Número Uno: Can Picafort and occupancy stats

“And at number one in August, it’s Can Picafort!”

The charts for August hotel occupancy in Spain have been topped by Santa Margalida. Can Picafort, in other words. How on earth has this happened?

Back in the middle of August, the Mallorcan hotel federation was indicating that, unlike some resorts which had enjoyed decent Julys, Can Picafort had been on the opposite scale. Rather than number one, it had bombed. What a difference a month makes, especially to a resort often seen as the poor relation within the trinity of conurbation it forms together with Puerto Alcúdia and Playa de Muro.

The Spanish national statistics office is the one that has elevated Can Pic to the lofty heights of suddenly being the country’s most successful resort. Does the town get a plaque or something? The town hall should put up a new sign. “Welcome to Can Picafort, number one in Spain”, with August 2010 in small type. 50,630 foreigners and 3,981 Spaniards can’t be wrong. 97.67% occupancy. God, how they love all this junk. And for many it is junk because they don’t believe it. Maybe the chaps at the stats office just stick a pin in a map and then roll some dice to see what numbers they can come up with.

To explain Can Picafort’s ascendancy may have to do with factors like discounts, Germans and the position of the planets. I had wondered if having a fiesta during August, and one with some hugely entertaining duck tossing, might have been a further factor, but under four thousand Spaniards suggests otherwise; foreign tourists are not normally attracted by fiestas per se. Nope, quite why it’s number one is a mystery to me, and will also be to many in a resort who are prone to wearing the long face of “cree-sis” and to letting anyone unfortunate enough to be in earshot to know about it. They will also let you know about the devil’s work of the all-inclusive.

Getting to grips with quite how prevalent all-inclusive is in Can Picafort is difficult. Look at certain hotels’ websites and you will find no mention of it, but go off to an agency’s site and you will. There are hotels in the resort which everyone knows to be all-inclusive and which don’t mind telling the world that they are, but there are others which are a bit coy. Of the approximately 50 hotels (depending on your definition) in the resort, it’s not unreasonable to assume that at least a third of them offer AI; the number is probably higher.

August’s celebratory occupancy figures for Mallorca as a whole, partly attributed to the rain-soaked British who fortuitously found an under-used credit card stashed in the pocket of a hastily retrieved winter overcoat, disguise the real truth – what’s being spent. Despite the positive figures on spend, issued generally rather than per resort, the all-inclusive/spend relationship has been proven. The research at Palma university says it all: an average daily spend by an AI guest that is under half of that of a guest staying B&B. There are plenty who would probably disagree with this, putting it at more like a quarter, if that.

To compensate for this 50% lower spend, you need an awful lot higher than average spend by all the other tourists. With the greatest respect to Can Picafort, it has a reputation for tourism which, how can one put it, is not at the wallet-bulging end of the market. And this is not me saying this; it’s a view often expressed by business owners. Nigh on full occupancy for the peak month of August doesn’t mean a great deal when you place it in the context of the nature of the market.

The statistics which get pumped out may be questioned by many. I’m less inclined to; they aren’t always positive. But more fundamentally, the regularity of their production and the prominence granted to them can create an illusion, or indeed a delusion. They may be correct, but they enable politicians and others to boast of “records” and of tourist seasons being “good” ones (and this one has been, according to Spain’s minister for tourism) and thus fail to appreciate how tourism is working – less at the macro level but more at the micro levels of the individual resorts.

Well done though, Can Picafort, you could do with a break, but you will also know that having a number one can be deceiving. Milli Vanilli, anyone?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Happy Together? Hotel occupancy Alcúdia and Can Picafort

Following on from the mention of low occupancy in Puerto Alcudia on 8 June, some firmer figures, not just those for one establishment. The combined Alcúdia and Can Picafort hotel association reports (from “The Diario”) rates similar to last year. Currently, occupancy stands at 57% in Alcúdia and 58% in Can Picafort. Not very high in other words. The forecast for July puts the numbers at 78% in Alcúdia and 72% in Can Picafort. For July, these aren’t particularly impressive; indeed, they are distinctly unimpressive.

Leading lights in the association gathered for a chinwag a couple of days ago. The report from “The Diario” included a photo, featuring, among others, Juan from the Sol Alcúdia Center and Ricardo from the Siesta 1 Apartments. They looked happy enough for the camera. Not so sure that they really are.

The association approves of the regional government’s attempts to attract new markets, but reckons that the push on the Russian front is unlikely to bear much fruit in either of the resorts, as the Russian market, mainly high worth, prefers four or five-star accommodation. Which does, I suppose, beg a question as to the standard, overall, of hotels in the resorts. Not, however, that there aren’t four-star hotels. Relatively greater numbers of four stars and indeed two five stars are, however, in Playa de Muro. Not for the first time, I wonder why Playa de Muro hasn’t combined with the associations in Alcúdia and Can Picafort, especially as Playa de Muro sits between the two other resorts. Or maybe this Russian thing gives the game away. Muro wants Russian. It already has it, and yes, they, the Russians, do go to five-star hotels.

In an attempt to drum up more business, the association has invited representatives of 25 tour operators to come along for some gentle persuasion on Friday. It will, apparently, be highlighting such wonders as the improvements to the beach in Alcúdia and the restoration of dunes, and then following it all up with a meal at Son Real, just outside Can Picafort. God, they know how to win and influence tour operators. Here are some new showers on the beach, here are some dunes with some walkways, here is a nature area where no one much goes to. I don’t think we should be holding our breath. But hats off, nonetheless; at least the association is trying. Or is it desperate?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

25 Per Cent: Crazy tourism

Further to the piece of 2 June (Window-Dressing), in which I mentioned a contact I had made with Inestur, the since-defunct government tourism “company”, I got a phone call. It came not from Inestur, because it doesn’t exist any longer, but from what is now the Tourism Agency for the Balearic Islands, a combination of Inestur and IBATUR (the former tourism agency). The gentleman who rang was extremely helpful and extremely chatty.

As my enquiry had to do with Mallorca alone, he explained, I would have to get in touch with the Mallorca Tourism Foundation (Fundación Mallorca Turismo), a body, I confess, I had completely forgotten existed. The gentleman said, at one point, that the system for promotion was a bit “crazy”. He isn’t kidding. Let’s just try and clarify, shall we. The new agency, the one the chap was calling from, has overall co-ordination for tourism across the islands, but each island has its own “foundation”, dedicated to promoting that island. Mallorca’s foundation falls within the control of the Council of Mallorca, as opposed to the regional government. The Fomento del Turismo, the private-sector “tourism board”, which has existed since 1905, doesn’t do any tourism promotion, despite its confusing pretensions to being a tourism board.

So, I hope that’s cleared up how tourism administration works now, as I’m sure you would have been wondering.

When the gentleman came on the phone, one of the first things he said, thinking – as I had suspected – that I was looking for money, was that there is no money. A state of affairs I had also suspected. He was quite surprised when I said I wasn’t looking for money. Normally that’s why people get in touch with him. That there isn’t any money, much of what there had been having ended up where it shouldn’t have, is slightly worrying. It is a regular enough theme of course that more and more money should be thrown at tourism promotion in its different guises. One wonders quite how tourism promotion is going to be both funded and organised over the next few months or years. The austerity measures are one thing. Who controls the purse strings, were there a purse to be strung, is another. The upheaval in the “crazy” system of tourism administration does invite questions.

This might not be so bad were it not for some alarming figures that one hears. Yesterday I was told about the situation at one establishment in Alcúdia. Last year (not a great year of course), the bookings at the start of June were around 75%. What do you think they are at present? 50 per cent? Go lower. 25 per cent. 25 per cent!! Even more alarming is the fact that July is not exactly full to overflowing.

As always one has to balance this with reports elsewhere, and there are certainly examples of hotels with good occupancy rates, but a quarter full in early June is quite shocking a statistic. Workers would normally be paid off at the end of the season with money in lieu of their holiday entitlement. Not this year they won’t. They’ll be taking holidays, a situation that is all but unheard of.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

It Only Takes A Minute

Or a second, or not even that really. I have this in my mind as I drive the roads. Only takes a second for potential oblivion for someone, myself included. I commend it as a thought for everyone to hold in their heads. It only took a second for the driver of one of the vehicles involved in the smash in Alcúdia the other day to not observe the stop sign and end up in a collision with a van and a people-carrier, with a three-year-old left in a serious condition. 

 

The accident took place at the junction of the Avenida Tucan (the Hidropark road) and the bypass by the mountain. It is not an accident that is hard to understand happening. Some of the junctions are confusing and downright dangerous, no more so than the one at the turning into the road for Cala San Vicente. The combination of fast-moving traffic, filter system and means of turning left from one road makes these junctions accidents in waiting. They should get rid of all of them and replace them with roundabouts. The locals may not be too clever where roundabouts are concerned, but at least they slow traffic and create less confusion. Roundabout accidents tend to be confined, at worst, to shunts, but they rarely cause multiple pile-ups; the filter junctions do. And while on confusing road layouts, can someone try and explain to me what in God’s name one is supposed to do on those roads by the Eroski on the outskirts of Pollensa going into the industrial estate; it is a complete shambles of confusion. 

 

It only takes a second, but if you need several seconds to be really sure, then take them, regardless of the idiot behind doing the gesticulating or giving it large on the horn. 

 

 

Thirty-three … the interior ministry

Ever ones to try and interfere with the previously unmolested workings of fiestas and tourism, different ministries seem intent on finding new ways of generally hacking everyone off with the irrelevant and the stupid. Let’s run this one by you. In the municipality of Marratxí, there has been a tradition during the fiesta in Pòrtol of holding a street bingo. Money raised from the event this year has been earmarked to go towards renovation work on the local church. In step the heavy boots of the interior ministry, via the local police, which says that it cannot take place as it is illegal; these bingos take place in many other villages and towns. The ministry reckons that they have got out of control, that their prizes are too valuable and that they do not exclude those under eighteen. 

 

The street bingos are something of a tradition, and frankly what harm do they do? If there was really a desire to eradicate some traditions, then the authorities should concentrate on more questionable aspects such as those involving genuine animal cruelty (and no not the ducks in Can Picafort, which is even more potty than it was now that rubber ducks are involved). Anyway, the bingo in Pòrtol did take place, and seemingly no-one tried to intervene to prevent it.

 

 

No flights?

And something of a follow-up to the piece of two days ago about the hoteliers and the so-called “catastrophe” that is this season. I am told that many hotels, those contracted to certain tour operators, have no real problem with occupancy, in that they are contracted for their allocations. A problem lies with the airlines providing sufficient flights. One hotel in Alcúdia has places but is unable to sell them – and there is demand – because flights cannot be obtained. Or that is what is being said. Not sure. On a different matter, I am also told that one tour operator, First Choice, is pulling tourists out of Bellevue and placing them elsewhere – Sea Club or, in the case of guests signed up for all-inclusive, Jupiter. There are, apparently, “certain problems”.