The First And Last Resort

The resorts of Mallorca are not subject to detailed research into what visitors make of them. They should all be. Every year there should be surveys. What you get instead is a mass of anecdotes, snotty letters to an editor here or there, soundings-off on the internet and precious little, if anything, by way of a coherent response.

Of resorts that are put under the researchers’ lens, only one (or, strictly speaking, three) is paid much attention to: Playa de Palma (along with Arenal and Can Pastilla). History decrees that it should be. This is where it pretty much all began; mass tourism, that is. The resort’s antiquity affords it a special status, one that has meant to be bringing about its transformation.

The research organisation Gadeso was in Playa de Palma in 2009. It has been back again recently. The transformation of Playa de Palma can’t come soon enough, it would appear. Excusing a touch of the dramatic, the introduction to Gadeso’s 2011 survey states that “every day it becomes more urgent” to improve and modernise Mallorca’s resorts, and Playa de Palma in particular.

It’s not all bad news, unless you happen to run a hotel, tourist apartments or residential tourist accommodation. For each category, the level of satisfaction has gone down since 2009, and the all-inclusive rates lower than the other categories. It’s not surprising: the restaurants are worse than regular hotels; the comfort is worse; the standards of cleanliness and facilities are lower. Customers may demand all-inclusives – the tour operators keep insisting that they do – but they also demand a reasonable level of service.

The satisfaction with Playa de Palma is lower than with the rest of Mallorca and so is the likelihood of people coming back again. The report’s conclusion: could do better, see me!

This year’s survey and that in 2009 are not the only ones that Gadeso has done in Playa de Palma. It hasn’t gone into other resorts, or hadn’t until it went to Cala Bona and Cala Millor last year. The survey there didn’t report in the same way. Though the conclusions said that there was an excessive amount of all-inclusive, it didn’t specifically offer information on hotel satisfaction.

The focus on this factor in Playa de Palma is understandable. Hotels are really at the heart of the whole project to transform Playa de Palma. And much as there is a desire for an overall upgrading of hotels across Mallorca, there has been not insignificant resistance from Playa de Palma hoteliers who argue that the bread-and-butter of the three-star should not be interfered with.

Gadeso has appended documents to its survey. One is a paper that emanates from the University of Barcelona which highlights the fact that, six years on from the creation of a consortium, political scraps, opposition (from hoteliers who should mainly welcome it and some residents who haven’t welcomed it) and general inertia have failed to effect a process of transformation that would make the resort the model for subsequent redevelopments elsewhere and also a model of which Mallorca could be proud. The paper emphasises the fact that the resort is deteriorating, thus reinforcing what Gadeso says in its survey introduction and what the survey itself suggests.

A different document, a letter to the tourism minister, argues that to continue with a consortium that is hamstrung by a lack of government finance is a “nonsense and a waste”. There is a plea that the project should be in the hands of the private sector, given the inability of the politicians to carry out such projects and to wrong priorities.

And one of those priorities, about the only public project that appears to have escaped President Bauzá’s axe, is the Palacio de Congresos, described as a bottomless pit that will do nothing to alleviate seasonality. The Palacio can’t be abandoned now, but it should never have been a priority. Its whole being, apart from the vanity of Palma and Mallorca being able to claim that it has a conference complex – as do many other cities in Spain as well as the Canaries – is predicated on a market, that of “meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE)”, which is largely unknown.

The sun and beach of Playa de Palma is known. It’s been known for years. Hopefully, it will be known for many more years to come, but its future has been placed in the balance by inadequate political supervision. Hand it over to the private sector, and just let them get on with it.

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.

Hidden Identities: Spanish or Mallorcan?

Let’s imagine that you are minding your own business, walking down the street and some chap with a clipboard accosts you and starts asking you with what you identify; your country or island, that is. Were this to happen in Mallorca, you would, and I assume for a moment that you are English, reply in song, “England till I die”, and then probably nut the interviewer. Were, though, you unable to opt for England or any other part of the British Isles, but had to select Mallorca or Spain or even the Balearics, what would be your reply?

Well, imagination is all fine and dandy, but chances are that you wouldn’t be asked. Unlike 900 Balearic sorts. The research organisation Gadeso has been asking them whether they feel more Spanish, more Mallorcan (or Menorcan, Ibizan or Formenteran) or more Balearic. And what do they feel? For the most part, they are neither one thing nor the other. They are split personalities, as Spanish as they are Balearic. 55% of them. But of those who are one thing or the other, roughly equal numbers consider themselves more Spanish or more Balearic, while equal numbers (7%) believe they are either only Spanish or only Balearic.

There we are then. The islands mainly comprise people who, on given the compromise option, opt for it. Spanish and Balearic in equal measure. It’s the don’t know answer for those who probably normally never give the question a moment’s thought. Gadeso is a worthy body, but this research is somewhat spurious. Or is it?

Not completely. Gadeso argues that an increase in those who feel more Spanish than the last time such research was conducted can be explained by dissatisfaction with government in the Balearics. Possibly. It could also be that they are just asking different people.

The more interesting stuff, though, lies in the detail behind the general findings. On first reading the report of this research, my own reaction was to question the degree to which local people associate themselves with the islands of the archipelago as a whole, the Balearics, or with an individual island. I cannot ever recall a Mallorcan referring even vaguely to the Balearics in terms of the islands being his or her homeland. To Mallorca, yes, but not the Balearics. The research bears this out. Around two-thirds of Mallorcans identify with Mallorca and not the Balearics; the numbers are higher in the other islands.

Is this either surprising or important? No, it isn’t surprising, but, yes, it is important. Important because regional government is Balearic, because autonomy is that of the Balearics and because much impulse for positioning and promotion is Balearic, even that of tourism promotion. Just as the tourist thinks only of the individual islands, so too do the people of the individual islands. The Balearics are a geographical convenience, rather than a cohesive political, social or touristic unit.

The finding is also important because, if there genuinely is a desire for greater autonomy or indeed independence, then it is not the Balearics which are inspiring this desire; it is the islands themselves. But even here, the sympathy is skewed significantly. Of the four main political parties or groupings at the 2007 local elections, only those who voted for the left-wing Bloc (the Mallorcan socialist party and others) have a strong Balearics-only identity. This, though, is diluted when Balearic and island identity is asked about. Across the four parties – Bloc, Partido Popular, PSOE socialists and the now ex-Unió Mallorquina – identity is overwhelmingly with the island and not the Balearics.

Any drive towards independence and an association with another vague political and social construct, the “Catalan lands”, is exposed as having virtually no ground swell of identity. A whole 2% of Bloc voters place a Catalan identity above a Balearic or island identity. The percentages are zero for the other parties. This will make uneasy reading for the likes of the Obra Cultural Balear and others on the independence wing who seem to believe that there is mileage in independence and a confederation of Catalan states. They may believe it, but the public may beg to differ.

Taking the findings as a whole, the case for greater autonomy or independence would seem, on the basis of personal identity at any rate, to have only a minority public support. Almost 80% of the public consider themselves to be either as Spanish as they are Balearic, more Spanish or Spanish alone. Another angle on this, and it should be something that the Partido Popular with its potentially dangerous tendency towards greater “Spanishness” should take note of, is that only a quarter of its supporters feel that they are more Spanish than Balearic and that only 10% feel more Spanish alone. They are not the majority, therefore.

What the findings also show is a confirmation of what has historically been the case. That the people of Mallorca and the islands are generally middle of the road and conservative with a small “c”. It’s a message that may not please the promoters of independence and it may contradict a growing sense of radicalism, but it is a message that is probably accurate.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.