Not Being Paid A Complement (17 November)

The title of this article contains a deliberate mistake. Complement is wrong; it should be compliment.

The so-called complementary offer, by which one normally means bars, restaurants and clubs, is a complement to the primary element of the tourism industry, the hotels. It completes the industry, but by perception, if not by definition, it comes down the industry food chain and is considered subordinate. As a consequence, it fails to be paid a proper compliment, or so it claims.

Palma town hall’s efforts to up its tourism game by bringing together different bodies from the industry haven’t gone down well with the restaurant associations of either CAEB, the Balearics business confederation, or PIMEM, the small to medium-sized businesses association. They feel as though have been ignored.

The fact is that they probably have been ignored. And ignored for different reasons. One is that they don’t sing with anything like a unified or co-operative voice, and not just in Palma. Two, and following on from this, they don’t have a collective organisation with the clout that demands to be paid attention to and which can command some lobbying space of the type that the hotel sector can. Three is that other parts of the industry, the hotels in other words, look upon the restaurants, to put it bluntly, as parasitic and incapable of or unwilling to actively involve themselves in promotion efforts. Four is that, as a group, they simply lack the financial muscle to make themselves important players in helping to drive the tourism industry.

CAEB and PIMEM are doing something about the first two, combining their respective associations for restaurants, bars and entertainment in order to try and give themselves a voice which will be listened to. But why haven’t they done this before?

Firstly, because the different associations themselves have their own agendas. CAEB and PIMEM aren’t the only ones. There is also, for example, Acotur, the tourism businesses association. These organisations occupy similar territory, duplicating or contradicting each other as the case may be. Secondly, restaurants in mostly any town or resort you care to mention function with their own interests to the fore. Co-operation has generally been absent, except where powerful and small groups of owners work together for their own benefit. Thirdly, and this is the unpalatable truth, the hotels have a point; the restaurants have been parasitic. They have done well simply by being there, but now, thanks to all-inclusives, heightened competition, economic crisis, the rules have changed, and the restaurants have been marginalised.

This sounds like a damning indictment of the complementary sector, but the lack of compliment paid to them stems also from a peculiar ambivalence shown to the restaurants.

The Spanish hotel confederation wants the new national government to make changes to help the tourism industry. One of these is a reduction in IVA, and the example is cited of how such a reduction in France has helped the restaurant sector. Not the hotels, the restaurants.

So, what has this to do with attitudes towards Mallorca’s restaurants? Something very significant, and that is that the French tourism industry is very different to Spain’s. France doesn’t have anything like the concentration of resorts that Spain and Mallorca have. It has resorts, but there is little that is comparable. It does have all-inclusive hotels but not like Spain or Mallorca do.

A reduction in value added tax to boost French restaurants was not simply a case of being helpful. It was a recognition of the central role of restaurants within the tourism industry. France’s restaurants are not complementary. It’s the other way round; the hotels are. The French don’t need to bang on about gastronomy, because everyone knows about the cuisine, and given the nature of the French tourism industry, the restaurants are absolutely essential.

A reduction in IVA might make some difference to Mallorca’s restaurants, but not much. What would make a difference would be were they not treated as the tourism industry’s doormats. But because they have never had that position of centrality, as they do in France, they are in a position of weakness, which is why they get ignored and why there is an ambivalence towards them.

Yet, gastronomy is meant to be one of Mallorca’s strengths. Maybe it is, but without an attitudinal shift on behalf of other players in the tourism industry, it won’t be. The restaurants have brought much of this ambivalence on themselves, but while the hotels continue to dominate the industry, a situation that will not change, they can’t expect to ever be more than complementary or to be paid their rightful compliments.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Is The Customer Satisfied?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

We Told You So: Lack of bank credit

On every bright horizon lurks a dark cloud or two. The optimism for the coming season is not, it would appear, being matched by a sector of the economy every bit as important to tourism, if not more, as hotels, bars and restaurants – the banks. Their purse strings remain pulled tight, so complain business associations. Without their injections of credit, bars find it difficult, if not impossible, to undertake the type of work that is typical of this time of the year – some improvements, some decoration, the purchasing of stock or new equipment. The lack of credit is reflected along the chain. Suppliers have pulled back in extending particularly generous terms, often for the same reason as their customers are experiencing difficulties – their own access to credit.

As the world’s tourists all descend from the skies onto Mallorca this summer, so the sight of a bar without a lick of fresh paint or some chairs minus wicker where wicker used to be will be the inspiration for complaints that standards have slipped. You can already detect the sound of indignant keys being stroked.

If not bars and a chipped tea-cup, then the annual whipping-boys of the car-rental world. To three years of crisis, hire cars are now subject to the effects of natural disaster; the earthquake and tsunami in Japan mean limited supply. On top of this, car sales fell in March anyway; by some 48% in the Balearics, though only a modest percentage of this was attributable to rental agencies not renewing their fleets.

Despite an understandable complaint that the banks might be more forthcoming and be more willing to join in with a general air of pre-season jollity, and also despite whatever impact a distant disaster might have on the price of a week’s car hire, is there perhaps a sense in which retaliations are being got in early? Don’t blame us, blame the banks, and the banks are as much a factor for the car-hire agencies as they are for bars or restaurants. A shortage of credit over the past couple of years has had an effect.

The apologists of the bar and car-hire trades are sharpening their keyboards as fast as the disgusteds of wherever press the send button on their emails or internet forums. The apologists are pressing their press releases. It’s not our fault if bars are in a bad state. Just blame the banks; oh, and the government while you’re at it for the smoking ban. Oh, and throw in the hotels and all-inclusives as well. On and on it goes. As ever.

It is something of a new excuse for the apologists that they can turn to the forces of nature. This year Japan. Last year Iceland. And one turns a wary eye skywards, as the anniversary of Ash-Cloud Wednesday looms. In fact, the volcano hasn’t been forgotten. It is still being trotted out as a reason for certain inactivity this year, on account of last year having been affected, albeit for a short period and before the season really got going, and having meant a poor year.

The excuses never cease. You can understand them. Up to a point. There is a legitimate beef when it comes to the banks, but were things so difficult then why are businesses preparing and readying themselves for the season? Cash is coming from somewhere, even if the Scrooge-like tendencies of banks and suppliers suggest that cash has ceased to flow.

The truth is that you never really know for sure. There may well indeed be bars that are facing an impossible situation because of a lack of liquidity, but the tendency towards a manipulation of the press, by the very obvious mechanism of the press release or conference, can rarely be taken as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If it is indeed the case that the effects of smoking ban have been so deleterious, then should not there now be whole towns with barely a bar still open?

This is not to make light of difficulties and obstacles which are placed in front of bars and other businesses, car-hire agencies included. There are difficulties, but the propensity on behalf of various business associations to flood the media with bad-luck stories and the headline-grabber, e.g. 70% loss of revenue owing to the smoking ban or whatever, should make you stop and question them for a moment.

It was informative, the other day, that a director of a well-known business on the island said to me that his company was good at working the press. But this is how it is. Good companies, good business associations do just this. And in the case of the associations for the bars, the intention is either to shame the banks or to simply get the excuses in. So if things don’t work out according to the optimistic tourism figures, they can at least tell us that they told us so, even if the fact that things don’t work out has nothing to do with the excuse given.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Bars’ Big Day Off

What on earth is everyone going to do? A day with no bars or restaurants. We’ll all have to do some work for once. And re-arrange the location for all our meetings. Where? Nary a café nor bar with its doors open, we’ll have to use things like offices. We’ll have to make our own coffee and, so, rather than complaining about the cost of a café’s cortado, we’ll moan about the price of a packet of molido from the supermarket. Life will simply be unbearable.

The bars and restaurants of the Balearics are planning on taking a day off. All of them. Ha-ha-ha. As if. One day in the not-too-distant future, in an act of protest against the smoking ban, the coffee machines will lie idle, the tapas will be taped up and the cañas will be canned.

One supposes that the bar owners will hope that this decaffeinated day will prompt an uprising of the dislocated populace, wandering aimlessly like the lost tribes of Israel in vain search of a welcoming terrace. Government buildings will be stormed. Riots will ensue. “We need our coffee!” will shout the dispossessed. Spain’s “coffee revolution” will occur.

Will it? Hardly. First problem is going to be getting all bars and restaurants to agree as to the day. What about a Sunday? You must be joking. Busiest day of the week. Erm, so how about a Tuesday? Are you kidding? It’s market day in … (add as applicable). Tell you what. A Saturday. 9 April. You what? It’s the first day of the boat fair in Puerto Alcúdia.

The bar and restaurant owners aren’t totally stupid, unlike the airport workers. They intend to have their day of protest before the tourism season kicks in. Of course they will. They’re not going to close once the punters start streaming in from the easyJets.

But getting agreement or universal support for a day’s closure sounds as unlikely as the local population announcing a collective abstinence from coffee, regardless of whether it’s inspired by bar closure or not. There’s one very good reason why it will be hard to agree to. Self-interest. Takings may, allegedly, be down by 20, 30, 40%, but mass action by a suddenly co-operative union of bar and restaurant owners would reverse the tradition of looking after number one. If this day does go ahead and is a success, I’ll eat my coffee machine.

This is not the first time that a protest of this sort has been considered, albeit that previously it was for an altogether different reason. In Alcúdia, rather than a pointless street demo, the idea was floated of a mass closure – during the tourist season – as a way of voicing discontent with the effects of all-inclusives.

Damaging though this might have been, in various ways, it would have been intended to show the damaging, long-term impact of all-inclusives – a resort with no bars or restaurants open, because they no longer have the business. Over-dramatic perhaps, but, as demonstrations go, it would have been powerful. But it would never have happened and never will happen. It’s all down to self-interest.

If the bar and restaurant owners’ day of inaction does get agreed to, what would happen were some bars to ignore it? Are there going to be pickets flying around, trying to prevent customers getting in?

Assuming that the bars and restaurants are prepared to forego a day’s business, what about effects to other businesses? The hard-pressed ensaïmada industry, sales already generally down, will suffer a day’s loss of fresh lard being scoffed. Newspaper publishers will also suffer, because there will be no bars to buy their papers for the clientele to read, though they might also benefit as said clientele would have to actually fork out for a paper for once.

There would be ripples in the wider economy from a bar’s day of inaction, but these ripples would be nothing compared with the floods that might occur. No bar open. Where the heck do you go for a pee?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Space Monsters Ate My Atmosphere

One of my nieces is an animator. She makes models that are transformed through computer-generated imagery. She has a penchant for strange, Gerald Scarfe-like grotesques that inhabit an alternative world of the weird. I have an idea for her. Creatures with mushroom heads, thin, skeletal torsos and one tree-trunk-thick leg. These would lumber across landscapes, terrorising man and environment alike with their noxious fumes which consume air and the atmosphere. These monsters would be the Space Eaters.

One impact of the smoking ban has been that the sale of heating units for terraces has shot up. Space heaters have been common enough in bars and restaurants, but suppliers have been recording record sales as owners look to keep their clientele warm while they smoke.

Is there anything quite as ridiculous as heating outdoor air? This, let’s call it the “batty proposition”, is one argument against space heaters. But heating outdoor space has long been with us. Bonfires, braziers, no one ever objected unless they were being set fire to. The difference with the space heater is that it is environmentally harmful. Supposedly.

Space heaters have been around for years. The Germans, for example, have used them to warm Munich beer drinkers and Glühwein imbibers at Christmas markets since the 50s. In the UK, they were a rarity, only coming into vogue in the late 90s before being elevated into the position of number-one environmental killer thanks to the UK’s own smoking ban.

The side effect of all the legislation aimed at driving smokers outside was that previously unknown carbon emissions started wafting into the atmosphere and onto the radars of environmental groups and tree-hugging politicians. Friends of the Earth leapt to the defence of the environment, earholed a Liberal Democrat MEP and, bingo, the European Parliament agreed to ban space heaters, in that it agreed with a report that was to form the basis of guiding decisions by member countries.

This was in 2008 though and bans, were they to be introduced, have yet to be implemented. But don’t discount them being so. If something can be banned, then politicians will find a way of getting it banned.

Inevitably, sides have been taken in the space-heater debate, which has been warming up nicely since Brussels and Strasbourg started to stoke the fire.

An average heater uses the same amount of energy as a gas hob would use in six months and produces 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide annually, said the UK’s Energy Saving Trust. No, it produces less, said Calor Gas: 35 kgs. Compare this with the average 3000kgs from a car, said someone else. The overall impact of heaters on emissions was minimal, said an Eric Johnson from the UN’s Convention on Climate Change: less than plasma TVs, for example. Electric outdoor heaters have greater carbon burdens than the usual gas ones, said a report for the UK Government’s sustainable energy policy, but can be more efficient as they provide focussed heat.

So, round and round the debate goes. Locally, I am unaware of enviro watchdogs having had their centimo’s worth, but it can only be a matter of time if they haven’t. GOB will surely come to the aid of the environmental party, but I wonder how many GOB-ists take a coffee on a space-heated terrace. Perhaps they don’t indulge in such a past-time because to do so would be environmentally incorrect as coffee plantations are destructive of Brazilian or Kenyan eco-systems and the greenhouse effect of a bar’s coffee machine is equivalent to the warming caused by all the methane from the dung of the entire wildebeest population of sub-Saharan Africa. Or something like this.

There is apparently a law covering heaters, one which says that they must be movable and can only be used during winter months. Which sounds like the bleeding obvious. But it also says that they should be used for only four months. Really? This is the first I’ve heard of this, but it comes from one of the many reports that have appeared in the local media regarding the sudden growth in space-heater sales.

For the time being though, and until any definitive moves to put a stop to space heaters, smokers and others can be kept warm on open-air terraces. But the Space Eater monsters’ days may be numbered, because, as Friends of the Earth have said, there should be a ban on “these carbon-belching monstrosities”.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Smoke And Mirrors: The smoking ban

Although we had thought that the smoking ban had been approved some months ago, it hadn’t fully been approved. Amidst the debacle of the downloading bill, Congress finally signed off on the smoking ban on Tuesday. Just as well really, given that it is to come into effect on 2 January.

The publicity surrounding the ban has, one would think, left no one in any doubt that lighting up inside a bar, restaurant or other public place will be prohibited. Less publicity has been given to the fact that some open-air areas are also affected. There is to be no smoking outside hospital doors and in children’s play areas. This aspect of the smoking ban makes the Spanish ban one of the most restrictive anywhere in Europe.

You wonder if the open-air aspect isn’t the thin end of the wedge. The zeal with which the Spanish Government has pressed ahead with the ban suggests it might be inclined to go further. Where? Beaches perhaps? There would doubtless be a great deal of support were it to. How long before the ban is extended to bar and restaurant terraces? Again, many would approve of such a move.

The bars and restaurants of Mallorca had launched, somewhat belatedly, a campaign to stop the ban. There had also been talk of an amendment to the bill which would have meant that the ban’s introduction would have been delayed for six months. This didn’t make a lot of sense. Everyone knew the ban was on its way, and crisis or no crisis, six months make no difference.

The arguments for and against the ban are well-known. The dire predictions of lost revenue, lost employment and potential business closure in the bar-and-restaurant sector are also well-known. There is little point in going over old ground. It is now a case of seeing whether the proof of the bill’s pudding will be reflected in less or more demand for a pudding and main course by those who disapprove or approve of its introduction.

Until the effects of the bill have been given time to show what sort of an impact the ban will have, it’s probably right to now just to keep quiet and see what this impact is. But there’s a problem with waiting for official or unofficial reports as to the impact, and it is the same problem that has dogged the propaganda of the pro- and con-lobbies throughout the time it has taken for the bill to become law.

The government’s stance, in addition to the health one, is that the ban will mean more, not less business for bars and restaurants. It bases this claim on what has happened elsewhere, such as in the UK. And this is where the problem comes in. For every bit of information that might support the claim, there is other information which refutes it. As with business, so also with health. One study can point to the harm from passive smoking, another says it is unproven, another one still debunks the whole notion. And you base what you believe about the smoking ban on your own view of smoking, backed up by information which may or may not be accurate.

We can probably predict that some months into the Spanish ban, the government will report that businesses are benefiting, while the hostelry and business associations will say something different. Who would you believe? It would all be down to where you stand on the issue. As ever.

Personally, I am hugely in favour of bars being smoke-free, but I have a mistrust of “bans”. It’s a personal liberty issue, but even this goes round in circles. What about the liberties of those who are forced to breathe in other’s smoke? (And these are pretty much the exact words that get trotted out by those who challenge the personal liberty argument.)

There is some scepticism as to whether the ban will be enforced effectively. This is scepticism largely of the “yes, but this is Spain” type. Being Spain, they do things differently, as in ignoring laws. Maybe, but don’t underestimate the power of the “denuncia”. If a bar is flouting the law, you can bet that someone will dob it in to plod, a rival bar perhaps, just as is the case with noise.

There is also some possibility for confusion. What exactly is the situation with a bar that temporarily encloses its terrace, as is the case during the colder months or when there is poor weather in summer? Does this then become “inside”? Will, as has been predicted, there be the emergence of the “cigarrón”, i.e. smoking and also drinking in the streets outside bars, and the potential for disturbance that would accompany it?

The answer to these questions and indeed to the impact of the ban we will get some time after 2 January. Whatever the answers are, the picture is unlikely to be clear, despite what government or other sources report, just as the picture from the arguments leading up to the ban have been unclear through the smoke, mirrors and smoke-screens.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

And Cancel Christmas

By the roundabout at the top of Puerto Alcúdia’s “Mile”, a single festive “Bones Festes” sign swings forlornly in the autumn wind. Alcúdia town hall will have to decide whether the rest of the usual lights will go up this Christmas. They might put them up, but whether they switch them on or have them on for only limited periods will also need to be decided. The town hall’s electricity bill has increased by a massive 40% in a year. “A barbarity,” has said mayor Llompart of the rise, one caused partly by new infrastructure in the town but also by – the target of Sr. Llompart’s upset – GESA’s prices.

Alcúdia has already taken the decision to switch off much of the town’s street lighting at midnight, including that by the old town’s walls. Alcúdia like a Christmas tree? Tonight or any other night over the festivities, the city won’t belong to me or to you. We won’t be able to find our way round. Angels of half-light. If that. Not that it probably matters. No one much will be around. They’ll be holed up at home, huddled over the radiators, reduced in the number switched on, the result also of higher electricity prices, or crouched by a gas heater, breathing in butane that has also gone up.

Christmas is coming. The goose is getting thin.

You can get goose for your Christmas lunch in Mallorca, just as you can get turkey. But what has been a meat-buying trend to downscale for some time will carry over into Christmas. Rabbit is going to be popular. And some of it may well be wild. The fincas are alive with the sound of guns, not all of them necessarily those of the licensed hunters.

FACUA, the consumers association, reckons that household spending in the Balearics as a whole will be down by some six per cent this Christmas. While the purchase of gifts is likely to remain at the same sort of level as last year, there is one element of Christmas cheer that has taken a nosedive, and not only at Christmas. Alcohol. Since 2007 sales of beer have slumped by 35%; those of higher alcohol content, spirits etc., by 27%. You can see the evidence of this in the supermarkets. Prominent, so as to grab the attention of shop traffic, are low offers on the likes of cava. Even checkout girls, unused to the role of playing salespeople, are drawing attention to the cheap booze.

It isn’t of course just the supermarkets which have been hit and which have had to introduce more basic lines. There are the bars and liquor stores as well. 30,000 of them across Spain have closed since the crisis took a hold. The “El Gordo” Christmas lottery will still attract its syndicates willing to fork out for what are expensive tickets, but lotteries in general, games of bingo and slot machines are also victims of lower spend on things other than necessities.

And with the slump in sales comes also a slump in revenue – that to the government, one only partially addressed by the increase in IVA. There is a further non-necessity that has seen the treasury’s coffers emptied: the sale of cigarettes. In 2008 this fell by a massive 37% in Mallorca. So maybe tourists don’t spend all their money on fags after all. The upward adjustment in prices on tobacco last year, primarily duty, has enabled the government to recoup some of the loss, but as with more or less everything, the curve heads downwards.

This will be an austerity Christmas, implies FACUA. Appropriately enough amidst the austerity of governmental measures which show no sign of bringing confidence back to consumers or to business. And the fear is that the new year might even herald something worse. The markets have sunk their teeth into Greece and spat it out, just as they are doing to Ireland, despite its regular austerity revisions. Portugal could be on its way out of the euro anyway. So then there’s Spain.

The new year will also see the introduction of the smoking ban. Predictions of a 15% fall in bar sales as a result would come on top of the decline in alcohol consumption that has already been experienced. The bars and restaurants have started a campaign to stop the ban or to at least delay its introduction. It’s a bit late, one would think. But maybe they have a point in that now is probably not the best time to bring it in.

For now is the time of less, less, ever less. Except when it’s more, more, ever more. Like the cost of electricity. Town halls in penury, the lights going out all over Alcúdia and elsewhere in Mallorca. Little to celebrate during the festive season, with less-extravagant feasts and fewer cups that cheer. It would be nice to say “merry Christmas”, but it would be said through gritted teeth. As for a happy new year, the bars will be the first ones to assess the accuracy of that, come 2 January. And after that …?

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.

All Mod (Air) Cons

As the temperatures took a real dive yesterday, thanks to the rain, air-conditioning became unnecessary (even if lurking were some truly bizarre, exaggerated ideas as to yesterday’s temperature, but ’tis ever thus). By coincidence though, there was a report in “Ultima Hora” about the optimum setting for air-con units during the summer. A couple of days ago, the government’s energy director-general kicked off a campaign for different aspects of energy-saving. One of them is that the temperature should be 26 degrees. For every degree lower, energy consumption rises by eight per cent, so he says. Given the cost of electricity, his advice is probably worth heeding. But those of you who have been paying attention will recall a piece on 8 July (“Rattle and Hum”) about air-con. In that, I mentioned the plan to establish temperatures in bars and restaurants etc (“a mad proposal”). Interior temperatures would not be lower than 26, which is exactly what the director-general is now recommending.

Recommendation is one thing. Getting people to do anything about it quite another. But there is more than just recommendation. In the article, it says that a temperature of 26 degrees is “obligatory for public places”. Is it really?

A while ago, there was another press report about temperatures being too high in public buildings during the colder part of the year. One of these buildings was the island’s environment ministry. Heating too high or air-con too low. It’s the same waste of energy, and guess who’s wasting it? One should perhaps applaud the town hall of Andratx which has banned air-con. Sales of fans must have soared, and not necessarily electric ones.

It’s the definition of “public places” that is confusing. The smoking ban will apply to just these public places, as in bars and restaurants. So has an obligatory level of air-con temperature been applied to these and no one has been told. If it hasn’t, then one can guess that it probably will be. It might sound like a mad proposal, but the government is serious as to its energy policy.

There are places one goes into which are near freezing. Supermarkets, for example. Are these public places? The 26 degree advice (78/79 Fahrenheit) is widely accepted as being energy-efficient, and not just in Spain, but when there are higher air temperatures, the temptation is to turn the air-con down lower. It is for this reason, one presumes, that there is the other proposal regarding keeping doors to bars and restaurants closed.

If the current definition of public places is only public sector, then one can expect that it will be widened, and that recommendation will turn into enforcement. Bars and restaurants have been warned.

By the way, as far as weather is concerned, and there will be those who are concerned given the rain, this is the link to the Spanish Met Office for Alcúdia. You can go to http://www.aemet.es/es/-m:b/eltiempo/prediccion/localidades/alcudia-07030. It shows (or did at 21:00 yesterday) 30 degrees maximum by Friday with a five per cent chance of rain and the same for a few days after. For Pollensa, you can click on “localidades” and get to the forecast for there which, you will not be surprised to learn, is the same. On the HOT! AlcudiaPollensa Facebook, I posted the links for the local weather stations, and these give current weather information.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Rattle And Hum: Air-conditioning

Could you live without air-conditioning in the heat of a Mallorcan summer? Many make do without it. Like me. I rarely even put it on in the car. To some extent, it has to do with home design and situation, especially the interaction of the position of the sun during the day and any shielding, such as an intervening terrace roof. But even without the influence of direct sunlight, the temperatures are high.

Air-con is hardly cheap to run. It can also be expensive to install. A restaurant owner recently explained to me that a new system had set him back 50,000 euros. That’s a lot of lunches and dinners to be sold. Home units may not come to anything like this amount, but neither are they inexpensive.

Somewhere still lurking in the Wacky Department of the Spanish Government is a proposal for temperatures in bars and restaurants, one that would also insist on doors being closed and operated automatically, in order to limit changes to temperatures inside. The proposal was that interior temperatures would not be lower than 26 degrees (79 Fahrenheit) during the summer months. It was and is a mad proposal, but the thinking behind it was to conserve energy and to be environmentally friendly. It is still possible that it might actually be passed into law, at a stroke rendering air-con units more or less redundant. That it seems to have been put on the back burner, so to speak, probably has more to do with the politics of the smoking ban than any desire to save the planet.

Air-con has become pretty much de rigueur for bars and for hotels. Its presence forms part of the promotional mix. “We have air-conditioning.” But not all hotels do, especially the older stock. I am led to believe that Bellevue – all 1400 plus apartments of it – could finally be kitted out with air-con. The new owners have an air-con company in their portfolio. It would still represent a massive investment, even given some favourable inter-company transfer pricing, to say nothing of the need for a dedicated system of power generation and also the charges to the guests.

In 2003, the summer of outrageous heat, the power system in Mallorca gave up one day in August. The outage lasted for up to eleven or twelve hours in parts of the island. We are told that there is plenty of capacity now to meet demand, but just think about the level of supply – for all those hotels, restaurants, shops, homes and everything else. One can argue that demand for electricity is very much lower in winter, thanks to all those cold hotels being closed. Open them all up and the gross demand for energy on the island would be significantly greater than it currently is. Perhaps this is a good reason for there only being limited winter tourism.

Air-con units and the demand for electricity have now moved into overdrive if not overload, but the temperatures are still not particularly excessive, despite an average two-degree above normal for the start of July. The fear is that, somewhere down the line, temperatures will become excessive and normal. The demand would be colossal.

The good news is that the island’s power stations now have capacity, at least for current needs and a foreseeable future not sent haywire through climate change.  The new one in Palma, that was opened in 2006, should be capable of handling estimated increases in demand of up to 6% per year. The growth in demand had actually gone up by a third in the five years before the plant started operating. The arrival of natural gas should be an advantage, albeit not to the plant in Alcúdia, which is coal-fired and which remains a bone of contention for environmentalists – Greenpeace have, in the past, tried to stop the shipping of coal to Mallorca.

The answer to the original question is almost certainly no. No you couldn’t live without air-conditioning, and it may be that air-con becomes a matter of life or death, if we are to believe the predictions as to temperature rise. For now though, you can be sure that there will not be a collapse of the power system and that the air-con unit can rattle and hum away, racking up the electricity bill. There again, you could always keep the windows open. Or could you? Some would argue that an open window just lets in warm air, while at night in fly the mosquitoes. And then there is always that mad proposal. To air-con or not to air-con? Who’d be one who wants to save the planet?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.