Happiness – Mallorca tourism promotion

How to win tourists and influence people. Smiling, happy people having fun. It starts at the top of the tourism trade and filters down, reminiscent of days when there was so much more of a personal touch, barbecues on beaches and even the local Guardia coming along and joining in. So recalls … . So recalls someone who needs to win tourists and influence people. Smiling, happy person. There, on the front page of yesterday’s “Bulletin”. A sullen Frank Langella as Nixon? No, this is the head of the Mallorca tourist board. Smiling, happy person, winning tourists and influencing people. Why oh why use a photo of someone who looks so terminally hacked off?

Pedro Iriondo, president of the Balearics travel agents association and founder of the agency Viajes Kontiki in 1974, became head of the tourism board at the end of last year. He has been a member of the board’s ruling committee for several years and had been its vice-president since 2005. Here he was, granting an interview, which unfortunately says little that we don’t already know: why don’t the shops open in Palma on a Sunday; the competition that is Turkey and Egypt; the reliance upon tourism in Mallorca; the need to exploit golf and other niches, such as nautical tourism; and the need to work closely with tour operators. I’m sure that Sr. Iriondo has some fine ideas, but the interview was thoroughly depressing; a re-hash of what we know to be the case and a distinct sense of the impotent. Take all-inclusives. He doesn’t approve, but accepts that there has been a market change. What we already know, and what we already know cannot be put back into the bottle. What we already know, that it is the tour operators who hold the whip-hand.

Iriondo has taken over from Alvaro Middelmann as president of what is known as the Fomento del Turismo. While referred to as the Mallorca Tourist Board, it is a private, non-governmental body. The promotion of Mallorca and the Balearics, via the government, is handled by the tourism institute IBATUR. The board is thus, as it says on its website, “a forum where everyone in tourism on the island can come and debate important issues, policies and decide on a future tourism strategy”. It continues by referring to the need for “forward thinking, consensual solutions for our future”, and by “our” one takes this to mean the island’s whole tourism industry. The Fomento can lay claim to being the oldest tourist board in Europe. It is, therefore, a body of some not inconsiderable significance and influence. But in its, if you like, mission statement, one comes back to an issue regarding who or which bodies actually drive “future tourism strategy”. Is it the government or the private sector? And if it is the latter, then which parts of it?

At the conclusion of the interview, Iriondo says that “we’ve go to sort out our prices, provide better quality and revive the personal touch”. Fine. But where does the impulse come from to do so and how can these things be done? In the interview, he refers to the fact that it is difficult to provide good product at low cost, unlike some competitor countries, to the fact that the personal touch has been lost because of the expansion in size of hotels, and to the know-how of Mallorca’s hotel groups – several of which can be credited with having high quality, yet which are also, through the export of know-how and their own international ambitions, contributing to the development of competitor destinations. Take a look, for instance, at the Iberostar site and its five-star Bellis complex in Turkey. But to come back to where that impulse might come from, it is worth taking account of the composition of the tourism board’s ruling body – three major hotel chains as well as the association of hotel chains, the associations for yacht clubs, golf courses and restaurants, a bank, a car-hire firm … one could go on. If that lot can’t sort something out, then who can.

Mallorca, and the Balearics, have experienced difficult times in the past, and the Fomento has acted in the past to revive the island’s tourism at times of recession. So it has something of a track record, but Sr. Iriondo believes that the current recession is “different” to previous ones, impacting hard on employment and the tourism industry as a whole and highlighting the economic reliance on tourism. He sees the need for more and more promotion, yet the promotional budget – the government’s – has been reduced.

It all, I’m afraid, does add to that rather depressing image. Forward thinking, consensual strategies. Indeed. But rather than an appraisal of what we know, it might be nice to learn what we don’t – those strategies in other words, and who exactly is going to implement them.

“The Bulletin” also reported on the launch of ABC Menorca (Association of British Companies Menorca). This really does look like something potentially quite impressive and of significance, certainly given the array of organisations and individuals who were present at the launch. Despite the scepticism referred to the other day, this body does seem, within terms of its British-market remit, to have broad support from other business groups and indeed at governmental level. It is a very different beast to the association that sprang out of Calvia at the end of 2008. But it has one important similarity, in that it is evidence of people taking an interest, becoming involved and looking to do their best for businesses. It should be applauded, and if it crosses into Mallorca, then it could also prove to be a force for good.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Windy – British business associations

Associations. Always associations. They are hardly novel, yet “The Bulletin” describes an association formed in Menorca as being just that: “a novel way of beating the recession”. This is ABC Menorca, the Association of British Companies Menorca. It will work with other associations, with the Council of Menorca, look to expand into Mallorca and, perhaps crucially, be a member of the Balearic Business Confederation. Though styled, clearly, as an association for British-run businesses, the intention is that any business with British clients could join.

Here we go again – perhaps. Towards the end of 2008 there was a fair amount of publicity for a British and Irish business association formed in Calvia; I spoke about it here, even met a couple of the prime movers. It never got off the ground, a problem – as I understood it – being some relatively small funding from the Council of Mallorca that was not forthcoming. This association also seemed, to me, to be not so far removed from ESRA in that it had a social and charitable agenda; one with a solely business focus would be, well, more focussed.

An association – such as that being formed in Menorca – seems a good idea, but as it is open to any business with a British interest and were it to embrace, in a significant fashion, Menorcan-run businesses and businesses owned by other nationalities, then how different would it be to other business associations? In a comment by the paper’s editor, we are told that Mallorca needs a similar association, one that could “advise local authorities on the best way to help the British market”. This, seemingly, would be the difference, though quite what this means isn’t stated.

There is a risk. It was one expressed to me by a British business owner when that Calvia-based association was around; namely that indigenous Spanish businesses would see it as a threat which could cause polarisation and antagonism. A generally held view, among many British owners, is that it is better to keep their heads down and get on with running their businesses. When, last summer, I spoke with British bar owners in Alcúdia who were expressing their concerns as to various issues in the resort, they did not want to be identified. To do so might, in their view, have exposed them to, how can one put it, some comeback.

It is the need to be running businesses that is a further obstacle to such an association. Most owners have little interest outside of their own affairs; they also have little time to devote to something like an association. It is revealing to note in the report that businesses currently involved are in the real estate and nautical sectors; businesses, in other words, of a more professional level of organisation than your average bar, which might be able to give time to an outside body.

Where I would agree with “The Bulletin” is in the observation that there are British businesspeople with good ideas (to help Mallorca), but who lack a direct link to the authorities – mainly the tourism ones – that might enable these ideas to be expressed. Perhaps the Menorca association, or an equivalent in Mallorca, might be a conduit to facilitate this. But then, there are any number of bodies – at town or island level – which could, were they inclined to do so, invite or co-opt representatives of British businesses and the British market onto committees to offer their ideas. One has to ask why they don’t. Maybe the suggestion has never been made, or maybe those authorities would rather not listen. Yes, there almost certainly are good ideas to be offered, and this association may well indeed prove to be the way of making them heard. We’ll see.

As a footnote. The paper’s report refers to a launch on Friday, yet a report of the association’s first meeting dates back to the start of June last year. Maybe there’s a re-launch. The paper also did not go into detail as to the people behind the association, other than mentioning the name of Colin Guanaria. Who he? The founder of Bonnin Sanso, the estate agency. A serious player, in other words, and one who does – or should – give confidence that this association could indeed be a force, despite any misgivings outlined above.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.