The Sun And The Moon

I like London’s China Town, not that I’ve been there for some years. But it used to have an atmosphere of Bohemian seediness and the smell of spice mixed with bodily deposits. My kind of place. Not that Puerto Pollensa is anything like that. Perish the thought (save doggy deposits, that is). But you can forget Agatha Christie as the promotional motif. Come to Puerto Pollensa, where the Mediterranean meets the Orient. Puerto Alcúdia and Playa de Muro may, combined, have roughly the equivalent of a World Cup squad of Chinese restaurants but they are diluted over a fair land mass. The Puerto Pollensa Chinese land grab is far more concentrated.

I had been inclined to think that it was some sort of wackiness, a Puerto Pollensa-goes-East Grinstead in L. Ron Hubbard terms, but no, Serenity Coast turns out to be, you guessed it, a Chinky. One of the international variety, whatever that is. Just a chopstick’s throw from the other one, the wording above the restaurant is like that you might find on a CD of music to do massage by. Sun and moon, and wind, and promise, and some other stuff. When it opened, there was a bit of a Chinese do, which was fair enough, but I’m damned if I can make head or tail of a Chinese dragon in terms of what it’s all meant to convey. Serenity Coast, not a bad name though, if, that is, you’re talking an Ibiza chill-out album perhaps.

Still on all-inclusives
Much as I have wanted to avoid the gloom, it is, I’m afraid, unavoidable. Another bar owner had a word. Again, it was not recession but the all-inclusive. When owners say things are bad, you are not inclined to disagree with them. The rough economic climate has exacerbated the underlying market change that the all-inclusive has caused.

I have been known to defend all-inclusives, if only in the pursuit of balance and objectivity. There have been some outlandish examples of blame being placed at the doors of the AI. When it was once suggested that a restaurant away from the centre of the old town of Pollensa was suffering because of AIs, that was stretching the bounds of credulity.

The AI has been an easy target for blame, and the mindset now is to seek to lay ever more blame. There is little point in dissecting the economic and market situation, either that at a macro level of recession or that at a micro level, of which the AI forms a major part in Alcúdia or wherever. No-one is inclined to listen.

Yesterday, I referred to a “breaking point”. That was in terms of businesses going down. There is another breaking point – people’s attitudes and actions. When there is talk of protests and of mass closures of bars, shops, etc. as a demonstration of what things might look like if there is no intervention (with AIs), one has the growing sense of a breaking point, and it is only the middle of June. Perhaps the high season will mark an improvement, one can but hope so. If not …

The sadness is that this was all too easy to have predicted. The economic shocks of the past twelve months may have been less easy to have forecast, but an economic downturn was inevitable, at some point. The fact is that there has been a decline over the past three to four years, a decline that the AI is only partly responsible for, and despite a so-called record year in 2007. Nevertheless, it did not require such severe shocks and resultant downturn to have exposed the folly of a local tourism economic model disrupted by such a fundamental market change as the all-inclusive.

When bar owners seek to air their grievances through the press, what alternatives do they have? Some might argue that, well, that’s business, chum, and if things aren’t working out, then better you go and do something else. That would be callous and heartless. Perhaps there was a fear that to deny the tour operators and hotels and therefore the tourist their places in an all-inclusive sun would have meant the abandonment of Mallorca and its resorts. Maybe so. But one hears and sees, and one wonders if it might not have been some tough love had the AI been strangled at birth, because the monster that is now stalking the resorts seems only to be growing in its strength and drawing the life out of all around it. Breaking point?

Calling All The Heroes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’re Tumbling Down

80%.

Following yesterday’s 100%, a fall of twenty per cent, but no less significant. Not 80% home-made, but 80% down, as in 80% less revenue. This was the admission from the owner of a shop, a branch of which is on the front line in Puerto Pollensa. Stop for one moment and think what that means. You shouldn’t need to think very long.

The economic malaise, especially that affecting the British tourist, was always likely to translate into a tough season for shops. More than places of food or drink, shops offer something purely discretionary, unless they are supermarkets or are selling underpants. The shop concerned is not alone. One nearby is reporting a similar tumble. Partly, this may well reflect the overwhelming Britishness of Puerto Pollensa. Another opinion is that there is a quasi-Club Mac-ist dumbing-down of PP, i.e. tourist stock with, in the main, less than bulging pockets. Even for places of food and drink, things are not universally rosy. Maybe there is some truth in the 60% decline at a well-known PP bar that helped to push a well-known bar owner to a breakdown.

There is a weakness in a place being essentially a one-product resort, as is the case with Puerto Pollensa. Contrast it with Puerto Alcúdia where there is a far greater diversity in terms of nationalities and relatively far greater numbers of non-Brits; the Scandinavians in particular are doing much to hold Alcúdia together, and reflect the historical importance of the Scandinavian market to the resort. Any one-product or largely one-product business is susceptible to adverse market conditions. And a mark of that one-product Britishness, it might be recalled, was reflected in advice to German tourists in “Bild” to give Puerto Pollensa a miss because it was a “well-known English holiday citadel” (4 June, 2008: Hans Plays With Lotte, Lotte Plays With Jane).

While bars and restaurants have long been potential victims of punters “doing a runner”, shops have their own problems in the form of what the trade likes to call “shrinkage”: shoplifting to you and me. It may not be peculiar to this season, but anecdotally there appears to be an increase. In a way, it is desperately sad. One shop owner in Alcúdia’s old town tells of incidents that previously were rare. One such involved a lady who went off with a bag. When tackled, she said that she didn’t have any money. A gift for someone back home, maybe? No money, so what to do? In the ensuing struggle, the lady did actually wet herself. Her camera was also taken from her, and she was told that she could get it back from the police. She did finally leave the scene with the bag, and presumably did not go and claim the camera.

More home-made
Coming back to percentages, my thanks to Ben for admitting to have been moaning in a Victor Meldrew-ish manner about the home-made claim for some years. He makes a good point in respect of an episode in a pub in England when the owner was challenged as to the home-made nature of the breakfast. Bacon, sausages and so on are prepared as opposed to being made, and prepared, moreover, on the premises, as opposed to the home. Theoretically, an establishment could make sausages or even go to the lengths of curing and smoking or whatever you do to turn Porky into bacon, but one suspects that this is not normally the case. And then one comes to the 100%. Could food be, for example, 85.7% home-made? It wouldn’t have the same ring, I guess. “Our burgers are 85.7% made in the home.” No, it wouldn’t work. It either has to be 100% or not, and I leave it to you to decide as to whether 100 or zero is the more meaningful number.

There is always the alternative, namely “hand-made”. This claim one does encounter from time to time. Much as it may sound like a Blue Peter exercise involving sticky-back plastic and your mum’s best table, it isn’t an altogether spurious claim. There are indeed restaurants where the chef slaves for hours over, for instance, the hand crafting of some ravioli. All good stuff, but invariably it costs an arm and a leg. Making by hand carries a premium; man hours, cost of, and all that.. Nope, if the price is right, I couldn’t really care less where or how it’s made. Bring on that tex-mex; yumm, yumm.