Between A Dog And A Hard Place: TV and film in Mallorca

June 1969. Some of you will be old enough to wish you couldn’t remember. But you may well do. It was 7 June to be precise. The day when Blind Faith first took to a stage.

Blind Faith were, from the word go, a deeply unsatisfying creation of rock super-groupism. From a healthily organic lineage of The Yardbirds, Cream, the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Family emerged the manufacturing of something cynical. So unsatisfying were they, that they fell apart within a year.

Throwing together talents, well-known ones, can bring success. But it can be success achieved, you fear, with an eye merely on the box office or the ratings and without an essential soul. So it is with “Mad Dogs”, a Blind Faith of the marrying of names without the substance of the slog of a rock band of old or a TV series that either grows from nowhere or is built on a repertory group in which even relatively star names are subordinate to the ethos of the TV show itself.

“Mad Dogs”, not, it must be said, without merit, is nevertheless, and notwithstanding some of its content, safe, middle-of-the-road, middle-class, focus group-shaped telly. The safety of its roster of stars makes it a “Daily Mail” of broadcast exploitation, though don’t say this too loudly to Rupert Murdoch. Its exploitation goes beyond that of an indulgent audience, seeking clues as to Mallorcan sites and scenes; it is one that comes also from Mallorca’s tourism officialdom who hope for some star dust to rub off, having helped with its funding, despite its not being a travel promo.

Contrast the build-up and the fawning media space granted to “Mad Dogs” with the news of the filming of “The Inbetweeners”. The movie version of the comedy series will involve a month of shooting around Magalluf and in particular along Maga’s “strip”. It is barely getting a mention.

Yet here is a series which has enjoyed the success that comes from organic development and which is also bollock-breakingly funny. A difference with “Mad Dogs” lies with the fact that the show is not star-based. The actors may have achieved some stardom, but the strength of the series resides in the sum of its parts and the symbiosis between the members, a lesson which Blind Faith ignored.

There are further differences. The show isn’t safe. Its characters, such as Will who would like to be “hard” but who spends much of the time tackling issues to do with his tackle getting hard, are embarrassing, cringe-worthy and awkward, much like teenagers are meant to be, despite all the actors being far too old for their roles. It is also to be filmed, not in brochure-beautiful, coffee-table locations around Pollensa, but among the down-and-dirty, lager-glass-ringed bar tops of Maga. The contrasting images and the contrasting image of tourism that the locations present are between the Crufts-coiffeuring landscapes of a “Mad Dogs” and the rock-hard place that is the intoxicated full-on-ness of Magalluf.

The excellent shagalluf.com has made the point that it should be worth being in Maga for the filming, but its is pretty much a lone voice in highlighting a reason to visit in what is of course the off-season. And you have to wonder why. The reason, you feel, is snobbery and condescension being shown to the resort and also, by comparison with “Mad Dogs”, to “The Inbetweeners”.

Locations and filming do have the power to attract tourists, either at the time of shooting or as a consequence of broadcast. The experiences of both “Passport To The Sun” and “Sun Sea and A&E” prove that visitors will either come simply because of programmes or to seek out locations and indeed individuals featured in shows. But both these documentary-style programmes were explicit in terms of what and where they were portraying. “Mad Dogs” isn’t. Nor will be “The Inbetweeners”, as the film’s setting is Crete, as is some other filming.

One series that has been explicit is “Benidorm”. It couldn’t be anything other than explicit, given its title. In between “Mad Dogs” and “The Inbetweeners” in terms of having some recognisable but not necessarily star names (in its earliest days at any rate), one of its great achievements has been to simultaneously poke fun at but also be affectionate towards its location and its typical clientele. Far from turning people off, it has made them want to visit and, moreover, to visit in order to coincide with off-season filming.

The repertory, ensemble nature of “Benidorm”, one that has prevented it being simply a vehicle for its better-known actors, adds to a sense of viewer empathy. Not all of its characters might be said to be typical holidaymakers, but, in Benidorm terms, the Garvey family members who bind the show are.

The shame, for Mallorca perhaps, is that the show’s creator, Derren Litten, chose Benny and not Maga. Had he opted for the latter, though, you wonder as to how well received the proposition would have been. Benidorm seems to be unabashed in revealing itself for what it is. Mallorca, on the other hand, has dual personalities, one of which it prefers to try and pretend doesn’t exist, and which results, therefore, in promoting the safe artificiality of the star system “Mad Dogs” over the unsafe, true-to-life, unknowns of “The Inbetweeners”.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

High Density: Sustainable tourism

Say “Benidorm” and the image the name is likely to conjure up is one of high-rise holiday hell or the sit-com’s Garvey family arguing around the pool at the Solana Resort. It is unlikely to suggest itself as a model of eco-sensibleness. But that is what it is.

Back in 2008 the head of tourism research at Sheffield Hallam University, John Swarbrook, coined the expression “ego-tourism” to refer to the trend towards tourism in parts of the globe where the eco-system is fragile; in Africa or South America, for instance, or the Antarctic, and why would anyone want to go there anyway? There was and is a confusion as to what “sustainable tourism” means. It doesn’t mean wealthy tourists heading off for remote areas where it is impossible to sustain them. Unlike Benidorm which, back in 2008, was already being held up as something of an ideal for eco-tourism.

And it is again being lauded for this ideal. A report entitled “Sustainable Holiday Futures”, carried out on behalf of Thomson Holidays, refers to the “Benidorm effect”. What this means is that, in terms of environmental management and the use of resources, it is far better to pack tourists into a relatively confined area rather than have them lolling around on hammocks on sparsely populated desert islands, trekking through the rain forest or hacking across ice fields with some Huskies.

It may not appeal to the inner romantic of the tourist, but Benidorm is infinitely better for the eco than it is for the ego. Why? Well, clustering tourists into what the report terms “super-holiday hubs” means less environmental damage, so long as the resort is geared up for monitoring and managing resources.

In the case of Benidorm, it is already evident that sensible environmental measures have been adopted, such as lights switching off automatically in hotels, low-energy lighting on the prom, foot pump-operated taps to save water, everything being pretty much in walking distance and local sourcing of food. “High density, low impact” goes the thinking. It’s a variant on the old “pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap” retail philosophy of Jack Cohen. The greater the volume, the lower the cost of environmental harm. And not just in-resort.

The report’s compilers, The Future Laboratory, point also to the benefits of Benidorm when it comes to the devil of eco-unfriendliness, i.e. carbon. A family of four travelling from the UK consumes 2.2 tonnes of carbon by going to Benidorm, as opposed to 15.8 tonnes on a seemingly more environmentally-friendly hiking tour of Chile.

Sustainable tourism and the managing of environmental resources are concepts often spoken about, not least by politicians who probably have the same limited handle on what they really mean as do tourists. As with everything else of a tourism nature, it is the tour operators, Thomson (and therefore TUI) in this instance, who are taking the lead.

The understanding of the issues by tourists is, though, getting better, and what Thomson are doing is to enhance this understanding. Even relatively simple innovations, such as the Waterpebble, a device for monitoring water usage, given away as a gift to holidaymakers, are intended to heighten consciousness of the environment and resources whilst on holiday.

TUI has been beating the environmental drum in Mallorca for some time and has looked to make environmental righteousness in hotels a selling point for its German clients. I have tended to think that environmentalism is an easier sell to the generally more eco-conscious Germans, but British tourists appear to be catching up. The report says, for example, that 29% of holidaymakers currently monitor their energy and water usage whilst on holiday.

If the “Benidorm effect” were to be repeated in Mallorca, then what might this involve? There are of course holiday centres which could just as easily become “super-holiday hubs”, and not just single resorts. Whole conurbations like that on the bay of Alcúdia might become one, but there would be an issue with transport. Specifically, nonetheless, Alcúdia has taken a step in the right direction with its laudable project for recycling water for use by hotels.

It might also be that more isolated, smaller resorts would have to be abandoned. There could never be “high density” in somewhere like Cala San Vicente. Might it indeed be environmentally more efficient to develop Puerto Pollensa further and create higher density there?

These sorts of questions arise from what Thomson are talking about, and they are ones of a strategic nature that we know that Mallorca’s decision-makers aren’t very good at answering. But the future is being envisioned, and it is one that could create a rather different tourism landscape to the one that currently exists in Mallorca.

* For more information about the “Sustainable Holiday Futures” report, go to the Communications Centre on Thomson’s website, http://www.thomson.co.uk.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.