The Great (Tourism) Reform Act

The new tourism law is still only in draft form. On Monday it was put out for “public exhibition”. What this means in practice is that sectors of the tourism industry can scrutinise it in order to ensure that their interests are being catered for. In theory, anyone can suggest modification, but it will fall only to the loudest and strongest to be heard or to effect amendment. And guess who they are.

Pedro Iriondo, the president of the Mallorca Tourist Board (Fomento del Turismo), while generally applauding the draft law, has also offered some criticism. “Everything is focused on resolving problems of the hotel sector,” he has said. But why should he or anyone be surprised by this?

Iriondo has gone on to say that the law should cover the interests of other sectors of the tourism industry. When pressed on which sectors, however, he mentioned that of the travel agencies. What is Iriondo’s background? Travel agencies. Viajes Kontiki, to be precise.

In calling for other sectors’ interests to be considered (and what, pray, are the concerns of the travel agencies), Iriondo and the tourist board have a credibility problem. It’s true that it, via its “junta” members at any rate, represents different sectors (restaurants, transport, marinas and so on), but of those members, four are senior executives with leading hotel chains. The independence that the tourist board claims, and its values, to include “plurality”, go only so far.

There is no genuinely independent tourism body in Mallorca. Were there, then it might just be prepared to point out that tourism, in terms of its accommodation, is more than simply hotels. But the alleged discrimination shown towards the holiday-let sector would still prevail. No one will stick up for it, because no one dares to.

The outcry from owners of property denied the opportunity to rent it out will ring around the letters pages. Here’s my advice: don’t waste your breath. No one who matters is listening or will listen, unless they are from the tourism ministry inspectorate or the Hacienda, or both.

Of course, the holiday-let sector isn’t discriminated against to quite the extent that is suggested. The new law contemplates an extension of the commercialisation of properties on “rustic” land and of holiday homes which are detached or semi-detached. It is the private apartment which really bears the brunt of the discrimination and of an absence of procedure by which it can be “regularised”.

While the government’s taking up of arms and mounting of a crusade against illegal accommodation is the headliner to grab the attention of the indignant property owner, there are other aspects of the draft law that are worthy of attention as well, and not just the changes of use that the hotels are to be permitted to undertake.

The director of the Mallorca hoteliers federation, Inma Benito, has come out with an intriguing statement. It is one to do with all-inclusives. She has said that the current all-inclusive offer needs to be revised profoundly and a consensus arrived at. What she has also alluded to is the need for spend to reach out to the bars and restaurants in tourism areas. The tourism law says nothing about all-inclusives per se with one indirect exception: that the taking of food and drink outside a hotel will be prohibited.

One presumes this means no more “picnics” being taken out of hotels and a way of tackling the unedifying sight of tourists wandering along streets with plastic glasses of beer or heading off to beaches with plates of food. But how this prohibition will be policed is another matter.

Nevertheless, if the hotels are serious about revising all-inclusives and can work this into the bill, this might just be the best thing to come out of the new law.

I’m speculating, but what they may be referring to, and this would be in line with one of the new law’s main aims of effecting a general upgrading of hotel stock, is the fact that all-inclusive has to mean all-inclusive, i.e. the standard of service would result in many three-star hotels simply not being capable of meeting the standard. There could also be some suggestion that the hotels are contemplating the type of “mixed” all-inclusive whereby local bars and restaurants become a part of the all-inclusive offer. We’ll see, but it is encouraging that the hotels appear finally to recognise that there is an issue.

The new law won’t be to everyone’s liking, but its reform and the reforms it will enable (to misuse “reforms” in the Spanglish sense to apply to building) may just prove to be a part of the strategic plan that the tourism industry has long demanded.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Worst Form Of Tourism

The World Travel Market (WTM) in London starts tomorrow. The world will be travelling to the ExCel; getting on for 5,000 exhibitors, 3,000 journalists and any number of VIPs, politicians, businesspeople and the poor sods who have to stand around at the exhibitions for four days.

Among the exhibiting of the 5,000 will be the Balearics Tourism Agency (stand EM1650, if you must know), proudly listed in the alphabetical running-order below Baki Tur, not a tobacconist tour agency but something designed to get you heading off to Azerbaijan. There is an awful lot of world travel to be had nowadays. How very different to the days when the Mallorca (spelt with two l’s for the purposes of the WTM) Tourist Board was founded in 1905. Sharing the stand with the tourism agency, its blurb reminds everyone that it really is this old and that “2005 will its centenary year”. Oh well, let’s hope no one actually reads the blurb. There’s nothing like incorrect grammar and downright error to influence people.

The Balearics participation in this year’s WTM is, as has been well-publicised, an altogether more austere affair than it has been in the past. The hangers-on are down in number and the budget has been cut. Tourism minister Delgado has insisted that the fair isn’t an excuse for a jolly; it’s all about business. Which is only right as the WTM itself has adopted the snappy slogan “WTM Means Business”, which it doesn’t as it means World Travel Market, but let’s not quibble.

The WTM isn’t just about stands and selling destinations. It is also about trends, and each year a report is produced which considers these trends and immediate prospects. But such reports overlook the unexpected. The 2010 report had nothing about the Arab spring. It predicted “weak performance” for European travel and tourism, which was right only up to a point as it hadn’t figured on the boost that the Arab spring gave to tourism to destinations such as Mallorca.

And word coming out of the WTM is that the Arab effect hasn’t finished. Libya and Syria together with a perception of growing Islamist influence in both Tunisia and Egypt are likely to help to make 2012 just as good for Mallorca. What can’t yet be determined is the extent of any fallout in Europe itself as a result of the Greek and Euro crisis. It is perhaps slightly unfortunate that the WTM international press centre is being sponsored by the Greek National Tourism Organisation.

Among the speakers at the WTM will be representatives of organisations that make it sound like an echo of the recent ABTA convention in Palma – British Airways, Royal Caribbean, Google – but perhaps the most interesting will be Leo Hickman.

That Hickman is a journalist with “The Guardian” is likely to have you leap to all manner of conclusions, but what he has to say is far from unimportant and will chime with what many think about issues in Mallorca. His book “The Final Call” was based on travels across the globe; he didn’t make it to Mallorca, but he did get to Ibiza where there are similar issues.

To give you a flavour of his views, and I quote from an interview on the Worldhum website, here is Hickman on tourism in general: “a one-sided transaction whereby the buyer – the tourist – comes off much better from the deal than the sellers at the destination”. “Tourism predominantly creates ‘McJobs’ … it is largely a myth that (it) creates a form of trickle-down wealth for all.” Here he is on “nefarious” effects of tourism. Sex tourism is the worst, but beyond this come all-inclusive hotels (and cruise ships); “one of the most damaging forms of tourism in the fact that they offer the destination so little”.

Hickman also refers to the theory of the remarkably named Dr. Stanley Plog who has plotted the rise of tourism destinations to a peak of too much development and then an inevitable decline, one that can be avoided by the right planning by regional governments and others but is all too often absent and instead dominated by short-term thinking.

There is an awful lot of sense in what Hickman says. Though the Balearics Tourism Agency will be busy doing business, it might do well to send at least one of its representatives along to Hickman’s presentation. Tourists getting much the better of the deal, McJobs, all-inclusives the worst form of tourism after prostitution, and the inevitable decline of destinations that are too developed. It does sound rather familiar.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Death Row: Empty units

What do you do with units that have been empty for ten years or so?

Playa de Muro has a number of such units (or “locales” to use the native). They are grouped together. A row of abandoned restaurants, shops and bars with forlorn for sale or for rent signs that have been in their windows for so long that they have pretty much acquired the status of being the units’ names, except that they are all the same and therefore indistinguishable from each other, which is appropriate as none of the units is in any way distinguished.

Who was it who ever gave permission for the type of architectural abominations that were allowed to spring up in the name of commerce? The more contemporary units in resorts such as Playa de Muro are without any character, any atmosphere and any redeeming feature. It is small wonder that they are empty and have, in some instances, been so since the turn of the century.

These are not units that have been solely ravaged by the arrival of the all-inclusive. Some have, but many closed before the all-inclusive really took hold. They have been empty because they are hideous, because there are too many of them and because no one in their right minds would pay the traspasos being asked, let alone the rents.

So unattractive is this line of abandonment that you can understand why tourists might prefer not to go a-strolling at night. Despite the valiant efforts of the Boulevard group which demolished some units and stuck up a glass-faced office building replete with tex-mex, tabacs and a fashion store and which thus gives the impression of at least some life (and light at night), the ugliness of the dark, dingy and long-vacated units deprives this part of the resort of any hint of charm.

It is easy perhaps to suggest that this death row of units is a portend of the ghost-town cliché set to be used for other resorts as a consequence of all-inclusives. It is certainly true that the closure of units is gathering pace elsewhere, but this is only partially explained by the loss of business. The story is often the same. It is one of rents being too high and of irrational landlords being unprepared to lower them. But it is also one of units that are, at best, functional and, at worst, simply unappealing.

The tourism ministry of Carlos Delgado has spoken about the redevelopment of older resorts. Taking the lead from the transformation of Playa de Palma, if it ever happens, this would involve an upgrading of the likes of Magalluf and Alcúdia. Meliá Hotels International’s announcement of its Magalluf megacomplex is perhaps the first stage in this. But the hotels are only one part of the story.

Playa de Muro is not as ancient as other resorts; part of it, yes, but not all of it. Indeed, the resort has been praised for the style in which its coastline was planned with what are modern hotels of a high standard, including three five-star hotels.

Because of the hotels, the resort would be unlikely to feature prominently on any list of resorts due for beautification. Were money no object, a solution would be to demolish the empty units and make green areas. But for different reasons, it wouldn’t happen, one of them being because they are someone’s assets.

And it’s when you come to learn whose assets they are that you begin to understand how such units can be allowed to be left empty for so long. They ultimately belong to a hotel. When I found this out, initially I was shocked. Why would they just leave them like they are?

It’s a good question. It doesn’t, you would think, help any hotel in any resort to have the appearance of abandonment, but should we be surprised? Hotels, in general and increasingly, seem to show scant regard for what goes on outside their grounds, as evidenced by the all-inclusive. Though this particular hotel isn’t all-inclusive, its publicity is almost as good as. What it packs inside its grounds allows it to say that everything is in one place “without leaving the hotel”.

One concludes, therefore, that there is a take it or leave it attitude towards the units. They are assets on a balance sheet that one day might be sold or made productive. It doesn’t really matter. And if there are no competitor restaurants or shops around the corner, then even better.

Take it or leave it. Yes, people have. They have left the units; they left them long ago. And now they are just left to rot.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Two Bellevues, There Are Only Two Bellevues

How do you make two hotels out of one? It’s not so difficult when the one hotel is not one hotel.

What is this riddle? It is a riddle that has been perplexing hoteliers for many years. It is what on earth you do with a problem like Bellevue.

If you don’t know Alcúdia’s Bellevue, then you should. There simply isn’t anywhere quite like it. It is an attraction in its own right. It is the single largest complex anywhere in Mallorca and probably in Spain and is testimony to an early-seventies philosophy of tourism that had seen huge complexes created elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

Unlike, say, the spaceship-style design of two of the main buildings at Cap d’Agde in the south of France, Bellevue is a series of individual apartment blocks (seventeen in all). But the thinking was similar. And this thinking conceived Bellevue as apartments, not as a hotel or hotels. Originally, they were meant to have been sold off as timeshares.

Like Cap d’Agde, the philosophy regarding the style of accommodation was one of packing as many apartments and people into an area as possible; 1400 apartments in the case of Bellevue. The accommodation was standardised into three types and was always fairly basic. The emphasis back then was straightforward; holidaymakers came for the sun alone, and the accommodation was somewhere for them to lay their heads.

Bellevue’s history has been dogged by ownership and financial wrangling, while the original idea of timeshare sales failed completely. In the eighties, it was finally, after years of being all but empty, conceived as a single “hotel”.

The history of ownership and financial troubles brings us up to today, to the former owners of the site, Grupo Marsans, and to a court administering the affairs of Marsans’ bankrupt hotel chain, Hotetur.

An agreement, seemingly now only requiring the judge’s approval, will see two hotel groups running Bellevue. BlueBay (Al Andalus Management Hotels), which currently operates the site, and Luabay, part of the Orizonia travel group, will share it, 50% each. What is really intriguing is the fact that documentation has apparently already been lodged with the Balearic Government tourism ministry which would permit the conversion of Bellevue into two hotels, or, strictly speaking, groups of hotels.

Luabay’s interest stems partly, one imagines, from the fact that Bellevue was the guarantee for a debt that Marsans owed to Orizonia. Also, until earlier this year, Luabay had no hotel interests in Mallorca. It took over a hotel in Arenal and has agreed to acquire three others, all in Cala Mayor. It would appear to be in an expansion mode.

Splitting Bellevue up has long seemed to be a sensible approach. Arguably, it is too big for any one operator, while it was never actually created with the intention of being a hotel as such, certainly not a single hotel. Splitting it up, though, brings with it potential headaches, and if the agreement is formalised, as seems likely, then the two hotel groups will have to get their heads around those headaches.

One of them is how you actually split the complex. To give an idea of the layout of Bellevue, the blocks are more or less evenly distributed to both sides of a road. The trouble is that mostly all the facilities – restaurants etc. – are on one side.

Another is how the separate hotels would be marketed. They couldn’t surely both be called Bellevue, could they? To do so would cause massive confusion. The name, though, is extremely well-known, albeit not necessarily for the right reasons. Bellevue may be loved by many, but there are many who hate it and give full vent to their feelings across the internet.

A further headache is tackling the age of the apartments. The size of Bellevue has always constrained redevelopment, mainly because of the sheer cost. The apartments don’t have air-conditioning, for example.

Creating two hotels sounds as though it should be an opportunity, one of pushing Bellevue into the tourist twenty-first century. It offers possibilities for different markets, different styles of hotel even. Whether, though, the development would be forthcoming, who can tell? One thing, though, is for sure. The peculiar story of one of the island’s most peculiar hotel complexes is set to have another chapter written.

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.

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.

Smiley, Smile

“The Balearics (are) a summer destination and in winter there are not many alternatives.”

These are words that will not be music to the ears of anyone much in Mallorca or the other Balearic islands. And certainly not to a succession of tourism officials who have sought to promote Mallorca in the winter and to promote specifically its “alternatives”. We are treated, through the words of these officials, to an endless diet of gastronomy, to an endless round of golf, to an endless tour of cultural sites. But to no avail. There aren’t many alternatives. Who says so? TUI. And worse still, TUI Germany.

The moaning that occurs regarding the lack of winter tourism is primarily one inspired by the absence of British tourists and by the absence of aircraft belonging to airlines from the British Isles rumbling along the runway in Palma. There are tourists in winter, however, and they are mainly German, courtesy of Air Berlin’s regular services from all over Germany.

Notwithstanding the winter lifeline that Air Berlin throws Mallorca, for TUI Germany to state that the Balearics are a summer destination should make tourism officialdom and all others who claim that there are alternatives to “sol y playa” (sun and beach) squirm in the vacuity of their endless desires to promote the alternatives. The desires count for little or nothing, as do whatever is meant to have been happening to realise them. “There is a lack of initiative to give life to the (winter) season.” Who says so? TUI.

If it really wanted to, TUI could probably do something about the “many places that are dead” in winter (again, its words). But why should it? There are plenty of other places that aren’t dead. Anywhere but Mallorca, let alone Ibiza or God-forsaken Menorca.

TUI Germany’s director-general and his two able lieutentants were holding court the other day in Palma. The three wise men followed the ibero star to Mallorca, bearing gifts but unable to turn dross into gold. But what gifts they were. The level of all-inclusive will rise to 33% from its current 20. Gifts to the consumer who has driven the demand (says TUI). And the consumer is the gift to Mallorca this summer. “The level of sales is very, very good.” And guess what type of hotel is increasingly enjoying these very, very good sales.

At roughly the same time as the kingdom of TUI and its court was assembling in Palma, elsewhere in the city a different type of court was amassing. The new kingdom of Bauzá. It must be utterly disheartening for a Mallorcan and Balearic leader to know that his own court is largely irrelevant and that the real power has just arrived from the north.

You know that story about the German businessmen who wanted to buy Mallorca. I’ve never known if there was any substance to it or if it was simply an urban myth. It doesn’t really matter, because Germany runs Mallorca anyway. The castle and stripes are not the flag of Mallorca. The real one is a smiley logo. TUI’s.

When TUI puts in its court-like appearance, it is offered tribute by the media and the lickspittles of officialdom. When Völker Böttcher, the TUI boss, speaks, it is as though there were a papal visit and address. What TUI says is far more important than anything that comes out of the Balearic parliament or from the mouths of a Balearic president or tourism minister.

It is in the gift of TUI to do something about winter tourism, were it minded to. And were it minded to, it would simply reinforce the fact that Mallorcan officialdom has been incapable of doing anything. This officialdom talks a good game – of golf, mainly – but knows, or should know, as TUI knows, that the only real game in town and across the island is sun and beach. It always has been and always will be.

It is also in the gift of TUI to do something about summer tourism. Like turning its back on it. It wouldn’t do so, of course it wouldn’t, but it can do pretty much as it wishes. Hence, a 13% increase in all-inclusives. What’s to stop it? TUI can make or break the island. It’s the real power. You just have to lump it, and smiley, smile.

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.