Guilty By Associations

How many associations, federations, organisations can one island need? How many such bodies can one industry need? Tourism is hugely important, but the industry is sinking under the sheer weight of its collective organisational body.

Let’s identify, shall we, just some of these organisations. Among those charged with tourism promotion and development are the Balearics Tourism Agency, the Fomento del Turismo (Mallorcan Tourism Board), the Fundación Mallorca Turismo, the Mesa del Turismo and the cluster Balears.t, to which will soon be added “mesas de alcaldes” (literally, mayors’ tables).

The hoteliers, in addition to federations in different towns, have at least two bodies – a federation of hoteliers and an association of hotel chains. Businesses, other than the hotels, are represented by Acotur, Pimeco, the chamber of commerce, and the local confederation of businesses. To all this lot, you can add associations for different niches and whatever the town halls might or might not be up to.

Duplication, triplication, quadruplication are endemic in Mallorca. Why have one organisation when a dozen will do just as well? It all starts at the top of course. At governmental level. President Bauzà is at least trying to address the duplications that exist between regional government, island councils and town halls, but he faces an uphill task in a society which appears to believe in more being better, especially if this means several bodies doing the same as each other.

Is Mallorca’s tourism industry disappearing up its own backside of associations? Or did it disappear there some time ago? What on earth do all these different organisations do? Apart from duplications, the impression is of a multiplicity of talking shops and competing and self-interests.

I’ll give you a test. Tell me this. What is the difference between the Balearics Tourism Agency, the Fomento del Turismo and the Fundación Mallorca Turismo? Give up? The answer is that the first is part of the regional government’s tourism ministry. The second is private with, among others, directors of leading hotel chains on its board. As for the third, this comprises the Council of Mallorca, the Mallorcan hoteliers federation, the chamber of commerce and … and the Fomento del Turismo. And what do they all they do? Pretty much the same things. Twice over in the case of the Fomento, to say nothing of the hoteliers popping up on both the Fomento and separately on the Fundación.

The Mesa del Turismo? Anyone wish to hazard a guess? No? This is the regional government tourism ministry, the local confederation of businesses and the main trades unions. Cluster Balears.t? What in God’s name is this? Hard to say, but it wishes to improve the selling of the Balearics tourism product, which is presumably what all the others want to do as well.

And now we are going to get the mayors’ tables. This is a new nest of tables dreamt up by tourism minister Delgado. The mayors of the Balearics can sit around them and come up with ways to improve the quality of the Balearics brand. To do what!? Yes, to improve the Balearics brand. What’s it got to do with the mayors? And there we were also thinking that Delgado had cottoned onto the idea that you brand what the tourist punter recognises (Mallorca for example) and not the unrecognisable, be it Calvia or the Balearics.

Then you come to the associations for businesses, those for the hotels and those primarily for the complementary offer, i.e. anything to do with tourism which isn’t a hotel.

Acotur, the association of tourist businesses (appropriately enough) has, as an example of its efforts, been talking to Alcúdia’s mayor about pressing concerns in the resort, one of them being the scale of illegal street selling. It has actually (and unsuccessfully) been trying to do something about this for years, producing notices of a “Grange Hill” “just say no” style to ask tourists not to buy from the looky-looky men.

The mayor will probably do nothing, other than say that the police are looking into it and to remind everyone that there is a local by-law that outlaws street selling (and indeed the purchase of illegally traded products), which does raise the question as to why an individual town hall needs to have a separate law or to act unilaterally, a point which Pimeco (small to medium businesses association), and not Acotur, wishes to address by getting all 53 local councils to unify in a grand anti-looky action.

I apologise. I can well imagine that you are totally lost by now. It is small wonder though. So many bodies, so many doing the same things, and so many failing to achieve anything. Mallorca. Guilty by associations.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Great Reform Act: Mallorca’s hotels

President Bauzà and tourism minister Carlos Delgado have been parleying with the hoteliers. Love is now in the air where once were poisoned arrows, those being lobbed by the hoteliers in Mr. D’s general direction.

Delgado is promising the hotels just about everything they might have wished for: a change of use for obsolete hotel stock; a new tourism law that will make procedures more flexible; a crackdown on illegal accommodation. Throw in some redevelopment of resorts and you have just about the perfect result for the hotels.

Just about, but not entirely. The redevelopment of Playa de Palma, still being battled over and still short of funding, is held up as the model for resort upgrading elsewhere – Magalluf and Alcúdia have been mentioned specifically – but not all hotels in Playa de Palma want to see changes that might remove the bread and butter of the three-star hotel.

But plenty do want improvements. Mallorca’s tourism industry suffers from having been one of the first locations of the tourism industrial revolution of the mid-twentieth century. As with all original infrastructures, they become obsolete or old-fashioned; hence the desire to redevelop the resorts.

Knocking old hotels down isn’t really an option except in extreme cases, but upgrading them or converting them is. One type of conversion would see hotels become condohotels; another would let them become residential. With either option, and depending on the precise nature of what “condo” might actually entail and what constraints, if any, were placed on what could be done with these residential former hotels, what you might end up with is a system whereby holiday lets are made available under the control of the hotels.

You can conclude, therefore, that behind the opposition to holiday rentals and behind what is now meant to be a more rigorous approach to stamping illegal ones out, there is another dynamic. The hoteliers aren’t daft. They know full well that a market, a very sizeable market, exists for accommodation which isn’t that of the hotel. What could be better than to get hold of that market as well, whilst at the same time seeking to eliminate or limit alternatives.

The hotels have been lobbying to be able to undertake conversions for some years. The consequence of this, however, together with a reduction in total hotel stock envisaged under plans for Playa de Palma (and therefore elsewhere, you would think) and the fact that Delgado doesn’t foresee new hotels springing up in abundance, is that there will be fewer hotel beds around.

This could all make sense if you believe that Mallorca’s tourism should become leaner if not necessarily meaner. However, take a certain number of hotel places out of the equation and the attack on the holiday-rentals market looks even more ludicrous than it already is.

Following my article of 5 July (“No Hope”), I had some correspondence on the issue, and one question that came up was just how many hotel beds there are in Mallorca. I’d thought finding the answer would be difficult. It wasn’t. Thanks to the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorcan tourism board), I discovered that in 2005 there were 283,436 beds. The figure won’t have changed materially. It was also easy, because I had written about it before, to find out how many tourists, at the very height of the summer season, there are. In August 2008, the number peaked at 1,930,000 in the Balearics; it will be higher this year.

Allowing for the other islands and various other factors, you can guess that, at a conservative estimate, there are at least as many tourists who stay in rental accommodation such as apartments and villas as there are those who stay in hotels. If the hotels cut their overall capacity, and even if they don’t, were holiday lets to be driven out of business or to be hounded more than they already are, where on earth would everyone stay?

The hotels might think that condos and hotels converted to residential use might go some way to housing these tourists, but the numbers would surely not be great. Plus, you would have lost those hotel beds into the bargain. Far from holiday lets being “unfair competition”, they are in fact a competitive necessity – for Mallorca and its whole tourism industry.

I have high hopes for Delgado. He should go some way to proving that these hopes are not misplaced. He should look at the total mix of the industry he now presides over and come to a conclusion that the hoteliers might not like, but which Mallorca can ill afford to be without.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

No Hope: Private holiday lets

Justin in Paris has made 90,000 dollars. Daren in London has raked in 100 grand. In Mallorca, you can expect to coin in 2003 euros per month.

An advert on a Facebook page demanded a damn good clicking. Make money in Spain, it said. Rent out your place to travelers (all American travellers, therefore, as they are lacking an “l”) and make 75 euros+ per night. Interesting, I thought. Not because I want to rent out to travelers or even travellers, but because it is quite possible that anyone wishing to – in Mallorca – shouldn’t.

On the site, there was Daren, relaxing, sound in the knowledge of the 100 grand he had made. Novi from San Francisco was smiling, thanks to her 30,000 dollars. Justin looked suitably satisfied with his ninety thousand.

The 2003 euros was the calculation for a month to rent out an apartment in Palma or Pollensa. I went and had a look. Was anything actually available in Mallorca? Yes. Not much, but there were some places. By the night or longer. Some with photos, some without. Not having a photo doesn’t really “sell” a place, but there might be good reason for there not being a photo.

It’s kicking off again. The periodic wielding of the holiday-rental stick. The tourism ministry and friends at the tax authorities are spending their days in earnest perusal of websites, mainly British ones, seeking to identify properties for holiday rent. An announcement was made last year that web pages in particular would come under scrutiny, and a similar announcement has been made this year as well.

John Lance, in his letter to “The Bulletin” (Saturday, 2 July) made the point well enough, as he has in the past, about the lunatic situation in respect of holiday lets in Mallorca. The “grey area” he referred to isn’t really all that grey. Want to now license your property for holiday rental? You can’t.

There are plenty of properties which are licensed but they date back to and before the registration of, when was it, three, four years ago. Even then, however, there was massive confusion, and the dice were heavily loaded against apartment owners. The greyness of the situation is especially so with apartments, but it isn’t so grey if you accept the version which states that you cannot rent out private apartments as holiday lets at all.

The tourism ministry has wielded its stick. In February, there were reports relating to action taken against owners of apartments in Santa Ponsa, to what was being offered, and to the fact that the apartments were being advertised via a UK website. And then there were the fines. Up to 30,050 euros.

We know the arguments in favour of more relaxed rules on holiday rentals: not everyone wants to stay in a hotel; tourists in private apartments and villas tend to spend more; a mix of accommodation types reflects the diversity of the tourism market. We know the hoteliers’ arguments against: they have the hoops they have to go through; they invest heavily; they are a key source of employment. Like the endless all-inclusive debate, none of the arguments are new.

The hoteliers can, however, be somewhat disingenuous. When the Santa Ponsa reports were coming in, the head of the local hoteliers’ association said that the competition from private apartments was unfair. Yes, but turn it around. Owners could argue the case of restriction of trade and of unfair competition that denies them the chance to properly register and market their properties.

As John Lance remarked, this could all end up with Europe getting involved. But for property owners, the problem is the lack of any co-ordinated voice. The hoteliers know this, and so, as importantly, does the Balearic Government.

It might be remembered that the hoteliers, well before the elections, expressed concern as to the appointment of Carlos Delgado as tourism minister. Now they express contentment, and Delgado, who one might hope might be more willing to throw off the shackles of trade restriction, has announced his intention to collaborate with the hotel sector in making the tourism law more flexible. And one aspect of this is the residential use of tourist establishments. Owned by the hoteliers, I think we can assume this to mean.

Just as is the case with its dealings with the major tour operators, a government in the Balearics, be it PP or PSOE, cannot afford to alienate the hotel sector. If there was hope that the private rental market might be treated more favourably by the new government, then I’m afraid it was probably a forlorn hope. And it will remain one.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

All Fall Down: Balcony diving again

On the “Ultima Hora” website some wag posted a comment under a news item. It read (and I’m translating here): “Balearic tourist promotion. Blue-flag beaches. UNESCO mountain heritage. University Hospital Son Espases (specialists in balconying)”.

You can probably work out what the news item was about. The day after someone died falling out of a hotel in Ibiza, two more didn’t quite bite the dust in terminal fashion: one in Cala Rajada, the other in Sa Coma. I might be inclined to make a not so funny gag about comas in Sa Coma, but I won’t; in any event the one who made the descent suffered relatively minor injuries.

Balconying. Balcony diving. I’ve done the subject before, but it doesn’t stop me doing it again. Another person commented under the news item that it was the “theme of the summer”. Which may be true, but then it was last summer’s theme too. And what a fine theme it is as well. If it weren’t for the case that it can end in tragedy, as it did in Ibiza, then we could all have a jolly good laugh. Actually, we do have a laugh, because what else can you do when you learn of the lack of brain capacity of some visitors to Majorca and the Balearics and the potential for the brain to be permanently lacking as it spills out onto some poolside concrete.

Rather than repeat what has been said before, let’s consider some of the thought processes and justifications that have been forthcoming from the incidents of what may be balcony diving or may be falls as a result of climbing from balcony to balcony.

Instead of just admitting that falls are because someone was mad enough to try and dive into a pool, what you get is some other reason. Not from the police, the paramedics or the hotels, but from the ones who have suffered injuries or from their friends.

One thing about balconies is that they have railings or some other elevated barrier. They are there for a good reason. To stop you falling off. I can think of only two really good excuses as to why anyone might find him or herself on such a barrier. One is that there is a fire. The other is that an axe murderer has broken into the room. Both might require that a certain risk is taken in effecting an escape. Otherwise there isn’t a good excuse.

Nevertheless, you get excuses. The fall was the result of a slip. The hotel was negligent. Neither is satisfactory because they ignore the obvious and seek a justification or to apportion blame. I can give you an example of how this goes.

When one particular incident occurred, I posted something about it onto this blog. This attracted a great number of comments, one coming from someone claiming to be the person who had fallen (and it may well have been this person) and who refuted the idea that it had been a case of balcony diving. The best of all was someone who reckoned that the hotel should be sued.

Do people deliberately fall from balconies as a way of trying to extract compensation? It would be an extreme way to do so, but you can bet your life that compensation and ambulance-chasing legal firms are likely to loom into the equation.

The Ibizan hoteliers’ president has been at pains to point out that the railing at the hotel in Ibiza is of a height that conforms with requirements and that everything possible has been done to prevent the sort of incident which occurred there. But why should he have to make this confirmation? Well, why do you think?

Hotels in Majorca and the Balearics fall foul of compensation claims all the time, and many are spurious. I mentioned all this in an article back in February (“Trying It On”, 22 February). And the poor hotel is normally left with no alternative but to cough up for cases that are brought not in Spain but in the UK or elsewhere. With balcony diving, well, you would deny you’d done this if there was some possibility of getting compensation; not even ambulance-chasers could surely get it to stick if it was admitted, though you wouldn’t put it past them trying. And crazy it would be if the hotel were held liable because someone had been crazy enough to take a dive.

There is such a thing as assuming responsibility, but the notion has become obsolete thanks to the rush to compensatory litigation and to assigning blame when blame resides elsewhere – splattered over a hotel terrace.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Cucumbergate

It is the lot of certain fruit and veg that they imply innuendo. Melons, for example, are something other than melons, while any old two veg, accompanied by meat, take on an entirely different meaning to that of simply being placed on a plate.

Which brings us of course to the cucumber. Its capacity for the comedically prurient was highlighted in the scene in “Benidorm” when Martin, thinking he was coming to Kate’s aid, burst into a bedroom only to discover Mateo, gagged and strapped to the bed, and Donald and Jacqueline preparing the salad.

The swingers would have been handling a Spanish cucumber. Was Mateo’s fate to be to succumb to the E.coli bug? Well no, but had it been, it would have been far worse than what the couple had in mind for him.

There was just a possibility that it wasn’t a Spanish cucumber, but a foreign import. This would, though, have been a remote possibility, because, as we know from the tourism-sustainably correct TUI and others, produce in Benidorm and elsewhere is sourced locally, thus establishing the great benefit of the all-inclusive.

The fuss about the Spanish cucumber, wrongly blamed for Germans dropping like flies, has had its repercussions on this local sourcing. Cucumber’s off in many a hotel, and there has been an 80% fall in sales. The locals, as well as the hotels, are eschewing any chewing on a pepino. Despite Spanish indignation as to German allegations of contaminated veg, one German supermarket proudly announcing that it is stocking no Spanish produce at present, the Spanish themselves have taken the scare to heart as well.

The Germans, and the German media in particular, have form when it comes to making the blame fall mainly on Spain for health scares. Outbreaks of swine flu in Germany a couple of years ago were attributed, with barely any evidence, to a pocket of the virus in Playa de Palma. And so, as with swine flu, Cucumbergate threatens the German tourism market.

Joan Mesquida, the national secretary-general for tourism, has admitted that damage has been done. TUI, however, reckons that German tourism has been unaffected, but you can probably imagine that it will have been firing off emails to all its hotels in Mallorca and Spain telling them not to let a cucumber within a hundred kilometres.

With health scares come the photo-opp ministerial attempts to convince that all is well. The Andalucia minister for agriculture, suitably but perhaps unfortunately trussed up in plastic anti-contaminant attire, has tucked into a pepino for press photographers and cameras. “Mmm, lecker,” she should have been instructed to say, with the footage then supplied to German television. It was her John Selwyn Gummer moment. “Mad cow disease? What mad cow disease?”

Not everyone is convinced though. In an act of solidarity with the Fatherland, Lidl has temporarily stopped stocking cucumbers, including those grown in Mallorca. This, despite the fact that all locally grown pepinos, which mainly come from around Manacor and Porreres, comply with all known sanitary measures.

Cap Rocat
Anyway, moving onto a different subject. The Cap Rocat hotel in Cala Blava, a converted fortress, has been named by the BBC website as one of its five best new hotels of 2011. The accolade for this Mallorcan hotel is welcome, as it is a remarkable hotel which presumably has some remarkable prices as well.

But quite how you arrive at the five best of anything when you have the whole world to choose from is a bit of a mystery. If the BBC’s travel chaps have been jetting off across the globe in search of the best five new hotels, this would be licence-fee-payers’ money well spent, I’m sure you would agree.

Cap Rocat, and its website is as near to it as I will ever get, other than standing outside its gated entrance, is not untypical, in its publicity, of the way in which the simple use of the definite article can create exclusivity. Thus, the website lists “THE water” (not that which you drink, but the “fantastic” and “crystal clear” Med; oh dear, someone’s been at the brochure talk), “THE experiences” (sport), “THE special moments” (private meetings, it would seem). The only part of its offer which isn’t “the” is an article-less gastronomy. No mention of THE cucumber being on the menu though, which is probably just as well.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Great Non-Debate: Tourism spend

Oh no, here we go again; the headline-grabber of tourism spend being up and likely to reach record levels. Why does this garbage refuse to be ignored? It’s difficult to do so, if the statistics office and tourism ministry insist upon shoving it down people’s throats.

The facts, such as they are, are these. Tourism spend in the Balearics during April was up by 35%. For the first four months, it rose by 7%.

If you weren’t paying attention before, let me remind you how this spend statistic is arrived at. The process of information gathering is by questionnaire; some 100,000 interviews at airports, ports and border crossings across Spain being conducted annually. Just think about this for a moment, and how thinly spread the exercise is.

Of the information that is gathered, only two of its five categories actually relate to spend on things other than accommodation, transport and the tourism package. There is, for example, no specific provision for spend in shops; just for restaurants and excursions. On-the-ground spend is limited, therefore, to 40% of the overall statistic (transport can include local spend, but equally it means spend on flights).

The good-news story of the increased spend is not all it seems anyway. An average spend per tourist of 866 euros is still some way lower than what used to be a more regular figure that was quoted, of plus-900. And, as ever, there is a huge discrepancy between what the statistics suggest and the reality.

Various bodies, those representing restaurants and other sectors of the so-called complementary offer, have been quick to point out that this spend is not translating into tills rolling over. Well, it wouldn’t, if much of it is skewed towards things other than the complementary offer.

One has to be careful where the statistics that these bodies produce are concerned as well. When they say that some establishments are suffering 50% falls in revenue, this doesn’t mean that all establishments are (5% appears to be an average). Nevertheless, there has been evidence to suggest that genuine and quite dramatic declines in revenue have been experienced.

The shops are probably the worst-affected sector of the lot, especially the souvenir shops. Yes, there are too many of them, just as there are too many bars and restaurants, but time was when over-supply didn’t really matter. It isn’t only the shops flogging siurells and what have you, but also those selling “different” stuff. One shopowner I know well was suffering an 80% loss at stages of last season, and he is not someone inclined to lapsing into BS.

The blame is, of course, directed at all-inclusives. The restaurant and other bodies have called for a debate within Balearic society to be opened to consider the increase in all-inclusives and the effect they have.

What on earth have they been doing for the past ten years? The trend was clear ages ago, and what precisely would this debate achieve, other than to reiterate everything that has been said about all-inclusives, time and time again? The organisations recognise the power of the tour operators, but still they want a debate. Well, let them. It won’t do much good.

The other great power in the tourism game, the hotels, defending themselves of course, say it is better to have tourists rather than lose them altogether. Which is fair enough, but they are also complaining that tourists aren’t spending money. And why would that be, do you think?

One of the elements of the tourism spend statistic should be looked at especially closely – the tourism package. This doesn’t exclusively mean all-inclusives, but how much are they a factor in this part of the spend (and others) and how much is the on-arrival upgrade to all-inclusive a factor?

To get a handle on spend by all-inclusive tourists, you need to refer back to the research TUI have done in Turkey, the research which revealed that, behind the tour operator’s assertion as to the benefits of all-inclusives, a mere 11% of spend found its way into the local community.

For the tourism spend statistics to ever be more than irrelevant, they need to be more precise and focused, but logistics as well as political expediency will mean that they won’t be. It is the headline of 35% up that is all you are meant to know, not what the figures really represent.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Two-Way Information: Tourist offices which aren’t

When is a tourist office not a tourist office? When it’s not manned by people with any knowledge that might be useful for a tourist.

Last summer, two tents, boasting tourist information, suddenly appeared in different parts of Playa de Muro. How very sensible I thought. The resort occupies a stretch of three to four kilometres in length. At its outer limits, tourists are a fair old schlep away from the town hall’s municipal building which houses the tourist office.

But there was something not quite right about these tents. They were often unoccupied and there was very little by way of information. To help them out, I took some along to one of the tents, even provided a plastic box, purchased at eleven euros, so that stuff didn’t fly away in the breeze; the tents were more canopies than actual tents.

The box disappeared. I was unimpressed both by this and by the general absence of any personnel or information. It doesn’t reflect well on the town, I thought. But I had made an assumption, always a dangerous thing to do, that these tents were part of Muro town hall’s tourism information provision. They weren’t.

The tents were put up by the local hotel association. Their primary purpose was not the giving out of information but its gathering. The hotels were engaging in market research.

There was nothing at all wrong with this; indeed, it was extremely sensible. But a false impression was given. The girls at the tents were disarmingly pretty and charming, but they didn’t have a clue when it came to local information. Which was probably because they weren’t local.

This is not having a dig at the hotel association, as there should be more research performed of tourists once they are in situ, but if, as a tourist, you see something proclaiming to be for tourist information, then that is what you expect it to provide. It was a case not just of reflecting badly on Muro town hall (which had nothing to do with the tents) as also reflecting badly on the cadre of personnel at the front-line of tourist interaction, the staff at the regular tourist offices.

The tourist information offices rarely seem to get much of a mention in the grand tourism scheme, but, from my experiences with offices in the northern part of Mallorca, their staff are knowledgeable, helpful and patient. I take my hat off to them. They do a fantastic job, often under pressure. You try switching between different languages, confronted by a never-ending queue of tourists seeking out information; doing this, day in, day out for several months, rarely getting the chance to take a breather.

It would be understandable, therefore, if this staff were themselves none too impressed by the wannabe tourist offices and the potential for a reputation for helpfulness and knowledge to be undermined.

The wish on behalf of the hotels to undertake some market research was fair enough. Whether the little that seems to be done has much effect is hard to say. Puerto Pollensa has issued a questionnaire for some time now, yet here is a resort which constantly seems to get in the neck for one reason or another. You fancy the results are carefully filed in some dusty archive room and never again see the light of day.

Approaching tourists under the pretext that market research is being done can, however, not be all it seems. The wretched time-share touts of Alcúdia (who mercifully seem not to be around this season) once used this as a tactic; all part, they said, of promotion of the resort. It was utter rubbish of course.

But however market research is done and by whoever, the key to it all is knowing what it is you really find out and asking the right questions. The questionnaire in Puerto Pollensa had such gems as rating, from one to ten, the “price/quality ratio of installations in your accomodation (accommodation spelt incorrectly)”. How are you supposed to answer this, even if you know what it means? What is the point of asking about staff “professionality” (does such a word exist?) in “non-food shopping facilities”?

Tourism market research. Yes, it’s a good idea, but only if it’s done meaningfully and not behind the guise of something else.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

How To Screw Up: Hotels

Here’s a case study for you. Assume it’s still last year, you own a hotel, a fairly small hotel popular for years with British families and firmly “British” in reputation. You get a bit edgy about the way things are, not just with the British tourism market but also with the competition from all-inclusives (you are, at present, a mix of self-catering and board). What do you do? Do you carry on in the same way or do you change completely?

I’m naming neither the hotel nor the resort, but the case study has panned out as follows. The hotel has switched to being primarily German and primarily all-inclusive. It is still possible for British tourists, of which many have been loyal and regular visitors, to book, but the Britishness has gone. The entertainment has changed. It was never grand, but it was homely, constrained by its budget and the domain of someone who was, in many ways, the “face” of the hotel.

British visitors have faced something of a surprise. In addition to the switch in emphasis to being German, which includes a different emphasis when it comes to the food, if they have booked all-inclusive, this hasn’t turned quite as they might have expected.

The hotel, remember, is fairly small. It has a restaurant, but it doesn’t have the facility for providing the sort of food, out of set dining hours, that is commonly associated with all-inclusives: pizzas, chips, burgers from a snack bar. Drink there is, on demand, but the guest is obliged to pay a deposit for his or her glass; a deposit for a plastic glass.

Because there are only set dining-times, if guests arrive after ten in the evening, there is nothing for them. The kitchen can’t be opened. There is no flexibility, despite the guests being all-inclusive.

Not all guests have booked all-inclusive. Those who have come on a self-catering basis are greeted with the possibility of their upgrading, at a daily rate, to all-inclusive. It’s what the hotel wants; it’s what it almost expects. The rooms for those who insist on remaining self-catering have to then have equipment re-installed that had been taken away on the expectation that it wouldn’t be required. The microwave, for instance, has to be put back.

Though primarily German, other nationalities are booked in. In addition to the British, there are the Russians. They are on their way. If the British and Germans don’t always see eye-to-eye, then the Germans and Russians positively detest each other. In a large complex, nationalities are diluted, but in a fairly small hotel, they are not. And they are all-inclusive. Likely to be there, all together, all getting on each other’s nerves.

The hotel, and the season has barely started, seems to realise that it has made an error. It is already considering going back to the board and self-catering mix, abandoning all-inclusive and getting the British back. So why did it take the route it has for this summer?

It panicked. It saw that the British market was struggling, and so looked for more secure markets, the German one mainly. But it leapt too quickly. As things have turned out, the British market has recovered. Not totally, certainly not, but sufficiently, and aided by events in north Africa. It also miscalculated. As a smallish hotel, but with a loyal British following and a good reputation, the British market would probably still have been viable, even if Egypt and Tunisia hadn’t come along.

This case study is informative in many ways, one being a lesson for hotels which, believing they have to jump to the all-inclusive tune, have to be sure they can deliver. This one can’t, not in the way the guest expects it to. It’s too small. Even larger hotels in Mallorca have problems, because they were not designed with all-inclusive in mind.

But more than this, it is informative in acting as a cautionary tale for hotels that would ignore their loyal markets. Apart from the nationality mix, many British guests don’t want all-inclusive. Not everyone does. The worst aspect for the hotel is that the internet will be alive with the sound of its being criticised. It acted in a supremely short-term manner. It didn’t think through the consequences, and now it faces a challenge of recovering a reputation, one that is likely to be damaged more, as we are still only in May.

And more than all this, for guests who have been dissatisfied, it is not just the hotel but also the resort and the island which suffer. “Never again,” said one guest. And never again might mean Turkey in the future. The greatest lesson should be that everyone in tourism is in it together, but they are not. They are in it for themselves, and the rest can go hang.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Taking A Dive: Balcony-diving

One swallow doesn’t make a summer. One swallow dive doesn’t make a summer of balcony-diving. We don’t know for sure that it was a balcony dive, but what we do know is that there will be dives and they will make the summer. They really ought to run a sweep on what the final number will be.

Barely open a week and Alcúdia’s Bellevue registered the first fall of the season. The several pints of Guinness and many a chaser Book Of Records says that this was an early-season record. It was a fairly unspectacular affair, first floor only. At the Aquasol in Palmanova at the weekend, it was a bit more like it. Third floor. Thud.

The occurrences of balcony-diving are avidly greeted by a blood-thirsty and bone-breaking media and by tut-tuttery from various quarters. The Spanish ambassador to Britain even managed to get in on the act last summer when the sport was at its seasonal height. Cheap booze was the issue, he said, thus inadvertently drawing attention to an attraction of Mallorca that many had thought was something of the past. It was good of him to have mentioned it.

So seriously is the problem of balcony-diving taken that warnings are issued. “Do not dive from this balcony as you might get hurt,” or something along these lines. Hurt, and splattered over concrete. It can make a dreadful mess, and not just of the concrete.

But then, what are balconies for if not to jump off of? Admittedly though, and before balcony-diving, they used to merely be base camp for re-enacting the scaling of the north face of the Eiger, as eager, would-be mountaineers clambered from one balcony to another. Without the aid of crampons, similar results were obtained as from balcony-diving, if at slightly lower velocity. Legend are the stories of the balcony climbers, such as the one of an extremely large, not to say fat German whose descent and ultimate collision with terra firma registered on the Richter scale.

In an attempt to limit the number of dives, some hotels are offering an alternative. Bedjumping. Yes, we know you like to come on holiday and jump around, so why not try our beds. Get similarly gargantuan Germans as the ex-balcony climber and the divan on the third floor will soon be a divan on the second floor or even in reception.

Less accommodating is the idea of increasing the heights of barriers and railings. Why not go the whole hog and enclose the balcony with a sheet of perspex? Why not indeed, and wait for the new craze of wearing a crash helmet and smashing through the perspex pre-dive. At least the crash helmet might come in handy when the concrete looms into view.

Or why not just accept that people want to throw themselves off buildings and give them some real sport? Mini cannons on balconies for human cannonballs. “See the Great Gonzo lagered-up tourist take to the skies.” As he is launched into the night sky over Magalluf (or wherever), you will believe that a man can fly.

Mallorca appears to have acquired a reputation as the in-place for balcony-diving. Perhaps it’s something to do with the quality of the balconies; I really couldn’t say. But it is a worldwide sport. In Australia, there is a now former Australian who, only from a first-floor balcony, achieved immortality by proving that he was most definitely mortal. In Florida, the climbing of balconies is now illegal and punishable with a fine. What a good idea. As me laddo prepares for a back one-and-half somersault, there would be the forces of the law writing out a ticket. “You can’t move the body until the fine’s been paid. That’ll be a hundred euros.”

Though the injuries and deaths create the headlines, balcony-diving is not supposed to be some suicidal kamikaze leap onto solid terracing. The intention is to land in water, as in a pool. But here’s the real madness. Why on earth would you do this in April, in a late April such as the one Mallorca has not been enjoying? Dive into a pool right now and you’d die of hypothermia. Some people really have no sense.

Oh, and if someone does fancy starting a sweep or a book, I think I’ll have, erm … well, it won’t be one or two, that’s for sure.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Feels Like Team Spirit

Easter is here and tourists are flocking in. They come expecting sun and what do they find? Oh well, never mind. What they also find is an abasement of language. While some words – gay, pants, sad – acquire additional meanings, some do not move on, but become un-words. There is no word that is as un-wordly as “team”. Yet, the poor tourist will find him and herself surrounded by, confronted by, greeted by, wished by, served by teams. Tour operators have teams, hotels have teams, even some bars have teams.

“Your so-and-so team.” We will be here to attend to your every need, we will be as one. One for all and all for one. We will all adhere to principles of the highest standards of customer service and will work to the greater good of the company we represent with shoulders-back, chest-out pride.

That’s what you are meant to believe. That’s what “team” is meant to mythically convey. It is of course managerialist doublespeak. The word means nothing of the sort, because it hardly ever means any of the above. It is an un-word.

Put two people together and you have a team. Put more than two people together and you also have a team. Actually, you don’t. What you have are more than one person as part of a pair or a group. You do not have a team. But by saying that you do, you seek to convince customers – tourists – and probably also yourself, that you are somehow guided by some light of righteousness that will indeed attend to the every need. Team is an un-word and it is usually complete drivel.

There didn’t used to be teams, except on a sports field. When management consultants realised that there were some new wads to be made, they delved into the world of sport and found that there were teams. They then highlighted examples of great teams. Liverpool FC of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the New Zealand rugby team under David Kirk in 1987, and others. They divined the factors that made for teams.

Shared objectives and goals, clearly defined responsibilities but also flexibility, clear lines of communication, total support from a leadership figure, the right systems, the right training, the right mix of abilities and skills. These were some of the factors, and some organisations set about putting them in place. They were not wrong to do so, and nor had the consultants been wrong to invent these factors. Away from the sports fields, some teams did emerge, but for the most part they were teams by name alone. Puffery, gloss, delusion and misrepresentation. Un-teams.

“You will be a team-player,” usually in a fast-moving and dynamic environment. Thus chants the recruitment ritual, and so the tourist, in the hotel, at the airport or wherever will be in the hands of just such a team-player, even if he or she isn’t and hasn’t the faintest idea what it means. But they will have said they are, because what else are they supposed to say. “No, I am a socially-inadequate loser with psychotic tendencies.”

Teams, team-players. They are lost in lexicography. But are found in teams because someone has said that they are teams and probably have the t-shirt or the uniform to prove it. And like sports teams, they will even have their names to add to the impression. Your reception team, your entertainment team, your kiddies-club team, your kitchen team, your toilet-cleaning team. They will smile from display units and will be teams.

Why do they do it? Partly because team is an un-word, one used by default and one now demanded by convention. But used properly, as in the concept of the team is applied correctly, then it can be powerful in delivering true service. Some businesses locally do deliver this, sometimes systematically perhaps and sometimes by luck or instinct. They do actually employ people who are genuinely team-players. They themselves have good team leaders. And more often than not, they are the ones which don’t puff themselves up behind the “team” facade. They do it anyway.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.