’t stand it’s having David Irving necking a pint next to you. 

 

Then one comes to the boastful sort. “I used to be” or indeed “I am”. As in “I used to be the head of MI5” or “I am Simon Cowell’s best mate”. The worst thing about this type is that there is no caveat. He is genuinely so far up his rear end that his pint glass has accompanied him. There is a variant on this theme, and one you would be very wise to accept is bollocks, and that is, in a Mallorca context, “no-one cares about what other people have or don’t have”. It is such transparent bollocks that it is both remarkable that anyone can even come out with it and that the one uttering it does not have two glass egg shapes concealed under his Björn Borg bathers. Be prepared to find it hard to hear over the jangling and to be blinded by the bling around this one’s neck and on his wrists. And then make your apologies and effect an escape, just as he produces a laptop in order to show you photos of the Porsche he was running during his time in the City, fleecing millions thanks to dodgy hedge fund activities.

 

There are other examples. I’ll leave you with a simple one. “Trust me.” On no accounts, therefore, trust him, as he will be totally untrustworthy, especially if he’s trying to sell you his bar. 

You Don’t Have To Wear That Dress Tonight

How many golfing tourists come to Mallorca do you reckon? The tourism ministry has kindly presented the answer. 112,752 – in 2008. No round figures here. Quite how they arrive at the figure who can say, but as it is so exact one has to suppose it’s right. The 2008 number was up by just under two per cent on 2007. The ministry also reveals that the golfer stays on average for just under ten days and spends per day 211 euros. Given that the average spend per person per stay is 993 euros (the figure for June this year anyway), that 211 per day is quite a lot of spend, though what it entails is not clear – perhaps it includes green fees and so on. Nevertheless, it is a tourism market that is worth cultivating, and so the ministry has come to an agreement with the association of golf courses to spend 180,000 euros promoting golf tourism in the Balearics, presumably in addition to that which is currently spent in attempting to attract this sector of “alternative” tourism.

I was told something quite startling yesterday. Had it come from bloke in bar as opposed to a hotel director (which was the source), I would have been inclined to have dismissed it. It was in the context of pickpockets, but it could apply in other situations. If the pickpocket pockets less than four hundred euros, there is nothing the police can or maybe will do. You get your wallet liberated with a mere 399 euros in it, and go and make a “denuncia”, and it won’t get you very far. It’s as though there is a sort of threshold, like with insurance policies: you accept liability for the first 400 in this instance. If you are, therefore, the unlucky victim, might be as well you make it a round 500, just to be on the safe side.

Kroxan – you don’t have to wear that dress tonight. Sorry, I’ve never been able to hear the name of this café without thinking of … (as you see, it’s today’s title). The only thing is that it has a name change, a slight name change – to Croasan. Why? Asked I of Pedro. A new company. Kroxan is a franchise, but the café is no longer a franchise. Pedro is now the proud owner in his own right. Hence the slight name change. For those who don’t know, Kroxan or Croasan is by the Magic roundabout on the Tucan road going towards Hidropark in Puerto Alcúdia. It’s one of those fine meeting-places, patronised by Mallorcans and expats alike, whatever the name.

Bulletin Watch – one of my correspondents sends me this observation: “The Bulletin’s beach of the day today is Cala Mitjana which is a rather remote cala I know from my Cala d’Or days. Very interesting except that the accompanying map locates it on the bay of Palma even though the text describes it as just 2km from Cala d’Or. Even better … on closer inspection the map shows Artà just south east of Palma airport on the way to Llucmajor.” Oh dear. At least one trusts that the text and the photos are correct. Not having checked this particular one, I can’t be sure but put it this way, when these beaches of the day first started appearing I thought there was something a bit odd about them. They come from the illesbalears tourism website.

Turn Back Time

One of the nice things about this blog is that “blogotees” make contact and want to meet up. And so it was that I met Captain and Mrs. Haddock, Alan and Sheila, fishily named as it was they who told me about bringing the frozen haddock with them. I missed a trick, I should have had the camera in order to photo some of the old photos they showed me. Perhaps I’ll ask if they can scan one or two and send them.

There is a tremendous interest in the history of resorts, and yet these histories are ill-served. There is also a tremendous amount of archival material – photos, postcards, whatever – as well as anecdotes that, were they to be brought together, would create something of genuine value as a record of the past. The photos of the port of Alcúdia from the early ’80s show the emergence of what one knows today. From the Condes, then standing in some isolation, the view was unobstructed. There were no Carabelas, for instance. What is Alcúdiamar was there, but just as a sort of harbour pier and wall, with no buildings or road on it. The old Miramar hotel was also still there. It can be seen from the fishermen’s pier, as it can be seen from the same location in those very old black-and-white postcards of photos dating from the early part of the last century. A road sign declaring Artà 33 kilometres speaks of the road that ran along the front before the Paseo Marítimo and was truncated at what is now the Dakota to one side and El Yate to the other in order to form the paseo. The old Casablanca disco; the building that looked like a small Moorish temple but was itself a club; Tony’s bar by the Condes that remains to this day; Bar Bamboo from way back then.

The history. I really must do it.

The other side of the story
Amidst all the talk of the impact of all-inclusives and this season’s economic difficulties, how does one quite square all that with what was said to me by a bar owner in the port? Food and drink sales up, more than just reasonably; the place so full that people are stopping, seeing it is “rammed” and moving on. To what could this be attributed? I’m disinclined to say what the answer was or to say which bar. The Famous Five fall-out favours discretion in all things bar identification and even quoting what is said. Of course, there can be a tendency to say things are better than they really are, but I happen to believe that this is not the case with this unnamed example.

The port, the Magic halfway house and The Mile are different, but the port still has its all-inclusives, it is as affected by pound weakness and recession. Is it the case that, away from the port, the effects are more profound? One might be tempted to say that the port is different in one respect, in that it is somewhere that people go to, but The Mile is not the sole preserve of those staying there; it attracts people from further afield as well. Or perhaps it is as simple as there being certain bars and restaurants which perform better than others, whatever the circumstances.

The Bellevue fire
I hadn’t anticipated that there would be anything to add to what seemed a minor incident (4 June: Paris Is Calling). However … A comment came in from someone who was staying in Minerva 1. It makes alarming reading. He says that the smoke was so thick that he and his family (with two youngsters of two and five) were barely able to breathe. “An absolute nightmare” are his words.

I had been inclined to not repeat all that was said in this comment, and I have not. But then I looked at the various sites – Trip Advisor, Travel Republic. There you have the confirmation. The alarms did not sound. Go google these sites and the comments for yourselves. They make pretty awful reading. They also go to show that the internet cannot be underestimated. Different people have gone to different sites to express what happened. I can understand that maybe the alarms get let off as a prank, but this could have been far, far worse than it was. Had it been, the news would have been far, far worse, and far, far worse in terms of bad publicity. The hotel really needs to offer an explanation. It could have had to offer something far, far more …

Calling All The Heroes

Following on from yesterday, the meeting did duly take place. You will note that yesterday’s reference has now been anonymised; that’s how they wanted it.

As suggested, the thrust of what the bar owners had to say was indeed about the all-inclusive. Why now, you might ask. The current economic problems have put the all-inclusive offer into even sharper relief. I’ve said it here before that it is hardly surprising that tourists will opt for the security of knowing what they’ve paid for that comes with an all-inclusive, even if what they get turns out to be rubbish. Recession has not stopped the paying out for AI as a higher upfront cost, but the theory (and the practice) is that the total holiday budget is reduced – and quite substantially so in some instances.

Recession and pound weakness are temporary. They are not seen as the villains of the piece by the Alcúdia bar owners; the AI is, and not just the AI but also those AI “offers” and “inducements”. One does wonder quite how many hotels do not have some form of AI now, especially now. Whereas the tour operators may have been the instigators of AI, the hotels have felt the need to go further down that route as a means of securing their businesses – at a cost to others.

There are some positive sounds as to the number of tourists who are going to be coming in high season; positive sounds from the tourist chiefs. But how many of them are going to be on an AI basis? How much spend will they have? The bar owners would like at least a reduction in the number of AIs, but were there to be, or to have been this season, would those numbers due to come be as high? It’s hard to say. Mallorca, Alcúdia, have had to compete not only with other holiday destinations, they have had to compete with other holiday destinations offering AI. To effect a reduction or even an elimination of AI would require some sort of cross-national agreement. It’s not going to happen, though one does wonder whatever happened to that European directive that was meant to have ensured certain levels of service and quality which would, in all likelihood, have put an end to many hotels offering AI.

There is frustration. It’s what caused the call and the desire to get something into “The Bulletin” and to call upon bar owners in other resorts to express their discontent. It seems so little. The frustration stems from the system, the system that seems immune to the impact on businesses, that seems not to appreciate that the AI does little for individual resorts, the system that creates one rule for some, and one rule for others. It’s a frustration that makes people not want to reveal their identities, because of that system. But they’re calling out to heroes elsewhere to voice their concerns and to kick at that system.

We’ve been here before, and doubtless we will be here again. But for how much longer? Is a “breaking point” close, or has it been reached? Will many bars really go to the wall at the end of the season? If they do, the authorities will offer their sympathy and blame the global recession. And they would be only partially correct.

An article has been submitted to “The Bulletin”. It should appear on Thursday.