Read You Like A Book: Literature, culture and technology

A week or so ago there was some navel-gazing going on. It was at a literary gathering known as Conversaciones de Formentor. Book publishers, Spanish and Mallorcan, were bemoaning what they see as the impoverishment of culture and lack of demand for more serious literature.

Books and their reading do not escape the obsessiveness with which statistics are presented on almost every aspect of Mallorcan life. Suffice it to say that reading is down, this in a wider Catalan society that can produce something as massive as the Sunday book market in Barcelona. There are all sorts of explanations as to why, one of them being media companies which contribute to what the publishers perceive as the increasing banality of local culture.

The publishers accept that new technologies can be enriching, but they worry – as many others worry – about children not growing up being “imbued with the experience of the book”. But are they right to be so concerned? They might be right in being uneasy at the proliferation of the inane, an X Factor winner’s fascinating autobiography for example, but technology might actually be the saviour of the book – serious or otherwise – and of children’s (and adults’) reading. At least this is what Amazon and Apple would like us to believe. When the publishers argue that “educational reform should not be limited to facilitating children’s use of a computer”, they overlook the potentially powerful symbiosis between technology and literature.

A recent book, assuming anyone’s read it, has advanced the theory that the internet is changing the way we think. Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows” has provoked a debate as it argues that the net has altered how we read and use our memories. Carr himself has said that “the deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle”. I can sympathise, when it comes to reading online. A mistake newspaper publishers are making in hoping for a mass migration to paid-for online newspapers is that they neglect the distractions of the internet. You can be reading something and suddenly the urge takes you elsewhere. Where do you want to go today? Why pay for something if you realise you’re not going to read it?

Apple, with its iPad, offers a potentially whole brave new world for book reading. The iBooks application is but one part of the iPad, which, by coincidence or perhaps by design, an official video from the company described as feeling right “in the same way it just feels right to hold a book or magazine or newspaper”. But the iPad is sold on the basis of its multiple applications; the distractions to go somewhere else, other than the book, are enormous. Amazon’s Kindle is more straightforward. A promo video for the latest Kindle features a far from unattractive young lady sitting on a deckchair on a sunny beach, tucking into what may or may not be Jane Austen. Go anywhere, download anywhere, read anywhere is a seductive argument, but just how popular is it? Amazon claims millions of sales; an independent estimate suggests they are not as strong as the company would have them. Nevertheless, there may be more than just wishful thinking to Amazon’s advertising which portrays the product’s coolness for youngsters and for those who had never previously read a book.

But you still come back to the banality that the publishers were complaining about. The iPad or any computer hooked up to the internet doesn’t overcome the greatest banalities of all – those sometimes perpetrated in the name of social networking via the likes of Facebook, recently described by the president of the Balearics’ division of the Spanish consumers assocation FACUA as – and I am quoting him out of context – “the greatest evil that has been invented in the world”. It isn’t that (he was specifically referring to some more unpleasant aspects of Facebook), but it does contribute to a growing sense of abbreviated communication, part of a wider issue of a failure to concentrate, which is the product of what Carr is saying.

Mallorcan literary heritage is hardly a thing of international acclaim, but book reading locally has long been taken seriously. Whether what is being read is serious or not, if the publishers are concerned as to a decline in reading (and the statistics would bear this out), then they should perhaps be embracing, if they haven’t already, the new technologies. Whether these really work though is still very much an unanswered question.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

This Expat Life: AlcudiaPollensa.blogspot* and perceptual gaps

“I’m surprised anyone talks to you.” Eh? What?

It’s a perception thing, you know. It’s what people think you write or think what you might write. I wouldn’t talk to me if I did write what people thought I wrote or might write. But the above was said to me the other day, if joshingly, by a local bar-owner.

This blog will be five years old in a couple of months. There have been over 1500 entries. I’m struggling to think of any occasion when I have slagged off a local individual or business, except obliquely; or any occasion when I have broken a confidence. There are things I know, but they won’t appear here.

No. One moment. There has been the odd occasion, like with the “Sun, Sea and A&E” lady, but there was that perception thing again, as in had it been read carefully it would have been clear that it was a piss-take, hardly for the first time, of “The Bulletin”. I have no reticence in rubbishing something which affronts me with its Palmacalvia-centricity, mistakes and rotten English. And it’s the media. Like politicians, political parties and town halls, it’s there to be shot at.

I’ve known this perception thing before. When I was at university I became the one who was most closely associated with a scurrilous publication that was eventually banned when the local police threatened an obscenity charge (and this was just a few years after the “Oz” trial). The only reason why I was thus associated, and I was neither a member of the particular college from which the magazine emanated nor one of its editors, had to do with a higher profile on campus than others. I was personally responsible for only one of the many controversies that the magazine spawned.

The perception thing was also evident when this blog was commended in “PC Advisor”. “Thoughtful and witty descriptions of the expat life.” The quote needs to be seen in context, but I don’t know that the blog has ever been about expat life, other than occasionally specific pieces. And the perception thing blends into the profile thing. You might take that quote, you might take that surprise at anyone talking to me as evidence of high profile, of hanging around bars and hanging on all the gossip and then churning it out – here. Both the perception and the profile are inaccurate. What can also surprise is when I say that I am an habitué of very few bars, and certainly not for the evening piss-artisting, have never been inside many and have never met or had anything to do with so-and-so expat who does, on the contrary, have a high profile.

The perception thing is wrong because the blog is detached. It is this very distance that creates a diversity of subject and an absence of pressure to somehow act as reportage of this “expat life”. It is, essentially, observational. A part of but also separate. It is the observation and the diversity which, despite times when I have wondered about stopping, keep the blog going. There simply is no end to what you can write about. Were it about “expat life”, were it about the local who’s doing this, who’s doing that, then it wouldn’t have legs, not long-running ones. People would not only not talk, they would also, in all likelihood, be somewhat aggressive. But more fundamentally, I have, despite that perception thing, no interest in being a conveyor of tittle-tattle, a slagger-off of who’s been slagging with whom. That said, there is a file of what I presumptuously call the blog’s basement tapes: stuff that has been written but which has never appeared. Even these pieces don’t name (though it might be possible to assign a name), but they are very much darker or more off-the-wall.

There have been recently, as there have been in the past, some highly satisfying compliments both of the blog and of HOT!. I even received a letter, remember them, from someone who had enjoyed the newspaper. Sometimes, though, I wonder if I don’t become self-indulgent, such as with yesterday’s piece. I had thought of consigning that to the basement tapes. And then I got a compliment about it (Glen’s), as similarly I had one a couple of weeks back from Derek who referred to the more poetic stuff being inspiring. But the danger is I end up taking myself seriously, which would never do. And I might end up understanding who the hell it is I’m writing for.

It’s this very unknown, among all the thousands of you who come to this blog, that make it as worthwhile as the compliments. The unknown also as to which pieces might interest more than others. The unknown as to who will be in the inbox on a given day, saying they have been following the blog for this or that length of time. The blog is self-indulgent. By definition, I suppose, most blogs are. But as to people not talking to me, I don’t think so, because I guess most don’t know what the blog is about, other than by some fault of perception. And I couldn’t help. Because neither do I.

* Please note that this version of the blog is a back-up to the original – http://www.alcudiapollensa.blogspot.com.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Going Up! Newspapers and the internet

“The Times” is set to end its free online service. It’s a gamble, but for readers in places like Mallorca, who might otherwise pay an exorbitant price for the daily paper, two quid a week is extremely good value. Not that this is necessarily the point. Free should be free, say many, and a cover price for the online version will simply cause readers to go elsewhere. We’ll see. The new site is actually pretty good.

The “Diario de Mallorca” is not “The Times”, nothing like it of course. But there is something interesting about this paper. It has a good website – free – which has enjoyed increased traffic recently. At the same time, the printed version has also increased its circulation. Its main competitor, “Ultima Hora”, has experienced a decline in circulation, and its website is not as good but is improving. Of daily papers in Spain with a circulation over 10,000 (not huge admittedly), the “Diario” has registered the second greatest increase in physical circulation among the 39 papers with circulation over this number.

On the face of it, the two increases seem illogical. As the website beefs up its traffic, so, you would think, the circulation of printed version would decrease. So how to explain the apparent contradiction, as evidenced by the “Diario”? Maybe it’s all the free publicity I give it, but probably not. Perhaps it has something to do with its local nature. Despite the plans by “The Times” to create its own online “community”, it is, like all big papers, rather removed. A paper like the “Diario” isn’t. There is a far greater sense of reader “ownership” of the different formats; they are complementary, even if their content is basically the same.

I confess that I am casting around to find a reason. I don’t know the answer. But answer there must be, and if the experience of the “Diario” is echoed elsewhere, the doomsday predictions for newspapers and/or their websites would not hold up. What will be interesting is whether the circulation and the site traffic continue to increase. If they do, then someone should try and discover the paper’s secret. I should be at the paper’s offices today, so maybe I’ll ask.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Make A Difference: Tourism and business promotion

The Balearic Government is to spend 12 million euros on a new “digital platform” which, so it says, will be a pioneering approach to internet tourism marketing. It is not entirely clear what this will entail, but President Antich was going large on this announcement at the Berlin ITB travel fair a couple of days ago. Whatever it is, the message is certainly getting through, that it is the internet which holds much of the key to tourism promotion and selling.

At the same time as the president was basking in the glory of this mooted, new technological shiny beast and was also saying that agreements with Air Berlin will see an increase in flights to the islands, a professor of marketing from ESADE was talking to “The Diario” about the advantages of “low-cost” businesses and also of the internet. (ESADE is not only one of Spain’s most prestigious business and law schools, it is also one of the world’s leading institutions.)

In this interview, Josep Valls said that there needs to be an almost wholesale shift in the direction of online activity and an end to investment in promoting the likes of fairs (and he probably means fiestas as well) and in massive publicity. There is something of an irony in this. The new tourism minister Barceló has been spending the past few days apologising for the fact that the Rafael Nadal ads had not been scheduled, shifting the blame onto her predecessor Miquel Ferrer, who seemingly wanted to cut costs at the ministry, and saying that there were negotiations with the Spanish tourism promotion unit, Turespaña, to actually pay for the adverts to be aired. Perhaps Ferrer took the view that celebrity advertising was of questionable benefit. Whatever his motivation, the point made by the good professor chimes well with what you will have read on this blog – that the internet can be both cheaper and more effective than older media, especially when it comes to tourism promotion. It just depends on how well it’s done.

You can sum this up in terms of innovation, professionalism and in doing things differently. Much of what goes on in Mallorca’s tourism industry adheres to these principles, but there is much which does not. While some of the island’s hotel groups are paragons of professional virtue, the supply to the industry from elsewhere can leave something to be desired. There is much of the “old school” about great chunks of this supply (be it in the form of bars, restaurants, entertainment, whatever), mired in the past and forgetful of what actually constitutes holiday.

In the past couple of days, I have spoken to the heads of the main franchise operation for Burger King in the north of the island and of Grupo Boulevard (the dreaded Dakotas etc.). These are both hard-nosed businesses, varying in terms of innovation but with strong streaks of professionalism. They are not to everyone’s taste, but it was illuminating to hear the Boulevard response to the impact of all-inclusives in Playa de Muro where it is headquartered and is expanding further this season. There has not been an effect. Talk to the old school and you will get a totally different answer. People dislike Boulevard because it’s brash and because it’s successful, and because it conforms to notions of being a business rather than the cottage industry of so many establishments. But in its product development Boulevard is representative of what the director at the Bellevue hotel in Puerto Alcúdia had to say about how businesses need to respond to market changes; it does things differently.

There is a bar in Puerto Alcúdia which this summer will be doing things very differently. Different types of event, parties. Anything to get people talking and coming. There are bars which are successfully using Facebook as a complement to, almost a replacement for, the more traditional PR in-front-of-bar approach. Rather than blame all-inclusives or the “crisis”, here are examples of confronting the problems, changing how things are done and therefore winning business. In the case of the first bar, there is also a recognition that there needs to be a return to the idea that holiday is an event, or it should be. Regulatory forces, combined with complacency and a lack of vision, have taken away much of the “event” nature of holiday. There is no going back to days of parties and barbecues on beaches  – the regulations have seen to this – but this does not mean formulaic, uninspiring and largely unthinking offers.

Holiday means different things to different people. Of course it does. And of course there is and always will be a call for and provision of the traditional; of the quaint family restaurant or the generally unsophisticated bar. But perhaps more than anything, there has to be a collective generation of a certain buzz, the notion of something happening. In Alcúdia at any rate, there are people and businesses looking to do just this; create a buzz. Doing things differently, use of technology, innovation; these can all lead in the right direction, and it should all be aimed at the tourist, of whatever style, and at giving the tourist an experience; an experience of something different. This is what holiday is, or should be, about. And not just the same old, same old.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Personal Service – Tourism, information and banks

Our friend Pedro Iriondo, the head of the Mallorca tourist board (Fomento del Turismo) and a chap who looks variously like Nixon (the film version) or “Knuckles” Norman, an East End associate of the Krays, is back in the press pages singing a familiar song. In an interview with “The Diario”, he says basically the same as he has said elsewhere, including snatches in “The Bulletin”. While lengthy enough, the interview really doesn’t add to the sum of our existing knowledge. What is slightly new is that he has a chance to speak about the effects of corruption at the tourism ministry. It doesn’t give a very good image to tour operators – I think we could have guessed that, and indeed I have said this very thing – but it also has meant that money intended for tourism promotion (in short enough supply) has of course been allegedly filtered off in different directions. The only other thing, amidst the normal stuff about all-inclusives (bad but what can you do), seasonality (there has been lots of promotion – but how effective?) and what the coming season holds (hard to say), that was new – to me at any rate – was the idea that images of people wearing masks in Playa de Palma last summer was somehow a set up by other tourist destinations. This was all to do with swine flu, and Iriondo reckons that this, and the mask-wearing, had a negative impact on tourism numbers, more so than ETA and its bombs. Apart from stupid sensationalism by the German paper “Bild”, I don’t know that it did. As for suggesting that perhaps the Turks and Croats and Bulgarians had ganged together to get some bad publicity, well this does seem somewhat far-fetched.

Back in Bulletin-land, I am somewhat baffled by the paper’s email what’s on thing. Its website gives a daily running total of the numbers who have sent in their email address together with dates of when they plan to visit Mallorca, and for which they then get an email giving them a list of things that are going on. The daily total announcement, all a tad self-congratulatory one can’t help feeling, is a bit like the Blue Peter Christmas appeal. “We’ve now raised 296 Fairy Liquid bottles that will be turned into a Jeep to help the starving of (add as applicable).” The reason for bafflement is why they’re doing it. Seems like work for someone, when putting the information onto the website would, one might have thought, be less hassle and might also have the benefit of generating additional site traffic. There again, maybe this is all part of a more personal touch that the internet has dispensed with. Like banks. Touching on the news about the Halifax branch in Puerto Pollensa closing, what it, and indeed other Mallorcan banks, have going for them is that the customer isn’t simply left to the de-personalised cyberworld of internet banking as the means of communication. Personal contact. With the bank manager. How very quaint. However, I do wonder if there isn’t a drawback with this. Is the relationship with the bank manager or with the bank? When the manager leaves, might the customer also leave if there is a strong recommendation for another bank, or rather another manager? In fact this isn’t a “might”, it’s a yes. I’ve done it myself.

Still, at least a relationship with a bank can endure for some years. Unlike that between tour operators and Mallorcan tourism ministers. Unless the former intend to get themselves banged up in the next cell.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Watching You, Watching Me – Webcams and surveillance in Mallorca

The surveillance society. It is said that the UK has the highest level of surveillance in Europe. Much of it can be deemed necessary or beneficial, much of it isn’t. And so it is in Mallorca. Or rather, it isn’t quite the same, as in Mallorca – and in Spain – there is a greater level of concern for the invasion of privacy.

Video surveillance was late to catch on in Mallorca. This was not a failure of technology but a legal issue. Police cameras, such as those for traffic and speeding, were also late on the scene, for a similar reason. Officially in Mallorca, there are even now only some 7000 video cameras of different sorts that are used by the police and by security companies. As “The Diario” has reported, there are many, many more cameras, most of them unregulated. A combination of the agency responsible for data protection and the police ensures that cameras used for security purposes are correctly registered. Video surveillance of property, for example, is a matter of registration by the security company that has to comply with the need to ensure that posters, informing of such surveillance, are clearly visible and also with ensuring that the cameras do not show the “public way”. In other words, they “guard” properties, their access points and grounds.

When you take into account government buildings, banks and some of the property in Mallorca, the 7000 cameras are not really so many, and for the most part they are activated only when an alarm goes off. The officially registered cameras that are on more or less permanently are those controlled by the police. Some concern has been raised about these, for example where they are used to monitor “deliquency”. These are directed at the “public way”. Yet one can accept their role in policing and in maybe acting as a deterrent.

Another concern relates to all those other cameras. And here one is mainly talking webcams. The paper makes it clear that much webcam use is private, but much is not. Anything pointing at a street, a park, a beach is showing the public way. Hardly any of these webcams are registered. In Palma, some twenty webcams are sanctioned by the town hall. But generally, webcams are put up, pointed and there is no registration. The law may well be being broken as a result, if there is no authorisation by the data protection agency.

One has to understand that the strictness with which privacy and data protection are controlled has a historical background. In Germany, there was also a similar anxiety about cameras. If you want to know why the Germans – or at least some of the Länder – have been rather more tardy than other countries in introducing anti-smoking legislation, you have to go back to the Nazis who frowned on smoking. And for smoking, read also the surveillance and intrusiveness of an authoritarian state. It’s the same in Spain, because of Franco.

Webcams that show a resort’s promenade or beach may seem innocent enough, and in truth they are. Many, many people access them via the internet; many, many people who would consider this a purely innocent activity. But that would be to miss the point – the invasion of privacy. A not infrequent question one may come across on a forum is – are there any webcams of such and such a resort? Not for one moment would the person asking the question think this is anything other than innocent.

A webcam that shows public places, it can be argued, is being used under conditions of freedom of speech or information. Similar justification can be used for the altogether more intrusive use of cameras by Google. It’s a disingenuous argument. It may all seem just like a bit of fun, but the public webcam operates under a similar principle of intrusion, the main difference – usually – being the more fleeting and temporary nature of the privacy being intruded into.

There is the possibility that there are some unwitting double standards applied to public webcams and by those who access them. Stick a cam outside your house, down your street, and would you be quite so happy? When Google come filming, would you be quite so happy?

One can make too much of this. Personally, I am rarely in favour of anything that limits freedom of speech or information. Public webcams are rarely so intrusive as to be potentially invasive of an individual’s freedom, but I can understand the sensitivities, as they exist in Mallorca. Innocent enough the webcam may be, but it may not be quite so innocent under law.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Tall Guy (Miquel Llompart)

Miquel Llompart was formally voted in as Alcúdia’s new mayor on Saturday, confirming what had been, for some weeks, the formality of his ascent to the mayoral throne. As is normal, a mayor is selected by council members, and not directly by the electorate. In Alcúdia, this means the combined muscle of the Unió Mallorquina (UM) and the PSOE socialists, the pact that controls the town hall. Llompart has promised continuity in working with “integrity, humility and transparency”, attributes sometimes in limited supply in Mallorcan politics. There is no reason not to believe him.

The act of voting for Llompart took place in the town hall meeting room, wherein were other mayors from the UM, such as Joan Cerdà from Pollensa, who heard the new mayor say that “on behalf of every citizen, it will be an honour to serve as town mayor”. This echoed a point he made when I met him. Yet for all that he, or indeed any mayor, might declare himself a servant of all the people, of whatever nationality, a question remains as to quite how much interest there is, among these different nationalities, as to who actually occupies the mayoral seat. I happen to believe that there should be an interest, not that non-locals necessarily take an active role in local politics, but that they at least know something about the man at the top. It is as important to know the person as it is to know what his politics are. Mayors in Mallorca are, or should be, very close to the towns’ residents. A further question, though, surrounds how well these mayors actually communicate with their diverse populations.

Towns such as Alcúdia have become increasingly cosmopolitan, yet there has been a retrenchment into communicative ghettoes, in which Mallorquín-Catalan is the de facto standard of communication. Understandable though this may be, it does not, however, reflect the nature of the population. The town halls cannot be expected to communicate in every language, and it can be argued that it is up to those living in the towns to make themselves capable of understanding the standard language, but that doesn’t reflect reality. Just as the town halls are ham-fisted in communicating information of a tourism nature, so they usually fail to make any compromise in general communication. English – at least English, as the international language – could, indeed should, be used on the town halls’ websites (and not the tourism ones, but those for all residents of the towns). German also. This might be seen as pandering to incomers from other countries and as being at variance with the politics of Catalan, but it would be a more realistic approach and would achieve the ambition – of the likes of Miquel Llompart – to be close to all citizens. It really should not be difficult to establish full English and German pages on the town halls’ websites. One might even add that this could offer an educative function for what the university in Palma has exposed as weak standards of English.

It will be interesting to see how “different” Llompart might be. Not only is he highly popular in Alcúdia, partly because of his basketball background, he also has a reputation for rankling more conservative elements within his party. He will also be one of the youngest mayors on the island, to say nothing of his being the tallest – a point that “The Diario” was keen to highlight the other day. At 1.95 metres, or 6′ 4″, he’s going to dominate Alcúdia politics, in more than one sense of the word.

The Late Show – Information Provision By Town Halls

All too frequently, our favourite newspaper contains too much that is irrelevant or an exercise in egoism, unrelated to Mallorca; too much that is space-filling and too much that lacks literacy; too much half-baked “celebritism” with the same unter-celebs. But, as I have said before on this blog, there is one element of “The Bulletin” that can be deserving of some attention – the letters. Not the lengthy tomes of self-aggrandisement and self-promotion, of which there are some, but those which highlight issues on the island. I referred to one yesterday. Here is another – one criticising the provision of information via the internet. The point is well made; the island can ill afford inaccurate information or an absence of information if it is serious in exploiting the internet to bolster tourism. The writer, in this instance, cites the wrong date given for an event in Calvia later this year on the town hall’s site. Perhaps one should be grateful that they have even bothered to flag up something that doesn’t take place for several months. All too often, information does not appear until events are all but happening – if it appears at all, or in English.

One only has to think about the provision of information about Sant Antoni programmes in the various towns to get a feel for how this information is given out. Two town halls – Sa Pobla and Pollensa – have been speedier than others, yet in the case of the latter, it has ignored what might be occurring in the port area. Not for the first time, there is a legitimate beef with the ivory tower of the town hall some eight kilometres distant from Puerto Pollensa. The activities may not be as grand and as numerous as in the old town, but activities there still are.

In the case of Muro, the information finally appeared on the town hall’s site, yet they had made much of the poster for Sant Antoni. This had been posted previously, minus any actual information. Who cares? The impression one forms is that too great an emphasis is placed on making it all look pretty rather than giving over the hard facts as to what’s going on.

An argument that is made – by the town halls – is that programmes are not always completed until roughly a week before events are staged. This is almost always rubbish. To give an example. In 2008, information for Alcúdia’s fair was handed to me nearly three weeks before the fair. It helps to have the odd mole lurking. The information was exactly as it was officially given, two weeks later. Even if an update is required, what’s to stop them doing so? But chances are that updates there will not be. A point to bear in mind is that for programmes to be printed, there have to be lead times. The actual information will have been nailed down many days, if not weeks, before the programmes actually appear. However, the information is not always clear. In Alcúdia, the information about the bonfires for Antoni and Sebastià refers to bars at the front of which are what seem to be “official” bonfires. Where are all these bars? Is it not possible to give an address? Not even the local Mallorcans know the location of every damn bar in town.

Another writer to the paper pointed out, a while back, that nowhere did there seem to be information about Palma’s Sant Sebastià fiesta. Again, it was a valid gripe, especially for an event that the Palma authorities themselves had said needed to be promoted internationally. That was, what, two, three years ago? They seem to have forgotten that.

The real reason for the tardiness with which much information is made available lies with late-minute “grandstanding” and a love of making grandiloquent statements, released officially to the press, about the latest fiesta. These are supported by lavish printed programmes, the economics of which should be, but never seem to be, questioned. The keepers of the fiesta information release it when it suits them, and in a way that suits them, and not in a way that helps the general and tourism publics.

And having finally made the information available, is there a programme for an international audience? In English? All too rarely. Some material in the exotic programmes is printed in Castilian as well as Catalan, but usually it is just the latter. What is stopping them from posting a simple programme translated into English? A reason for this may lie with the fact that the English is so poor. A recent report into standards of English at the university in Palma, where many students take tourism, was damning. And where English is used, it is often wrong. This is inexcusable. Even the Balearic Government’s tourism website is riddled with bad English, and one can thank “The Bulletin” for drawing attention to this when it was lifting – verbatim – stuff about beaches from that site.

Late information, inaccurate information, information that is not in the international language. The island’s tourism authorities talk a good game when it comes to the use of the internet, but they – be they government, town halls or others – just don’t seem to get it; that information is the most important element of what they can offer both over the internet and in print. What one gets instead are highly designed PDFs, but also shoddiness and sloppiness in the core of what has to be conveyed – that information.

As something of a footnote. I know of no-one, British, German, Mallorcan or whoever, who refers to Sant Antoni as anything but Sant Antoni. The Catalan is used by everyone, not even a Castilian alternative is used, and certainly not an anglicised name. So why does “The Bulletin” insist on calling it Saint Anthony?

Joy To The World

The tourism dignitaries have gathered in London for the World Travel Market. Today, Balearics Day at the trade fair, will see the premiere of the new Rafael Nadal advert for the Balearics. Let joy be unconfined.

What does any of this achieve? The World Travel Market is, in no small part, a set of shop windows for the industry, one that already knows about Mallorca and the Balearics. The same applies to corporate advertising, of the Nadal style. Not everyone may know about the Balearics, which does of course beg a significant question, but they (the consuming tourist public) know about Mallorca. Both the trade fair and the advertising act, at best, as a means of putting Mallorca in the “front of mind” of the industry and the consumer. But so does that of every other destination.

In “The Sunday Times” at the weekend there was a double-page colour advert for Andalucia. Some of the advertising for this region of Spain has been sensational. Its TV advert, luscious colours, dramatic scenery and vibrant flamenco chill music, was outstanding. But it was still an advert for a region. Just as advertising, of the Nadal variety, is for a region. It may all create attention and therefore, possibly, some action, but that is all it does. 

In the case of the Andalucia advert, there is a scrawled blurb across the two pages: “I want you to share my energy, my happiness, my strength, my warmth … A thousand monuments beyond compare. And just one question: When are you coming?” This last bit, the question, is the only good part of this. The rest is utterly ridiculous and pretentious. An attempt to make personal the impersonal, supported by a photo of a beach at sunset and a church in daytime. Whatever good it may achieve is undone by a small logo at the bottom which refers to “Junta de Andalucia”. Someone might have pointed out that the word “junta” has negative connotations where the British are concerned. 

Be this as it may. Advertising for Andalucia, for Turkey, for Egypt, for wherever you may care to mention, it all follows the same pattern. Mediterranean destinations tout the same things, the same sorts of images; they display warmth, sun, sea, culture, people, scenery. There is no differentiation. It is why much of the advertising is questionable. Its main purpose is to be there. In other words, it would be conspicuous by its absence. 

This advertising is part aspirational and part image-making, but it fits a particular aspirational class and one attracted by a specific image. For all that it is intended to promote the whole gamut of a destination’s offer, it does nothing of the sort. Holidaymakers are not a homogeneous group. They differ in all manner of respects. For this reason and for all the attention that gets paid to the Nadal-style corporate advertising (by the media and letter writers), it can only ever act as a starting-point (if that) or as a reinforcement to those already familiar with the island. 

How do those who sanction this promotion believe that the process then works? Do they assume that there exists a hierarchical decision-making system? At the top comes Nadal, then there is a series of moves before the holidaymaker chooses a specific resort or hotel. Is this how it is meant to work? If it doesn’t, and I don’t believe it does, then what’s the point of the thing at the top? This is how it used to work, back in the days when the family would be assaulted by Boxing Day adverts, opt for Mallorca and then head off to the nearest travel agency and pretty much have the choice of resort and hotel made for them.

Consumers take more or less as read the elements of a Mediterranean destination, be it Mallorca, Andalucia or wherever. They do so because the advertising and the images are essentially the same. As much as some consumers may work down from image advertising, they also work upwards, if not more so, in making their choices, without necessarily specifying a destination. And they all have different priorities, the satisfying of which is made in no small part through the informal channels of the internet – the forums, the blogs, the this, the that. The choice of a Turkey over a Mallorca lies largely with word of mouth, with a critical mass of recommendation, with a curious incuriosity that is the consequence of somewhere having become the latest in-place, and with a sense of “oh, let’s give that a try”. And much of this is predicated on price, on hotel (often all-inclusive), on specific offers, on what there is for the kids and all the rest. It is with the very detail of the holiday that the decision lies, not with the broad sweep of a Nadal on a yacht.

The tourism chiefs have singularly failed to understand the new dynamic of holiday decision-making or to appreciate the subversive influence of the internet; subversive in that, though these chiefs see the immense value of internet promotion, the internet acts independently of the corporate advertising. The real challenge lies in attempting to formalise the informal, of working this subversive element so that it favours a particular destination, and not just an island or a region, but a resort or even a particular complex. These chiefs need to cotton on to the reality of how consumers function on the internet, through social networks and so on, and to exploit these subversive factions themselves. If they don’t, all that lavish spending on corporate advertising is a waste.

Same Old Story

Just as sure as night follows day and as Real Mallorca slump from one financial crisis to the next, so the winter tourism woes arouse a regular “Bulletin” statement about the need for a “bit of imagination”. Oh, the imagination of calling for a bit of imagination. But against a backdrop of the regional government’s tourism minister bemoaning the fact that he has only a mere 30 million or so to spend on promotion, I do agree with the view in the same piece in the paper that diverting a large part of that wad towards Rafa Nadal makes arguable sense. Has the presence of the Manacor muscle made any discernible difference to Mallorcan and Balearic tourism since he has been used for advertising? No, I don’t imagine it has. Much as Nadal may be an obvious “face” of local tourism, perhaps that’s the problem. It’s so obvious, no-one takes any notice. There is also the problem that, Mallorcan boy though he is, his world is quite different to that of most mere tourism mortals who do not earn vast fortunes on the tennis circuit and take to yachts bouncing across the waves off the south coast of the island. It’s all a matter of making a connection. They should scrap the whole thing; it isn’t working.

The paper goes on by reckoning that half this promotion budget should be thrown at winter tourism. All well and good, but not much use if the airlines don’t fly, the hotels don’t open and bars and restaurants are shut. And doubly not much use when aspects of the winter scene are currently so poorly promoted. Let me give an example. The regional government’s tourism website is meant to give information about the so-called “Winter in Mallorca” programme. This may not amount to a lot, but it still amounts to something. There is a PDF of the monthly schedule of events. For October. November’s has still to be uploaded. That’s how good promotion gets. 

Whether winter or summer, the internet does, nevertheless, hold the clue to much promotional effort. Elsewhere in the paper, it says that the tourism minister is looking to exploit the internet. Good for him, even if the omens are not good. As ever, there is reference to cultural, gastronomic and sports tourism – all the same old thing – as well as to online reservations. It is not as if there are not already innumerable ways of booking via the internet. It makes one despair if this is all the tourism ministry has to say. Then there are the sites themselves. As with the Nadal advertising, which itself features on the Balearics tourism site, there is a sense of making people feel good about all this – the people being the tourism authorities themselves. Look at us! We’re doing something! 

The informational style of websites, allied to advertising, is largely old hat. For all the good it does, the tourism authorities would be better off placing promotions on the likes of Alpharooms and all the other booking agencies which are just as important, if not more, than the corporate websites for the Balearics and Mallorca. But for all this, there is a complete failure to recognise the shift in internet usage – towards Web 2.0 and towards social networks. Even if there were to be the odd myspace created, chances are it would be done half-heartedly and moreover with a non-native speaker controlling it and therefore communicating incorrectly with the target audiences, be they British, German, Russian or whatever. 

Were the tourism bods to appreciate that there is a whole different way of conveying messages and interactively communicating with the markets, they could build a far more meaningful internet presence. But they are most unlikely to. And the reasons why not lie with, yes, that lack of imagination, but also the obsession with corporate-style sites that are operations in promotional self-aggrandizement. 

I have a solution to the tourism minister’s lack of funding. Slash the budget even more and then make them think how they can make their money work harder. Because currently, there is no evidence that throwing greater amounts at promotion would be any more valuable. You would end up with more Nadal, more elaborate promotional literature stacked up in the tourism offices, itself largely an exercise in job creation for all those who can find no other employment than design, and more of the same informational, corporate websites.