The Importance Of Being Erstwhile

“To lose one director of a tourism agency, Sra. Barceló, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose a second looks like carelessness.”

The tourism ministry. Home to the former, the ex, the one-time. The erstwhile. Mar Guerrero has walked away from her job as director of the ATB (the Balearics tourism agency), nine months after having replaced the erstwhile head of the erstwhile IBATUR agency. This is a real blow. Guerrero was greatly admired and liked. Her already high stock has been raised by her having done something quite unusual. She has made herself erstwhile by resigning. On a matter of principle.

She has said that she didn’t like having to sell motorcycles. This might sound a rather odd thing to say, but it’s a translation of a Spanish expression which means not wanting to pull the wool over people’s eyes. Not wanting to deceive, if you like. This is an almost unheard of point of honour from someone in Mallorcan public life. Rather than keeping mum and pocketing her salary, she has gone. She did actually tender her resignation three months ago, but had agreed to stay on until there could be some “consensus” to explain her departure. Things obviously came to a head before that consensus could have been agreed.

Why has she gone? There seem to be several reasons. One is that the job was not the one in the brochure. She was not allowed to do what she was brought in to do. And why? Because political needs appear to have got in the way. It doesn’t seem as if it was an issue over the level of funding, more one of where the funding was to go. Nevertheless, there seems also to have been a political desire to have committed to promotion, to have raised expectations without there being the credit to meet them. There was also a lack of transparency. This is the selling of the motorcycles.

It is all rather strange that just as Guerrero announces her resignation, the tourism minister Joana Barceló makes her own announcement – that of the budget for tourism promotion. It will be just short of 45 million euros, higher than last year. What is doubly strange is that this has risen from the 22 million euros that was being spoken of earlier this month and which appeared to be the limit set by the regional government’s treasury minister, Carles Manera.

To add to the mystery there is the fact that an emailed document, leaked to the press some days ago, stated that the tourism ministry had no money available for developing a marketing plan this year. (It might also be remembered that the tourism ministry has been in debt to the tune of 47 million euros, now down to 39.5 million.) This email was sent from the ministry to the ATB and so was presumably seen by Guerrero and her finance director who has also resigned.

There could well be a simple explanation for the sudden discovery of this additional funding. The regional government’s bond issue has been a considerable success, and, as I had suggested previously, the capital raised could quite well be made available for tourism promotion. But things don’t really add up. The timing of Barceló’s announcement seems opportune to say the least, a way of deflecting the bad news of the resignations. And then there is the matter of that leaked document. It was released at the same time as Barceló was saying at the FITUR fair in Madrid that there wouldn’t be a lack of funding. How did the press come by it?

Of the money now being promised, nine million of it will go to the councils of the different islands, such as the Council of Mallorca, for them to engage in their own promotion. You are back again to the issue of duplication, for 6.9 million will also go directly on promotion through the ATB. Of the rest, and from the original 22 million, there is money to meet agreements previously entered into with town halls operated or then operated by the Unió Mallorquina party, Alcúdia and Pollensa being two of the four in question.

The UM, it should be recalled, ran the tourism ministry before it was booted out of the coalition; it is now having overtures made to it by the ruling PSOE socialist party to sound it out as to a possible future coalition. There is also 3.1 million euros for renovation work to be undertaken at the Pati de Sa Lluna in Menorca. This may be money well spent, but who in the regional government is from Menorca, a leading PSOE politician in Menorca and the erstwhile president of its council? Joana Barceló.

Guerrero has gone. Her departure signals more disruption within the tourism ministry, the one of which tour operators and hoteliers have asked that there be stability and continuity. Well, there is continuity. It is that of continual change. And what seems to have prompted this latest change is a political agenda, one to which she was not amenable.

Some of the erstwhile figures at the tourism ministry did not leave of their own volition. One now has. And it is important to know why. The question is whether we really do know why.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Open House: The holiday-lets nonsense

There was an open letter the other day to “The Bulletin” from the boss of a UK holiday-let company. It was addressed to the tourism minister, was not without merit and has, seemingly, attracted support, to the extent that the same writer is now wanting to form some sort of pressure group. It was, as you would realise from the nature of the company, about the lunatic situation regarding holiday lets. Fair enough, and a fair way of generating publicity, you might imagine, but let’s not be cynical.

The open letter is a familiar enough technique. One of the most famous was Zola’s “J’accuse”. It acquired fame not only because of the accusations made but also because of Zola’s standing and influence in France. And it is this, standing and influence, that makes the open letter powerful. Moreover, the fact that it might actually be read by those for whom it is intended, makes it doubly powerful, which was the case with “J’accuse”. Zola had to flee to England.

I had heard of neither the author of the letter nor of his company until the letter appeared. No Zola, in other words. It might have been considered rather self-serving. Yet, it was a reasonable letter, one that expressed well the frustrations surrounding the confused holiday-let situation and the antagonism shown towards a sector of the tourism industry in Mallorca that has enormous potential for good. I might not go along with the technique of the open letter – and don’t – but the sentiments cannot really be faulted.

The problem is though, has the intended recipient – the tourism minister – read it. Will she read it? If the answer is no, then what was the point of it? Even if she has, or does, would she be likely to respond? Doubtful. But were she to respond, what would she say? Thanks, but no thanks, or something along those lines.

You have to go back to June last year to get a real handle on this. On 19 June (“But You Can’t Come In”), I reported on the agreement between the Balearic Government, business (hoteliers) and unions to tackle the principal problems with tourism, one of which was – so they reckoned – illegal holiday lets. And many holiday lets are illegal, because there is no mechanism to make them legal, which is how the government seems to want it. It is government strategy to outlaw as much of the holiday-let business as it can. It is also government wish to pursue ever greater standards in hotel stock. It should not be forgotten that, of the leading Mallorcan companies, several are hotel chains; they are extremely powerful. They are also highly organised and represented on all manner of tourism bodies. The holiday-let sector, on the other hand, is not organised, lacks representation, has no lobbying power, is fragmented. When the press come calling to ask for reactions to the appointment of the latest tourism minister (and they’ve had to do this a few times over not so many months), to whom do they talk? The holiday-let business? Of course not. It is to the hotel associations, those who always seem to express their full confidence in a new minister. They express confidence, not because they necessarily have any, but because they want they want to establish who wears the tourism trousers, and to let ministers know who not to antagonise. Get a campaign going for holiday lets, get a tourism minister listening, sympathetic even, and what do you reckon would happen? “Now then, Sra. Barceló, a little word in your shell-like over this holiday-let nonsense …”

Try starting a campaign if you are some small holiday-let business from the UK or another foreign country, and where do you reckon this will get you? Foreign companies can exert pressure, if they are powerful, the tour operators most obviously. And maybe it is these, the likes of TUI and Thomas Cook, who should be the real recipients of the open letter, for they want a flourishing holiday-let market as much as they want to be able to extract every last concession from the hoteliers. They also want to sell flights.

Joana Barceló will take precisely no notice of this “campaign”, because it would be politically unwise for her to do so. But if there is to be an open letter to her, then rather than “The Bulletin”, try the Spanish press. She might then read it.

I am, however, not unsupportive of the letter and of the writer, because he has done what the paper singularly failed to do when the tourism minister was interviewed, namely ask what the hell she’s going to do about holiday lets, other than place them outside the law. It is an issue that affects many and is important in the context of the total tourism scene; one also that is regularly aired in the paper – by letter-writers. But why does it fall to a letter-writer to raise the subject or to start a campaign?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.