Getting Into An I Pad-dy: Newspapers

I Pad, U Pad, Wii Pad. We all Pad together.

Unfortunately, for Apple and for newspaper and magazine publishers, we don’t. We may in some distant future. But for now, we pad as a small minority.

The publishers are ambivalent to this future. They would happily dispense with one of their biggest cost bases – printing – but they are no nearer creating a business model that satisfactorily digitalises and monetises hard copy into oblivion. Ah but the iPad will be that model. Some might think so; some, like Steve Jobs, would hope so. But the mere newspaper-reading mortal continues to be a Steve Unjobsworthy who hasn’t become an Apple organisation man and hasn’t been commanded by the contemporary tablets of stone, the ostentatiously styled modern miracle of the iPad tablet and its peers.

There’s bad news for newspaper publishers; good news for publishers of magazines. PriceWaterhouseCoopers have reported that whereas revenue from digital magazines is set to “sky rocket”, thanks to the iPad, sales of subscriptions of newspapers in this digital form will not be sufficient to offset the fall in print sales.

The iPad is many things, but essentially, for many of its products, its newspaper products, it is merely a digital replacement of the hard copy. The hype, and that also for the iPhone, the Android and any other current-day trickery you care to mention, outstrips the reality. There are many, many users of course. But this doesn’t mean that newspapers will suddenly disappear. As pointed out by the UK firm Enders Analysis: “Ten million pay for a daily newspaper in the UK. They spend roughly 30 pounds a month each. There will not be 10 million people spending 30 pounds a month on the iPad any time soon”.

In a way, the iPad is an experiment, as is much digital and internet publishing. It is worthwhile playing with, but it is only one aspect of the digital future. Newspaper publishers who see it as the only holy grail of a prosperous non-print new world are seriously deluding themselves. Experiments need to be conducted in different ways, and one is to create a wholly new product (or products) with its own revenue stream. It’s thinking out of the box, but the fear is that publishers will be seduced into boxing themselves solely inside the iPad tablet box.

All of which brings us to the “Majorca Daily Bulletin”. It is now iPad-able, online in full. At a price. Part of a service under the non-snappy moniker of Kioskoymas, through which we are told “the most complete offer of press of quality” is available, the Bulletin is the only English paper in what is an online iPad-oriented system for Spanish newspaper and magazine publishers. A bizarre aspect of this service, were you minded to want to subscribe to the paper, is that you would need to read Spanish. Obviously you would. They’re not going to have an English version to guide you through the online registration and payment process when the service is meant to be for Spanish readers.

And subscription is a not unimportant element. Getting the punter to buy a month or more ahead does wonders for cash planning in the uncertain digital world but it runs counter to consumer psychology. Subscriptions to hard-copy newspapers have only ever been a small part of publishers’ businesses. Readers habitually buy daily, a truism for a daily publication. Why would you stump up in advance when you haven’t in the past? News International is facing this conundrum along with other more pressing matters.

A solution is an incentive. Yet from what I can make out, unless you have a multiple subscription, i.e. to at least more than one title through Kioskoymas, you pay the going rate. And unless you, as an English reader, are inclined to also read Spanish papers or even able to, then you are not going to have a multiple subscription. Moreover, a month seems to be the minimum subscription period, this being unlike other services which enable you to pay daily.

And one of these services is Orbyt. This was launched last year and features “El Mundo”, “La Razón” and other Spanish papers as well as magazines. So Kioskoymas is a rival and a less elegant one than Orbyt, if the websites of the two services are anything to go by. The competition with Orbyt is probably quite significant. The Bulletin is part of the Grupo Serra stable, of which “Ultima Hora” is its biggest-selling paper. And “Ultima Hora” is a competitor with the Balearics version of “El Mundo”. For it to have an iPad presence as a rival makes sense, and you wonder if this is the main reason why The Bulletin is now iPad-able; it has been bundled in, but it is “Ultima Hora” that really matters.

The Bulletin might gain from this service, it might not, but fundamentally it cannot be seen as the be all and end all, and this is the message for any newspaper publisher. The iPad is basically a means of cannibalising the product. It is a replacement technique more than it is a new-product technique and it is the latter that publishers need to work on.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Henry The Seventh: Social media success

Do you “like”? Do you “tweet”? Do you tube? Does your business do any or all of these things and, if so, does it really know what it is doing with them?

Social media. Social networks. Once upon a time, social networks were just networks of people, doing what people do, i.e. being social, being friends, being business acquaintances. Whatever the type of network, the purpose is the same: to make contact and connections.

And that’s what it’s about. “Making connections.” The words of Seamus Cullen at No Frills Excursions when I told him I was going to be talking to his business partner, Toni Alenyar, about social media.

No Frills is a small business, but it is a successful one, and one reason why it is successful is that it goes about its business in a purposeful fashion. It plans. And among its plans is one for the use of social media. I have a copy: all fourteen pages of it.

Not every business can devote significant time and resources to social media, but most have come to appreciate that they are, as Toni says, “essential tools”. Many businesses have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and the like, but do they really appreciate what they are doing with them?

No Frills is guided by a seven-step strategy. It is one that is partly specific to it as an excursions’ operator, but most of the steps can be applied to or adapted by any business. How the company uses social media is geared to meeting one or more of these seven steps. Crucially, they are not the company’s, they are the customer’s.

From the customer’s seeking of holiday inspiration and information to his planning and decision-making, to his taking action (making a booking and travelling) and to his sharing of his experiences, social media accompany each step along the way.

No Frills tests out any social media going. With some it is a case of learning what they offer and which may assume greater importance in the future. But with all its social media activity, there is a wish for the business to be visible, to enhance its reputation and to be seen as innovative.

Of the different networks, the most important to the company are Facebook, You Tube and Trip Advisor. The glowing reviews that No Frills attracts on Trip Advisor come quite obviously as a result of good experiences and good service, but the company actively encourages customers to review what it does, whether good or not so good, and spends time in responding to reviews which are posted.

The sharing of experiences by customers on Trip Advisor is the seventh step in the company’s strategic approach, but it can just as easily be seen as the first step. As Toni points out, Trip Advisor is that significant now that a majority of travellers consult it as part of their initial planning.

The attention given to the traveller’s information-gathering process is one that has led No Frills to be highly proactive and innovative. For example, it now makes short videos about hotels and posts them on You Tube. Why? Because someone interested in coming on holiday searches for information about specific hotels. No Frills videos give a short tour of the hotel and other relevant information about the resort, and relevance is a keyword in Toni’s vocabulary.

But how does this benefit the business? It’s not about selling as such. Of course, selling is the outcome that is sought, but it comes back to making connections. Someone sees a video about a hotel, it comes from No Frills, there will be some means of connecting to more No Frills information and the result … There may be a sale either online or in-resort. Critically though, trust and credibility are being created.

Actually quantifying the benefits of the company’s social media activity is nigh on impossible. Toni freely admits this. But then much promotional activity is hard or impossible to quantify. It is hard to place a value on the benefits derived from visibility, reputation and innovation, but social media, used well and planned well, will bring such benefits, and the importance attached to social media by No Frills is reflected by the fact that there is now a full-time member of staff who concentrates on the company’s internet presence.

There is way more to the No Frills internet story. I’ve not mentioned how Google search enquiries have helped to create a whole separate website, I’ve not mentioned that each of the four No Frills offices (three in Puerto Alcúdia and one in Puerto Pollensa) has its own You Tube channel, and I’ve not mentioned Henry the elephant. You might guess though that Henry has his own Facebook page.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Have I Got Videos For You

“This week’s odd-one-out round. Paul and Jon, your four are Harold “Hype” Williams, some happy slappers from West Bromwich, the MKTGONLINEIB and the Iberostar Alcúdia Park hotel, Playa de Muro, Mallorca.”

“Is it the? What did you call it? The Muckt-gon-lee-nee-aye-bee? Is it the only one who looks like a robot which looks like it could do with getting out more?”

“No, actually it’s the Iberostar Alcúdia Park hotel, Playa de Muro, Mallorca. Shall I tell you why?”

“No thanks.”

“Well, I’ll tell you anyway. It’s the only one that doesn’t make videos, but has videos made of it. In fact, there is one about it that appears at the top of the list of other videos to watch on YouTube next to this edition of ‘Have I Got News For You’, assuming you are watching S40E01 extended parts one to three and probably also assuming that you are watching it in Playa de Muro.”

“And why’s that exactly? Just because you’re watching this particular show and because you’re in – where’s that place called again?”

“Playa de Muro. It’s in Mallorca.”

“Is it really. But that doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m not sure why.”

“But you play Sherlock Holmes, you should know why.”

“They didn’t have YouTube in my, erm, in Holmes’s day. I think it’s to do with intelligently figuring out the location of the user or something like that.”

“Intelligent!? But if you’re in this place, whatever it’s called …”

“Playa de Muro. It means the beach of the wall.”

“In the beach of the wall, why would you want to know about a tourist hotel? You’re not going to stay in it, if you’re already there.”

“That’s a very good question.”

“Yea, I know. That’s why I asked it.”

“In fact, the video is in Spanish as well. And I don’t think this show has many Spanish viewers.”

“So it’s not intelligent at all, then.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t.”

“So, why did you say it was, then? And this MKTGONLINEIB, how do we know it’s a robot?”

“We don’t. In fact it’s probably a person.”

“A robot’s a person!? What is this? The return of the Borgs or something?”

“It’s the name that appears under the video. The poster I think you call it. Or him. Or her. Anyway, shall we move on?”

“Yes, let’s.”

The above is of course made up, but is intended to raise a question about promotional videos and the like that are placed on the internet. Why would you, if you were in Playa de Muro, as in I was when I was watching the “Have I Got News For You” video, or anywhere else for that matter, be interested in a tourist hotel that’s just up the road? I assume the video was placed because location was detected. But what’s the good of that?

And this, if you’re interested, is the video in question.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Underground, Overground, Infrastructure Isn’t Free

It is easy to forget just how much Mallorca has developed in a relatively short period of time. The island’s “industrial revolution” is not even 50 years old; mass tourism in terms of massive tourism across Mallorca didn’t become fact until the ’70s. It is unsurprising, perhaps, that the infrastructure to support this revolution has taken time to become a reality.

Gas, natural gas, is the latest infrastructure development. The connection from the mainland came on-stream in late 2009. One of the things holding up the creation of the network is the inevitable process of getting agreement from all parties, not least owners of land who will be affected by the installation of pipes. The first phase of taking the gas into the regions, from Palma to Andratx, has run up against exactly this obstacle.

Objections are not solely being made on grounds of environmental disruption. There is also the safety angle, and the objections seem bizarre, quaint even, for those of us used for years to natural gas in the UK. Local fears are of the unknown, of the new-fangled. Yet, you couldn’t get much more old-fangled than what natural gas would ultimately put an end to – butane supply. Natural gas would have an enormous benefit not just because of its convenience; it would mean an end to hernias and pulled back muscles. The “butaneros” of Mallorca may find themselves out of a job, and so may many a chiropractor.

Natural gas would have an additional benefit, that of putting a stop to the butane scams. Two separate actions by the police forces are currently ongoing. For this reason alone, the arrival of natural gas will be a huge bonus, as it will also be if it means not seeing the flames flicker and then go out on the hob and having to go outside in a howling gale and horizontal rain in order to mess around with changing the gas bottle.

The supply of gas has not, as yet, run up against a different obstacle, one facing electricity cabling from the mainland. How exactly does it happen that a town hall, Sagunto in this instance, can suddenly turn round and say that the supplier, Red Eléctrica, does not have permission to occupy land in the mainland municipality and also has to pay a tax in order to continue work on laying the cable to the Balearics? The how probably has something to do with this latter aspect. Some bright spark at the town hall eyes up the opportunity for some extra revenue.

Whatever the infrastructure development, there is some hassle associated with it. A new road, such as the so-called “via conectora” in Palma to take some strain off of the creaking road system around the city, becomes mired in objections. The siting of train lines encounter similar squabbles. Re-development of Playa de Palma, ditto. It makes you wish for the old days when a Franco-esque official would have come along one day, nailed the order for works to commence to the head of a passing peasant and the next day sent in the boys with the shovels.

And back then, whatever was built would have been as cheap as chips. Today? How much might we end up paying for natural gas? Don’t bank on it being cheap. Don’t bank on it being operated in a fashion that might be competitive and with the consumer first in mind.

Telecommunications are another element of infrastructure which has come on in leaps and bounds. Sort of. Time was, really not so long ago, the start of the ’90s, that parts of the island weren’t able to moan about Telefonica because they had no lines to moan about. Parts of the island still can’t, because phone lines can’t be laid across some of it. But where it is, the service is neither inexpensive nor satisfactory. Let me give you a personal example.

For some time there has been a problem with my ADSL. It has finally emerged that I have been paying for three megabytes (only three) which cannot be adequately supplied because of the distance I am from the exchange. I have, in fact, been getting little more than one megabyte. The internet provider, Orange, does at least see my argument, that perhaps I am entitled to some form of recompense.

Regardless of this, internet provision is absurdly expensive. And one also has the honour of forking out for Telefonica’s line rental when the phone itself is barely used. This rental brings you to another sort of rental, that of the “potencia” contract for electricity supply.

Can anyone explain this to me? It seems to have no rhyme nor reason, other than to stuff the coffers of Endesa. It was not something I paid much attention to (I seem to be one of the few people in Mallorca never to have had much of a problem with electricity bills, while my “potencia” is low) until some correspondence I received and some checking with neighbours highlighted the apparent iniquities with this charge, to say nothing of why it is made in the first place.

Yes, Mallorca has developed greatly in a relatively short period of time. Developed in terms of constant objections, expense, uncompetitiveness and the Heath Robinson; current-day utilities don’t get much more Heath Robinson than faffing around with a butane bottle. Not yet 50 years of industrial revolution. In another 50, they may just have got round to something like reasonably priced efficiency.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

I’ll Be Watching You

Watch out! I’m watching you. I’m watching you in a bar. I’ll be coming but you won’t know me. I’ll be sitting there, watching. I am the eyes of the government, the tax office, the social security, employment. I’ll be in your bar.

The tax office, along with the other departments, is stepping up its efforts. “An aggressive plan” against the black economy, the absence of papers or the papers not quite right. More inspections. Checking on those claiming dole, but receiving a wage. Checking on everything, including the importing of goods from Asia and elsewhere.

When the money’s tight, the government does what it can to ensure its revenue stream. Quite reasonably so. But when money’s tight, the propensity for rule-bending increases. It is the vicious circle of crisis.

The checks are not out of the ordinary. They happen all the time. Just that they’re going to be increased. That “aggressive plan”. Watching and waiting.

The watching happens in different ways. There’s the watching on the internet. For some time, websites with accommodation to rent have been paid particular attention to, especially websites of British origin. The tourism ministry has netted some apartments in Calvia. The fines can be as high as 30,000 euros. The ministry’s inspectors paid a visit to one apartment, all perfectly well turned out, cleaned, with the use of pool and garden. 4,500 euros to rent. Except it wasn’t quite legal. Others offer even more, such as transfer to and from the airport. Who’s doing the transferring?

This watching of websites and of accommodation intensified a couple of years ago. The checking of apartments and villas for quality, safety and tax was not new, just that the level of effort increased and the technology was made greater use of. You wondered whether it would have much effect. It would appear that it has. There is the vicious circle of renting, though. The hoops and obstacles of trying to be legit, only to come up against the impossible barriers. Not everyone wants to do it improperly. But not everyone can do it properly. So the watching continues and becomes more intense.

There’s the watching on the roads. The director-general of Tráfico was in Palma not so long ago. More controls are planned. More promotion of the risks of speed and of being distracted, but more potential for revenue, you would have to imagine. Again, not unreasonably though. And then there is also the automated watching. The new radars. They’re not watching. Not yet. More investment is needed to make them work.

They need to step up the controls, not just to stop speed, drink-driving and “distractions” (playing with mobiles, sat-navs etc.) but also to compensate for the loss of revenue during what was something of a work-to-rule by traffic police last summer. The number of fines fell by 15% along with a reduction in the number of vehicles that were stopped, albeit, however, that during the first half of last year as a whole the number of drivers caught for drink-driving went up by a staggering 114%.

Watching employees, watching the number of chairs on terraces, watching the needle on a music limiter, watching the PRs, watching the space occupied by sunbeds on a beach. Now watching the smokers. Maybe there are even detectives watching the detectives.

All this watching has its value. Calvia, when setting its budget for this year, placed an amount on what it anticipates coining in through fines. Maybe local authorities all do this, wherever they are. Maybe it is a part of “good” public financial management. I confess it had never occurred to me that local government or any other government income might actually take into account what comes in by way of fines.

Revenue from fines, you might think, would simply be the jam on the other revenue. The bonus. It would seem not. But by formalising the outcomes of all the watching, giving it a number in the accounts, it is as though it institutionalises wrong-doing. The expectation is to break the law. Human nature being what it is, then maybe this is a pragmatic approach. Yet it is a system which appears set up for social failure as it undermines the psychological contract of reciprocity between authority and citizen, the latter afforded the role of the unscrupulous, whoever the citizen might be.

And all the while, the citizen does his or her own watching. That of the politicians and others in positions of authority or in positions within businesses with close connections to these authority figures doing their own fiddling.

The whole world’s watching. Each other. In Mallorca, at any rate.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Money Isn’t Everything: Tourism promotion

Something rather odd has been happening. Prospects for this summer’s tourism are looking good. It’s not just the regional government saying so, the tourism industry is also confident.

This may not be odd when you consider factors such as increased prices in competitor destinations and events in Tunisia, but it is when you add in one further element, or rather its absence. Promotion. The government’s promotion.

As mentioned yesterday, haggling is still going on in governmental circles as to what exactly the budget for promotion will be. Though the tourism agency (ATB) announced a couple of weeks ago that it will be assigning 22 million euros, precise spend and therefore precise plans have yet to be agreed.

Despite this, we are presented with evidence painting a rosy picture for this coming season. Which leads you to question the role of the government’s promotion. There hasn’t been any, yet there are optimistic noises.

Regular are the calls for more government money to be spent on tourism promotion and for television campaigns. Regular also are the links made between a failure to spend, a failure to engage in high-impact campaigns and a future of dwindling tourism in the face of international competition. Far less regular are any suggestions that this promotional spend and these campaigns may not make massive amounts of difference.

You can point to any number of reasons as to why the noises are optimistic, and one of them is reliability. It may not be an exciting message, but for a tourism market which is generally less than adventuresome and wishes only to be guaranteed reasonable value for money, then Mallorca can satisfy this wish. It doesn’t necessarily need to offer excitement, especially as, as a “brand”, one built up over many years, its attributes are well-enough known.

When promotion is spoken about, it tends to be done so in terms of headlining advertising, such as that involving Rafael Nadal. But this advertising is only part of the promotional equation. Its value lies as much with creating “front of mind” or reinforcing a message to the punter as it does with creating significant new business. Just as important is what goes on that is largely hidden, for example the co-operative campaigns between the government and the tour operators.

When the tourism minister Barceló was threatening to remove funding for such co-operation with Thomas Cook when it started deducting 5% from what it owed hotels, she was playing politics. It would never have been done, as to have done so would have been a case of cutting off her nose to spite Mallorca’s face.

What is overlooked when it comes to tourism promotion is the sheer volume of it that is done on the government’s behalf. The government has its own websites, but how many others are out there doing promotion that is as good if not better? In addition to tour operators and villa agencies, there are numerous websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts, apps for mobiles all doing their bit. Where the government has been missing a trick is in not engaging with this informal resource that does so much work for it.

The internet has totally transformed tourism promotion and, for the most part, it is considerably less expensive than television or glossy print advertising. Criticisms of the style of headlining advertising, of the Nadal type, or of its absence miss the point that its value is greatly exaggerated within the mix of media and the vast number of sources of information and promotion that are available to the tourist.

Shortage of funding for the government’s tourism promotion is, in one respect, a positive. Or will be if it has the effect of making the tourism agencies think more carefully about how they use the different tools that exist in order to get their message across. Having a huge budget does not guarantee anything other than potentially wastefully expensive, “vanity” campaigns, the returns on which are difficult if not impossible to calculate. The Nadal campaign was an example of “ego” advertising; not Nadal’s ego but that of the person responsible for commissioning it.

Altogether less glamorous are the associations with the tour operators, travel agencies and online brokers; the optimisation of websites and the working with those who are performing a task for tourism promotion; the tourism delegations, especially those in the newer markets. They are less glamorous but they are more meaningful.

So if it turns out there isn’t some expensive TV campaign, it shouldn’t be considered a failure. It might just actually be the most sensible thing the tourism ministry has done.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Have Your Say: Balearic Government opinion seeking

The Balearic Government is giving people their say. An internet campaign that goes under the title of “tú tienes la palabra” offers the possibility to cast opinions as to various initiatives undertaken by the government. The very use of the familiar, informal “you” form (“tú”) gives the campaign the air of consultant-led marketing puffery styled in the language of the intimate; citizens are the government’s friends. Of course they are.

It’s all a bit of catch-up. Together with the informality, it is designed to make the government appear inclusive and to make the citizen participative. It’s an approach that has been doing the rounds for years, one that sprang up in the US and which was couched in the managerialist vocabulary of the consultant – accountability, social responsibility, customer-focussed, stakeholder. It has taken it’s time to catch on in the Balearics where the notion of citizen participation has only recently started to be given some prominence or respect.

If you are inclined to, you can visit the part of the government’s website that enables opinion to be cast – balearsopina.caib.es. There you will find the various initiatives, new ones appearing on a daily basis. Anything from support for immigration to cultural promotion to statistical information that the government pumps out and to the politics of language. An interesting aspect of all this, where I’m concerned at any rate, is that I seem to have written about most of them at some point; some of them on many an occasion.

Whilst the drive towards inclusiveness and participation is not in itself unwelcome, certain questions arise. One is how much interest there is. The answer, given the number of responses to questions regarding initiatives already posted, is not very much. The campaign started on 10 December. Only now is information regarding it surfacing in the media, probably in recognition of the fact that there has been so little response. There isn’t a lot of point in inviting opinion and not telling anyone that you wish to. Perhaps further opinion should be invited as to how well the government (and other public bodies) publicise things. I think we know what the answer would be.

A second question is what happens with the information. The fear is that it will simply add to one of the initiatives, that of statistical information provision. Percentages will be released in great abundance to the press who will slavishly reproduce them, and this will be the end of it. There will be an appearance of involvement and no more.

This government campaign is not the only attempt at getting citizens to participate or to voice opinion. Pollensa town hall, for example, invites comments and suggestions. You send them by email. And then? Who knows. One can guess at the sort of thing that they will include, as they are voiced often enough. Dog mess, street cleaning and so on. For a town hall that took little practical notice of some thousand people marching in the streets of Puerto Pollensa to complain about town hall neglect, you would have to wonder what notice they would take of emails from “disgusted of the Moll”. The town hall now has its perfect response in any event, having finally got round to rolling out its 800 grands’ worth of annual contract for new cleaning equipment combined with satellite positioning technology to show where is being cleaned and which the citizenry of Pollensa will eventually be able to consult via the town hall’s website.

A third question that arises, or would were there any real interest in this government campaign, is the potential for manipulation. Not by government but by respondents. The weakness of online voting and opinion is the same weakness that one gets with text voting. It is a weakness that stems from a strength of both the internet and SMS: that of whipping up support, be it for an “X Factor” contestant, a Sports Personality or a political initiative. The democracy of inviting opinion, of quasi-referendums via new technologies, is to also invite the tyranny of minorities masquerading as majorities. It is the modern-day take on John Stuart Mill’s tyranny of the majority in a democracy, without even the certainty that it is a majority view.

For the moment, however, there is no fear that this will occur with the government’s campaign. So uninterested does the Balearics citizen appear to be in voicing his or her opinion that in one poll – on equality and women – a question as to the prioritisation of a protocol for detecting, preventing and drawing attention to sexist violence drew precisely no responses.

If the government is serious about citizen participation and counselling public opinion then it needs to rethink its online campaign and probably relaunch it with much stronger publicity and a message that you don’t just have your say; your opinion will actually matter.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Closing Down? Illegal downloading in Spain

I have a confession to make. I have never illegally downloaded a movie or a song from the internet.

Boy, you don’t know how it feels to get this off my chest. I have been living with the shame of being a download-denier for years. I know that my ‘fessing up could mean my being shunned by friends or family, but this is a cross I have to bear.

You have to ask why I have been a denier. In Spain of all places. Spain which is the most lax country in the European Union when it comes to tackling internet piracy. It is a haven for the dodgy downloader and also, therefore, for download “re-sellers”.  And these are not just the lookies. So lax is Spain and so high is the level of downloading by Spanish users that the country has been put on a blacklist by the US Congress. Production companies are wary about distributing original material in Spain.

Some years ago, Singapore sought to legitimise itself in the eyes of the international community by getting to grips with what was rampant piracy and counterfeiting. It was of a different type – fake Rolex, Gucci, Lacoste and so on. There were shops that taxi-drivers would take you to. The windows were papered over. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim never to have obtained pirated goods. The Lacoste t-shirts from Singapore made excellent Christmas presents. The day after I’d been to one shop, the front page of the local equivalent of “The Bulletin” ran with the story of a police raid. On that very shop. I must have missed it by moments.

Singapore did legitimise itself. Spain has been facing similar demands to get its act straight when it comes to downloading. Which is why for much of this year the passage of the so-called “Sinde” law has been staggering through parliament.

Named after the culture minister, Ángeles González-Sinde, the law was tagged onto a much more wide-ranging one, that of the “sustainable economy”. This alone created confusion, a not uncommon facet of Spanish law-making. Months after it was meant to have been enacted, Sinde’s law has just reached its final parliamentary stages in the Spanish Congress.

The law has not looked to emulate the route in the UK, that of cutting off the internet connections of habitual illegal downloaders and file-sharers. Quite right, too. The UK’s solution is absurd. Instead, Spain would block or close down websites which offer illegal film and music downloads and free sports programmes that would otherwise be on subscription. Any decision to do so would still be subject to authorisation by a commission for intellectual property.

Getting to a vote has been a tortuous process as it has involved negotiations by the PSOE ruling administration with the multitude of parties which exist in parliament, the Catalonian CiU and the Basque PNV having been particularly crucial. There has been a reluctance to support the measure, and this stems, one has to presume, from what is a strong desire not to limit freedom of information. There has also been the added confusion of elements of the sustainable economy law that have nothing to do with the downloading element and which have been used as bargaining tools. You wonder why the Sinde law couldn’t have been dealt with separately.

The law has also attracted the mavericks of cyberspace. Websites for the PSOE, Congress and others have been attacked in the days and hours leading up to the vote. The Anonymous group, which has been behind attacks on PayPal and Visa in light of the WikiLeaks furore, has been prominent in activating the Spanish attacks.

The point about the Sinde law, other than any notion of limiting freedom of information, is that it would probably have very little effect, especially for those internet users who understand a bit about file-sharing. Furthermore, closing websites down does not mean that new ones might not emerge, and recourse to a commission on intellectual property opens up the field to all manner of potential legal challenges by websites. The law could actually be a minefield.

And then there is the question as to whether it is sensible to legislate at all, which brings into play the whole issue as to what the internet stands for as well as the costs of trying to prevent piracy. In a way it’s a bit like the war on drugs. Vast amounts of money and resources go into fighting drugs, but to what end? The scale of downloading and sharing in Spain is enormous – one in three users is said to regularly share copyrighted material – and this despite the fact that, in the Balearics as an example, the number of homes with internet connections isn’t as widespread as you might think; only 56% of homes in the Balearics have one.

The other way of looking at this is that downloading, illegal or not, could be set to become even more enormous. For the meantime though, it’s carry on downloading – illegally. Why? Because the passing of Sinde’s law has failed. By two votes. All the horse-trading and it still couldn’t be passed. You never know, maybe I’ll join the rest and download with impunity. Until, that is, the Senate tries to ratify it in January, but don’t bank on this.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Enjoy Your Trip: Review websites

Do you use TripAdvisor? Do you post reviews to it? Do you take notice of reviews on the site? Do you put reviews on other sites or are you guided by what others might say? Are your reviews potentially defamatory? Do you know that, in the UK at any rate, you might end up facing legal action if you do so?

The fight back has started. At a so-called “masterclass” in London, arranged by TripAdvisor with the intention of showing hotel and restaurant owners how they can make the most of the website, the whole thing turned into something of a fiasco – those owners expressing their anger as to how TripAdvisor goes about its business.

In fact the fight back started some while ago. In the UK, since 2008, misleading reviews, i.e. those which, for example, come from a hotel itself and masquerade as independent opinion, can be subject to naming and shaming by trading standards or even court action. It hasn’t helped that much. There are PR companies who will sort out good reviews, there are hotel or restaurant businesses who will give “incentives” to get good reviews. There can also be a whole load of family and friends only too happy to oblige. Users of sites – consumers, travellers – are being taken in.

Then there are the negative reviews. TripAdvisor says that it has ways of combatting them and it points out that has its “owners centre” through which responses can be made to negative comments, but this hasn’t satisfied owners who have seen their businesses’ reputations being dragged through the mud of cyberspace. The anger has given rise to the anti-TripAdvisor site – ihatetripadvisor.org.uk. The power of the negative review is such that owners can be subject to blackmail in order to stop bad comments.

TripAdvisor is singled out because it is the biggest and best-known of the review sites. It isn’t the only one of course. Far from it. There are so many reviews, opinions and comments plastered across Lord knows how many websites, it is a wonder that anyone has the time to ever go to a restaurant or take a holiday as they are spending so much of it on reading what can be misleading, malicious, ill-informed, gushing, potentially fraudulent. The wonder is that anyone takes any notice of any of it, given how unreliable it seems.

Recommendations from “real” people can be hugely powerful, as indeed can criticisms. This is why so much prominence is granted to sites such as TripAdvisor. The Spanish director of the site revealed earlier this year that a well-known but unnamed hotelier places more importance on the opinions expressed rather than the categorisation system that TripAdvisor has.

But the potential for abuse is enormous. Which is why a group of 700 businesses is considering a group defamation action against TripAdvisor, and why individuals can be liable to action against themselves if they’re not careful.

There is now advice being given to site users so that they can try and sort out the reliable and honest wheat from the ill-formed or misleading chaff. One piece of advice is that if several reviews all make similar observations, then the information should be ok. Maybe so, but there is an undeniable tendency to the me-too about much that is posted. It is the curious psychology of online communities, one of reinforcement. One person slags off or praises to the hilt and others follow my leader; they don’t want to be left out. And the reverse psychology, as it were, occurs when someone takes umbrage at this groupthink, which can then have the effect of reinforcing even further the initial line of argument. How dare anyone disagree?

I have recently seen a particular restaurant coming in for some harsh comment. As it so happened I was at another restaurant, two doors down from the one in the spotlight. I mentioned to someone who works there that the restaurant more or less next door has got a poor reputation. “Really? I like it. Food’s always good. It’s always packed. People wait on the street to get a table.” And this was from someone who is a chef in a rival establishment. Go figure.

The worst aspect of all this isn’t that a business can be brought to the point of ruin by bad reviews, deliberately arranged or just because, well, the place is no good or, for whatever reason, people don’t like it. This is bad enough. But more than this is the fact that we now seem incapable of making choices of our own. Everything is decided for us. By people we have never met, who don’t know what we really like, but in whom we invest colossal and utterly ludicrous amounts of credibility. Which country we might go to, which resort in a country, which hotel in a particular resort, which restaurant or bar, which this, that or the next thing.

Why bother going on holiday any longer? You can just stay at home and spend your week or fortnight reading the reviews. About as exciting as being on holiday, given that the spirit of adventure or the unknown has been lost. And even if you do go on holiday, how do you spend your time? Must tell everyone how good/bad it is. Go to sites x, y and z. “Hotel’s brilliant/rubbish. Restaurant’s outstanding/awful. Resort is fantastic/dreadful.”

Once upon a time holidays were there to be enjoyed. Of course there were bad experiences. So you never went back. Of course travellers and consumers did not have the “empowerment” of the internet to voice their discontent or their praise. Fair enough, but behind any comment, good or bad, can you be really sure as to its authenticity, as to how accurate it might be, as to how simply nasty it might be? You can’t. Information isn’t everything, and nor is having the whole trip advised.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Kissing With Confidence: Embracing Facebook

The Pope is to be confronted by a kiss-in – a “queer kissing flashmob” – when he turns up in Barcelona on Sunday. A gay and lesbian demonstration will involve two minutes of slobbering. “Avert your eyes, Holy Father. They’re using tongues and all.”

This is part of what is an ongoing collapse of Catholicism in Spain. The rearguard, die-hard Catholics are said to be outraged. Which is presumably part of the reason for the kiss protest. What the Pope thinks about it, who knows. Not that keen, one would imagine. He probably won’t be videoing it all on his mobile and then posting it on YouTube. Does the Pope do the internet in this way, do you suppose? Doubtful. It’s unlikely that he tweets or has a Facebook page. If he did, then he might have been invited to the kiss-in or been asked whether he liked it or to have even been asked to become a “friend”. The notion of the Pope being poked by some gay activists is really not something one should devote too much time thinking about.

The demo has been arranged through Facebook. Ah yes, Facebook. Where would we be without it? With a lot more time on our hands to do something more productive, like lying down or watching the telly. We would also be a whole lot less likely to be invited to demos or to partake in some action, gay, lesbian or otherwise.

In recent times, Facebook has been used locally to try and arrange an alternative to the Can Picafort night party during the summer fiesta (i.e. staging it on the beach where it used to be held); to call to arms supporters of live ducks being thrown into the sea (also in Can Picafort, and a movement which furthermore featured a YouTube video with, coincidentally, a “Pope” enticing some Donalds from the Son Bauló torrent); and to post pictures of rubbish, graffiti and general unpleasantness in Pollensa and its port. I daresay there have been many others. Were I to spend my life hooked up to Facebook, I might be able to tell you about them, but I don’t. I am ambivalent towards it.

A touch of citizen participation agitprop seems a pretty good application of Facebook. I am all in favour. There are plenty of other benefits. What I don’t like is the controlling nature of Facebook, the control on time and the sheer impulse to use it. This stems from an irrational further dislike, that of having been steered in its direction by some nerdy geek who wasn’t much good at getting his leg over. I can at least take satisfaction in the knowledge that a time will come when we all hate Mark Zuckerberg as much as we now hate Bill Gates.

The rotten thing about Facebook is that it can be so useful. And not just to the summer-employed population of Mallorca, now with so much free time that they can to go into Facebook overdrive when not standing in the “paro” queues. No, it’s more useful than this and more useful than appealing to the agitating duck-fanciers of Can Picafort.

It has occurred to me to wonder quite why so many resources, mainly money, are piled into the creation of governmental and local authority tourism websites, especially as most of them are completely useless or are embarrassing in their use of English. Facebook’s free. And there are all manner of people knocking around who do pages which serve a similar sort of purpose. Like myself. At least I was doing so until I started to get bored with it all towards the end of the season.

But with the Facebooks and indeed websites that are privately operated, there is an enormous resource that basically does the job of the tourism authorities for them. Moreover, they often speak to the audience in a far more comprehensible and helpful fashion than the “official” sites.

Of course, these alternatives would never be sanctioned as being real mouthpieces because they might – and do – say things that the authorities do not care for. You are more likely to get information and opinion, warts and all. This doesn’t square with the default mode of websites and their descriptions of everything as “beautiful” or “paradise”, the sea as “turquoise” or the natives as “welcoming and friendly”. And you might also get, because this is the nature of Facebook, pages that are friends with or who like gays kissing in front of the Pope or illegally live ducks quacking in the sea off Can Picafort. Tut, tut, that would never do.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.