The Great (Tourism) Reform Act

The new tourism law is still only in draft form. On Monday it was put out for “public exhibition”. What this means in practice is that sectors of the tourism industry can scrutinise it in order to ensure that their interests are being catered for. In theory, anyone can suggest modification, but it will fall only to the loudest and strongest to be heard or to effect amendment. And guess who they are.

Pedro Iriondo, the president of the Mallorca Tourist Board (Fomento del Turismo), while generally applauding the draft law, has also offered some criticism. “Everything is focused on resolving problems of the hotel sector,” he has said. But why should he or anyone be surprised by this?

Iriondo has gone on to say that the law should cover the interests of other sectors of the tourism industry. When pressed on which sectors, however, he mentioned that of the travel agencies. What is Iriondo’s background? Travel agencies. Viajes Kontiki, to be precise.

In calling for other sectors’ interests to be considered (and what, pray, are the concerns of the travel agencies), Iriondo and the tourist board have a credibility problem. It’s true that it, via its “junta” members at any rate, represents different sectors (restaurants, transport, marinas and so on), but of those members, four are senior executives with leading hotel chains. The independence that the tourist board claims, and its values, to include “plurality”, go only so far.

There is no genuinely independent tourism body in Mallorca. Were there, then it might just be prepared to point out that tourism, in terms of its accommodation, is more than simply hotels. But the alleged discrimination shown towards the holiday-let sector would still prevail. No one will stick up for it, because no one dares to.

The outcry from owners of property denied the opportunity to rent it out will ring around the letters pages. Here’s my advice: don’t waste your breath. No one who matters is listening or will listen, unless they are from the tourism ministry inspectorate or the Hacienda, or both.

Of course, the holiday-let sector isn’t discriminated against to quite the extent that is suggested. The new law contemplates an extension of the commercialisation of properties on “rustic” land and of holiday homes which are detached or semi-detached. It is the private apartment which really bears the brunt of the discrimination and of an absence of procedure by which it can be “regularised”.

While the government’s taking up of arms and mounting of a crusade against illegal accommodation is the headliner to grab the attention of the indignant property owner, there are other aspects of the draft law that are worthy of attention as well, and not just the changes of use that the hotels are to be permitted to undertake.

The director of the Mallorca hoteliers federation, Inma Benito, has come out with an intriguing statement. It is one to do with all-inclusives. She has said that the current all-inclusive offer needs to be revised profoundly and a consensus arrived at. What she has also alluded to is the need for spend to reach out to the bars and restaurants in tourism areas. The tourism law says nothing about all-inclusives per se with one indirect exception: that the taking of food and drink outside a hotel will be prohibited.

One presumes this means no more “picnics” being taken out of hotels and a way of tackling the unedifying sight of tourists wandering along streets with plastic glasses of beer or heading off to beaches with plates of food. But how this prohibition will be policed is another matter.

Nevertheless, if the hotels are serious about revising all-inclusives and can work this into the bill, this might just be the best thing to come out of the new law.

I’m speculating, but what they may be referring to, and this would be in line with one of the new law’s main aims of effecting a general upgrading of hotel stock, is the fact that all-inclusive has to mean all-inclusive, i.e. the standard of service would result in many three-star hotels simply not being capable of meeting the standard. There could also be some suggestion that the hotels are contemplating the type of “mixed” all-inclusive whereby local bars and restaurants become a part of the all-inclusive offer. We’ll see, but it is encouraging that the hotels appear finally to recognise that there is an issue.

The new law won’t be to everyone’s liking, but its reform and the reforms it will enable (to misuse “reforms” in the Spanglish sense to apply to building) may just prove to be a part of the strategic plan that the tourism industry has long demanded.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

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.

The Hotels’ Beachhead

Change of government is still a month away, but the tourism industry has gone into overdrive in anticipation of all sorts of liberalisation that may be ushered forth by a Partido Popular victory.

As far as the hoteliers are concerned, Mariano Rajoy may as well already be prime minister. The Meliá plans for Magalluf are partly dependent on legislative relaxation, and the specific plans Meliá has for the beach would almost certainly require some changes to the Coasts Law.

When it was announced that Meliá wished to “exploit” the beach, a thought which occurred had to do with what the Costas Authority would make of it. This is a body which, while it does, quite rightly, seek to protect the coastal environment, is also the source of obstruction and of much that runs counter to the wishes of the tourism industry.

If a likely change of government were not in the offing, the chances are that Meliá’s wishes would have been stamped on from the great height that the Costas has come to assume; or probably, the wishes would never have been made public. Without knowing for sure, one gets the sense that the Costas might find its seemingly all-embracing powers being cut back.

Meliá wants, among other things, to be able to provide temporary moorings next to its hotels. The Mallorca hoteliers federation, very much to the fore in driving a national agenda, wants a change to the Coasts Law which would not only remove any obstacle to Meliá providing its moorings but would also permit other hotels to exploit other beaches for leisure purposes.

The proposal, much as it may make good business sense for the hotels and for the tourism industry, does run up against a difficulty. Essentially, the beaches would be privatised and there has to be a risk, somewhere along the line, that the principle of free public space on the beaches might be endangered.

Where the Costas has been doing a good job is in ensuring this free space. Together with town halls, it has also kept the sea itself free. And by free, one means open and accessible. It is the open to access principle that comes into question if the hotels have their way. With Meliá’s moorings, where would they go exactly? Would they in some way impede public use of the sea?

A further factor in the hotels’ ambitions for beach exploitation is the Costas’ bureaucracy. An aspect of this does badly need to be changed, and it is that which relates to the annual rigmarole that is gone through to establish provisions for beach management and for licensing operations.

The annual bureaucratic procedures have the effect of inhibiting investment. If a beach operator cannot be sure of running a beach from year to year then it is understandably reluctant to commit itself too heavily. Meliá wouldn’t, one would imagine, put up with such uncertainty.

If there were to be a relaxation of this bureaucratic burden, it could only be a good thing. It would prevent, one would hope, the kind of delays that have bedevilled beach management operations in Puerto Pollensa, and it might also be hoped that further relaxations would get rid of the nonsensical situation whereby an operator such as Sail and Surf in Puerto Pollensa cannot put out buoys for larger craft out of high season, so restricting its ability to extend the resort’s tourism season.

This constraint is another of the Costas’ domains, just one that has consistently placed it at loggerheads with business and especially the hotels. In Mallorca, there is an added dimension. The local head of the Costas is Celesti Alomar, the former (socialist) tourism minister who was responsible for the despised eco-tax that the hotels were charged with collecting and which, in some cases, they never handed over.

The Costas locally has brushed up against some heavy hitters, not least in Muro where its interpretation of coastal demarcation and the almost unworkable notion of land that is “influenced by the sea” have threatened hotels’ interests. To put it mildly, there is no love lost when it comes to the hotels’ attitude towards the Costas.

So now the hotels can sense the opportunity to get the law changed and also bring the Costas down a peg or two. As a protecter, it does a valuable job, but its role as enforcer has created too many enemies. If the law does change and if the Costas finds itself with a diminished role, this may be no bad thing. But would things go too far in the other direction? The privatisation of the beaches and of the water.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Bingo! There’s no uncertainty

A listener to “Test Match Special” last year came up with the idea for a game called “Boycott Bingo”. This entails calling out “bingo” every time the great man – Sir Geoffrey – utters one of his regular and predictable clichés, e.g. “corridor of uncertainty”, “we used to play on uncovered wickets” or “my mum would have caught that in her pinny”.

Mallorca has its own version of Boycott Bingo in that bingo illegality crops up as regularly and as predictably as the Great Yorkshireman states that his gran could have “hit that with a stick of rhubarb”. One moment it’s outdoor games at fiestas being banned because minors are in attendance – bingo!; the next it’s some old dears having their games interrupted by the sound of heavy boots – bingo!; then it’s a hotel being raided because it’s conducting games that it shouldn’t be – bingo!

When day centres for the elderly were being raided by plod who suspected – correctly – that the oldsters were up to no good in playing bingo for which there was no licence, all manner of indignation was released. How insensitive. Why stop a little bit of pleasure for the old folk? It was accepted that perhaps it had been a bit heavy-handed. However, it turned out that behind certainly one of the illicit bingo games was something a bit fishy that proved worthy of further investigation.

There is no real uncertainty regarding the playing of bingo. You need a licence. The absence of one may have something to do with plod having pounded down the corridors of a hotel in Sa Coma to put a stop to its bingo. I could always tell you which hotel, but I won’t, because it’s not been reported elsewhere, so I’d rather not say. But rest assured, keep checking Sa Coma hotels on “Trip Advisor” and there will doubtless be some entry referring to a bingo raid. “I was just about to call ‘house’, and this policeman took my card away. I shall be complaining to the tour operator.”

One difference between the relatively small cerveza of the old folks’ day centre bingo games and those in the hotel has to do with the amount of money the latter raise. Two and seven? Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven thousand euros. A month.

If you were to go and look on “Trip Advisor” and choose a hotel on Mallorca, you might well find mention of bingo among the entertainment on offer. Most hotels have games. And are they all correctly licensed? I couldn’t begin to answer that question. But the two bingo associations – AESBI and ASBA – have been making repeated representations to relevant authorities regarding the need to “eradicate the large number of illegal bingo games that proliferate” on Mallorca and the other islands.

A couple of days before the raid in Sa Coma, the two associations had in fact presented a proposal for the establishment of electronic bingo terminals in hotels as part of their drive to stamp out illegal games. The proposal may well be greeted favourably, as a “win” would involve a ten per cent tax finding its way into the coffers of the Hacienda.

It will be instructive to see how this all pans out, as Mallorca’s hotels, anticipating the likely change of national government, are putting together various proposals of a legal nature for the new Partido Popular administration to chew over.

One of these is to do with the law on intellectual property. This has an impact on the “complementary offer” of entertainment in its widest sense within hotels (of which, incidentally, the electronic bingo terminals would be a new addition, say the bingo associations). It doesn’t have to do solely with any rights from musical performances. It also covers television.

Decisions by both the European Court of Justice and the Spanish Supreme Court have led to interpretations that television broadcasts in hotel rooms constitute “public communication” and are therefore liable to rights payments. This is because, for the most part, a cable or satellite signal is re-transmitted by the hotel to the rooms. Were signals to go directly to the rooms (far more costly to set up), then the communication would be private, meaning no broadcast rights payments.

On these two matters, the bingo and the broadcasting, I am with the bingo associations and the police but not with the public communication interpretation; charges are probably passed on for what is made public but is consumed in private. As for bingo, though it is harmless fun, it is fair to ask what actually happens to money that is raised. There is no uncertainty, or shouldn’t be. Gaming is either licensed or it isn’t.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Three Degrees: Mallorca’s winter tourism

I was dreaming of a less-than-white Christmas. No rubbish weather for me. Bronzed, golden brown. I was dreaming and then I was told to stop. By the BBC website home page. Make it real. Make what real? Make a holiday in the Canaries real, courtesy of Iberostar. I clicked the link. Dreams can come true.

You’re given no false impression as to why you would wish to make it real in the Canaries. Off you go with the family, one of whom is the child with the snorkel kit who greets you as you click from the BBC site. And why is he wearing snorkel kit? Because he wants to go snorkelling of course. In the sea. Departing from a beach. In the sun. Sun and beach. In winter.

This is a promotion by the same Iberostar which grew rich on the back of Mallorcan tourism – Mallorcan summer tourism. Once you have scrolled down the list of the 13 four or five-star hotels on the four main Canary islands – all available with special offers to the end of November, for booking through the winter to the end of April – you come to a footnote. It is under “most popular destinations”. Hotels in Majorca. Click.

Well, having clicked, you can probably guess. The red squares on the calendar mean the hotels are closed. All of them. Until April. Mallorca is “most popular”, when it is open. But who can blame Iberostar for flogging the Canaries? They’re doing what has long been one half of the mainstay of winter tourism promoted by tour operators, travel agents and now hotels. What do they all promote? Either snow or winter sun.

Summer tourism means sun and the movement of millions in its pursuit; winter tourism means snow or sun and the movement of millions more. But you move the millions to where you can pretty much guarantee good coverings of snow or good amounts of sun in temperatures of at least 20 degrees.

Sorry, Mallorca, but you fail the 20-degree test. By three degrees. It may not seem much, but the average temperature for the six months of the off-season is only 17. The psychological barrier is 20 degrees (minimum). Tenerife, by comparison and despite having almost as many days of rain if not as much rain as Mallorca (10 millimetres less on average), comes in at 21.9 degrees (which also happens to break the 70 Fahrenheit barrier). This is why the boy has his snorkel kit on, this is why dreams can be made real – in the Canaries – and this is why Iberostar makes them real there, and not in Mallorca.

Weather does matter. In fact, it is all that matters.

Mallorca’s winter tourism. Discuss. Culture, gastronomy, bird-watching, hiking, Nordic walking, cycling, golf, senior tourism. There is much which is available and promoted; it combines to create an under-mass of winter tourism approximately one-tenth the size of that which comes in summer. Unless there were real incentives, such as major, and one means major, attractions, the ratio is unlikely to ever alter fundamentally. And it’s all down to those missing three degrees.

There is a great deal of what one might call apologism for Mallorca in winter. And it is apologism that entails preaching to oneself or the converted. It is apologism that can cover all the list above and more that bring about the around one million off-season visitors. But it can only ever get the apologists so far, because something’s missing. Three degrees’ worth. At least.

This all said, it’s a nonsense when you think about it. A nonsense, not that Iberostar or any other hotel chain, airline or tour operator would choose Tenerife over Mallorca, but that Iberostar and all the other hotel chains are sitting on colossal amounts of prime real estate in Mallorca which sit idle for six months of the year. All that asset being unproductive, being wasted; an asset and an investment that have contributed to the cost of land in Mallorca for everyone else, largely deprived of their own productiveness for twelve months of the year.

The tourism industry in Mallorca would probably like to believe that it is efficient. It isn’t. It is massively inefficient. Inefficient in terms of asset and resources and inefficient in having been singularly incapable of arriving at solutions to make these resources more efficient, twelve months of the year. But then, what can it do about the weather? Not much. It makes efficient use of one resource – the sun – for six months, and that’s it. In the Canaries, on the other hand … .

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Death Row: Empty units

What do you do with units that have been empty for ten years or so?

Playa de Muro has a number of such units (or “locales” to use the native). They are grouped together. A row of abandoned restaurants, shops and bars with forlorn for sale or for rent signs that have been in their windows for so long that they have pretty much acquired the status of being the units’ names, except that they are all the same and therefore indistinguishable from each other, which is appropriate as none of the units is in any way distinguished.

Who was it who ever gave permission for the type of architectural abominations that were allowed to spring up in the name of commerce? The more contemporary units in resorts such as Playa de Muro are without any character, any atmosphere and any redeeming feature. It is small wonder that they are empty and have, in some instances, been so since the turn of the century.

These are not units that have been solely ravaged by the arrival of the all-inclusive. Some have, but many closed before the all-inclusive really took hold. They have been empty because they are hideous, because there are too many of them and because no one in their right minds would pay the traspasos being asked, let alone the rents.

So unattractive is this line of abandonment that you can understand why tourists might prefer not to go a-strolling at night. Despite the valiant efforts of the Boulevard group which demolished some units and stuck up a glass-faced office building replete with tex-mex, tabacs and a fashion store and which thus gives the impression of at least some life (and light at night), the ugliness of the dark, dingy and long-vacated units deprives this part of the resort of any hint of charm.

It is easy perhaps to suggest that this death row of units is a portend of the ghost-town cliché set to be used for other resorts as a consequence of all-inclusives. It is certainly true that the closure of units is gathering pace elsewhere, but this is only partially explained by the loss of business. The story is often the same. It is one of rents being too high and of irrational landlords being unprepared to lower them. But it is also one of units that are, at best, functional and, at worst, simply unappealing.

The tourism ministry of Carlos Delgado has spoken about the redevelopment of older resorts. Taking the lead from the transformation of Playa de Palma, if it ever happens, this would involve an upgrading of the likes of Magalluf and Alcúdia. Meliá Hotels International’s announcement of its Magalluf megacomplex is perhaps the first stage in this. But the hotels are only one part of the story.

Playa de Muro is not as ancient as other resorts; part of it, yes, but not all of it. Indeed, the resort has been praised for the style in which its coastline was planned with what are modern hotels of a high standard, including three five-star hotels.

Because of the hotels, the resort would be unlikely to feature prominently on any list of resorts due for beautification. Were money no object, a solution would be to demolish the empty units and make green areas. But for different reasons, it wouldn’t happen, one of them being because they are someone’s assets.

And it’s when you come to learn whose assets they are that you begin to understand how such units can be allowed to be left empty for so long. They ultimately belong to a hotel. When I found this out, initially I was shocked. Why would they just leave them like they are?

It’s a good question. It doesn’t, you would think, help any hotel in any resort to have the appearance of abandonment, but should we be surprised? Hotels, in general and increasingly, seem to show scant regard for what goes on outside their grounds, as evidenced by the all-inclusive. Though this particular hotel isn’t all-inclusive, its publicity is almost as good as. What it packs inside its grounds allows it to say that everything is in one place “without leaving the hotel”.

One concludes, therefore, that there is a take it or leave it attitude towards the units. They are assets on a balance sheet that one day might be sold or made productive. It doesn’t really matter. And if there are no competitor restaurants or shops around the corner, then even better.

Take it or leave it. Yes, people have. They have left the units; they left them long ago. And now they are just left to rot.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Necessity For Change: Tourism

Remarkable. Firstly, that I’ve got a good word for the Partido Popular; secondly, that it is displaying some uncommonly common sense. Where tourism is concerned, the PP have it over the other parties. They try not to obstruct where others do try. They make enemies along the way, and they are nowhere nearer striking a sensible balance between the needs of the established tourism industry (primarily the hotels) and those of the non-established, such as the holiday let business. But praise where praise is due.

A caveat. It was the hoteliers, in the form of the Mallorca hoteliers federation, that staged a conference entitled “Tourism, The Necessity For Change”. Change, where the hotels are concerned, is change that’s good for the hotels. Nevertheless, the outcomes of this conference are generally positive.

Amongst them is the likelihood that Meliá Hotels International will create a new “megacomplex” of four-star accommodation out of existing hotels (the Royal Beach, the Antillas Barbados and Mallorca Beach) and that this complex will be themed. The exact nature of this theming is not yet clear, but the wish to do so is one to be welcomed.

One hopes that the themes won’t be of the Flintstones variety; please God, anything but this. What one does hope is that it might be of a “theme” that Mallorca is crying out for, an all-year, all-weather complex; the theme would be akin to the Center Parcs concept. One fears that it might not be, in which case it would be a huge missed opportunity, but we will see.

Another outcome is that the tourism minister Carlos Delgado is minded to go ahead in permitting hotels to stage concerts. He could hardly say that he wouldn’t, having more or less single-handedly granted Mallorca Rocks its licences both as mayor of Calvia and now as tourism minister. He’s made his concert hotel bed, and now he has to lie in it; in different hotels. But good for him.

A further move, and one well heralded, is that the time when the tourism law is changed to enable condohotels seems to be drawing ever nearer. But one detects the first rumblings of division and self-interest amongst different hoteliers. There needs to a minimum size for apartments that can be converted to residential use (90 square metres), or there needs to be a stipulation that they are from existing three to four-star stock, or there needs to be provision to make sure that condos aren’t simply a “refuge for the obsolete”.

One would have thought that a refuge from the obsolete was a very good reason for allowing condos, always assuming investment were forthcoming to make them of sufficiently good standard. If the condo does go ahead, and it seems unlikely that it won’t, then this could be good news; residential apartments in hotels means that they won’t be all-inclusive.

The other side to this is that the condo idea, around for some years, is being exposed as blatantly self-serving when you take into account the fierce opposition of the hotels to the holiday-let sector. Forget all the other spin, this is the real reason for that opposition; one that allows the hotels to have the cake of conversion and of a lucrative residential tourism market and eat it, too, to the point of their gorging themselves.

And then there is something else. The PP government’s finance and business minister José Aguiló is flagging up an idea that is so sensible that is one that even ordinary Joe Soaps, who are neither members of governments nor anything in particular to do with the tourism industry, have thought up; and this is the idea of social-security breaks for businesses which lengthen the season, i.e. the likes of hotels which would stay open over winter.

The idea is such a no-brainer, one wonders why it has not been introduced and not even really discussed. One reason why it hasn’t is because of the debilitating culture endemic among many Spaniards and Mallorcans (and indeed other nationalities that have come to live in Mallorca) that you work for six months and then live off the state for the other six. It’s time for a cultural change and for an incentive for hotels to keep open, even on reduced staffs.

There is much to be positive about what the government has been saying these past few days. There is a “necessity for change”. The necessity has existed for years, but complacency, lack of will, lack of strategic thought have all prevented it. We might just have reached a stage when everyone finally understands the necessity and will actually do something about it.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Good, The Bad And The Holiday Let

I’m going to give you a list of organisations. When you get to the end of the list, here are your questions – what do they have in common and what is missing? Here goes, and pay attention:

The hotel federations of Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera; the association of hotel chains; the association for agrotourism; the Mallorca Tourism Board; the chambers of commerce in Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza; the federation of local authorities; the University of the Balearic Islands; the associations of small and medium-sized businesses in Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza (PIMEM); the association of travel agents; the school of hostelry; airlines; tour operators; unions.

Ok, if you have said they have all been invited to form part of the Balearics Tourism Agency, then have a banana. This is indeed what they all have in common.

Pretty big agency, huh? Yes, but a reason behind them all joining the agency is to avoid duplications in tourism efforts. So, credit where credit’s due. The agency may now sound unwieldy, but better this than numerous bodies here and there doing their own things.

But what of the second question? What’s missing? Need some help? Just look at the list again. Which are the really big players? Tour operators, airlines, yes, but also the hotels. Still don’t know the answer? This is a tourism agency, don’t forget. Tourism requires accommodation. Are you getting warmer?

Nowhere in this coming together of pretty much all those who matter in Mallorca and Balearics tourism is any representation of non-hotel accommodation: the holiday lets. The tour operators are one player that has an interest in this type of accommodation, others do to a degree as well, but otherwise there is no voice at all.

Why isn’t there? The obvious answer is that there is no body to represent what is a highly fragmented part of the local tourism industry. Even if there were, how well organised it would be would be open to question. There are all sorts of reasons why owners of holiday lets might not wish to be part of an organisation. This aside, the chances are that it wouldn’t be invited anyway.

Two summers ago some grand strategy talking-shop was meant to have been organised by the tourism ministry. It never actually met, but had it done there were to have been two key problems to be addressed, those of seasonality and holiday lets. While mostly anyone associated with the tourism industry would agree that seasonality is a serious problem, only certain parties openly state that holiday lets are. Who were due to have been involved in this strategy talking-shop? The hotels and unions for a kick-off. Both of them antagonistic towards holiday lets.

Amongst the organisations being pulled into the tourism ministry’s agency now, there are few which might speak out in favour of non-hotel accommodation. You might hope that the university would offer an independent view, for example. But as for others, they will mostly tow the line, the one that the hotels, the unions and therefore also the tourism ministry promote: that holiday lets are a bad thing.

Not completely a bad thing, as the tour operators will be quick to point out. But their interests lie with the regulated and registered villas of Mallorca. The airlines might also point out that holiday lets are not a bad thing. What about PIMEM? Where would it stand on the issue?

PIMEM has a bar and restaurant division. PIMEM is quite vocal on different matters, such as all-inclusives. A bad thing, it has been saying recently. It has also been saying that permission for hotels to convert to condohotels would be a good thing.

A hundred or so hotels are already said to be planning to sell off rooms and apartments in anticipation of a change to the tourism law which would permit condohotels and which would therefore create a type of residential tourism, akin to holiday lets but to the hotels’ advantage.

PIMEM reckons this is a good idea because it isn’t all-inclusive and because it would benefit its restaurant members, given the type of tourist it would attract.

But this is precisely the same argument regarding holiday lets. Or one of them. So why doesn’t PIMEM come out and support these? Probably for the same reason that the tourism ministry won’t. It doesn’t want to upset the hotels.

The newly constituted tourism agency is a good thing in many respects, but in one, that of a whole sector of the tourism industry, it isn’t. The momentum against holiday lets is unlikely to let up. Unless there are now voices at the agency to say otherwise, it is likely to get very much stronger.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Hope Lies In The Proles

I was interviewed by the BBC the other day. The interview was about all-inclusives and was to form part of a feature for the “Fast Track” travel programme.

The background to the feature was two-fold: the announcement by First Choice that it will be only offering all-inclusive packages as from next year, and the impact that all-inclusives have on local businesses.

The location that First Choice had suggested for filming was the Holiday Village in Can Picafort. This is a fine complex. It is modern, offers a good range of services and generally speaking is well regarded when it comes to reviews on the internet. It is four-star, and herein may lie a tale.

On the First Choice website there are ten hotels which appear most prominently when you search for Mallorca. The Holiday Village heads the list. In the Alcúdia-Can Picafort conurbation, there are four hotels in all, and only the Holiday Village is four-star.

Fair enough though; why wouldn’t you pick the best that you have?

The presenter of “Fast Track”, Rajan Datar, was not overly familiar with Alcúdia and Can Picafort, so I took him for a bit of a tour one evening. A port of call was a hotel complex that had been dropped by First Choice during the 2009 season. Bellevue.

The level of all-inclusive offer at this vast resort in Alcúdia has increased substantially over the past four to five years. In 2009 it was around 50%. The word locally is that it is now 80%, though local word is often not reliable. Let’s just say that it would be a surprise had there not been an increase since 2009.

We went to a bar nearby. The owner is preparing to close at the end of this season, attributing this primarily to the impact of AI. He was happy enough to be interviewed for the feature. He was less happy when it came to the actual filming and choked up when reading from a poster that announces the closure.

A suffering bar owner is not the most objective of subjects for a report, but it can make for powerful telly. He displayed a lack of objectivity, understandable enough, when dismissing benefits that AIs might offer families on a tight budget.

For me, as I said during the interview, it’s a no-brainer. I can completely understand these families opting for AI. But you always come back to the same seemingly intractable problem; that of the effects on the wider economy and on bars and restaurants in the shadows of all-inclusives.

I don’t know what was said when the filming moved on to the Holiday Village, but I can guess. First Choice and TUI have been doing their best to put positive spin on all-inclusives, such as it being a myth that AI guests do not go off-site and do not spend outside. It is a myth, but then why do some guests find it necessary to go off-site and spend? Because the AI they have ended up at isn’t much good. Holiday Village is more the exception to the fifteen to twenty-minute rule; how long it can take to be served with a beer in a small plastic glass.

However, the spend of AI guests is low. It has been proven to be so by research conducted by the university in Palma. TUI, perhaps inadvertently, added to the proof when it revealed that only 11% of guests’ total spend found its way into the local community at a different Holiday Village, one in Turkey. And that is also a four-star.

This, the star rating, is relevant, because the higher the standard of the hotel and AI offer, then the more the myth of guests not spending off-site ceases to be a myth. I am at a loss to understand the logic as to why, if you get really good AI service, you would ever spend anything outside the hotel.

There is another reason for going off-site and that is because guests tire of what is on offer and also need a release to stop going stir crazy. And it is this which is perhaps inducing something of an AI backlash, together with a growing appreciation among many tourists as to the effects on the economy outside the hotel. There are plenty of tourists who will mock a bar owner saying hello in the hope of business by waving a wristband in his face, but there are plenty who are sympathetic. Without wishing to sound disrespectful, it’s a touch Orwellian. The hope lies in the proles.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Pile ‘Em High: Hotels

Pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap. Remember this? It’s your starter for ten. Whose phrase was it? To give you a clue, he founded a supermarket chain that in the late ’60s and early ’70s no self-respecting, middle-class housewife would be found dead in. You know who it was. Of course you do. Jack Cohen. Tesco’s.

Tesco used to be a by-word for total naffness. Back in the day it was the loon pants and platform heels of retail; the Noddy Holder and Slade of grocery. What saved it was Lord (then plain Ian) MacLaurin’s makeover of sophistication, matched by an aspirational style of marketing, as well as its product expansion; Tesco was the first supermarket to become a petrol station as well.

Pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap. Tesco as it once was (and also as it has become) is a metaphor for much of Mallorca’s hotel industry, both all-inclusive and conventional. A guest at one of Alcúdia’s all-inclusive ghettoes was telling me how he and his wife (they were grandparents) were squeezed into a room with two double beds along with their two grandchildren (girl and boy). The arrangement was not exactly satisfactory, nor was the size of the room. Barely enough space to swing a cat (and there is probably, as an aside, a fiesta event somewhere in Mallorca which involves swinging a cat; but I digress).

A correspondent of mine was telling me of the situation in a Magalluf hotel. Two-bedded rooms have increased in size by 100% in becoming four-bedded rooms. At the prices they’re being charged, the guests shouldn’t have grounds to complain, went the hotel’s explanation.

In the Alcúdia hotel, they were and are being piled in high. But are they being sold that cheap? Three grand for the four of them, I was told. Maybe this is cheap, but when you take into account their circumstances plus the time it takes to get served with a drink or to manage to get into a lift plus the cost of add-ons (this is an all-inclusive, remember), then maybe it isn’t.

More than the cost, however, is the philosophy. Pile ’em high with scant regard for any sophistication or aspiration. Some of Mallorca’s hotels are locked in a timewarp of old Tesco days, and some of them were built around the time that Tesco was reaching its early-70s, pre-MacLaurin nadir.

Tesco discovered that in order to change its entire business and marketing philosophy some of its older supermarkets had to be done away with or greatly improved. It was no use having outdated stores that didn’t stack up with the new aspirational message and which weren’t fit for purpose. And in addition to building new supermarkets, Tesco became, in effect, an all-inclusive retailer; everything from petrol to music.

The Tesco metaphor is pertinent because in terms of philosophy and bricks and mortar, a good part of Mallorca’s hotels are in precisely the same situation that Tesco once found itself. A key difference is that many moved into the all-inclusive line quite some time ago. So they attempted product expansion but did so without considering any of the rest. Or if they did consider the rest, they were unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

The result of this was, and remains in many cases, that the hotels are not fit for purpose. They were not built or designed with all-inclusive in mind. The facilities simply aren’t there. Moreover, some hotels are little more than human processing plants. A mechanistic approach, predicated on the pile ’em high philosophy, induces a mindset which is the antithesis to sophistication or aspiration.

Of course some of the market to which the hotels pander, let’s be frank, is or can be low rent. And the low-rent market perpetuates a low-rent attitude among hoteliers, even if, as the Alcúdia case suggests, the rent isn’t so low that it can truly qualify as being categorised as cheap.

The problem is that the market, be it low or higher rent, has witnessed for itself or learnt of what exists elsewhere. Mallorca’s hotels have not responded, very often because they have been unable or not allowed to respond, to the brand spanking new out-of-town, indeed out-of-Mallorca competition; that of the eastern Med and north Africa.

An expectation has therefore grown, and it is one that is more aspirational and demands greater sophistication. For this reason, plans for hotel renovation, if they ever see the light of day, or changes to use cannot come soon enough. What some of Mallorca’s hotels need is to undergo a process of Tesco-isation. The punter can’t continue to be piled high.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.