The First And Last Resort

The resorts of Mallorca are not subject to detailed research into what visitors make of them. They should all be. Every year there should be surveys. What you get instead is a mass of anecdotes, snotty letters to an editor here or there, soundings-off on the internet and precious little, if anything, by way of a coherent response.

Of resorts that are put under the researchers’ lens, only one (or, strictly speaking, three) is paid much attention to: Playa de Palma (along with Arenal and Can Pastilla). History decrees that it should be. This is where it pretty much all began; mass tourism, that is. The resort’s antiquity affords it a special status, one that has meant to be bringing about its transformation.

The research organisation Gadeso was in Playa de Palma in 2009. It has been back again recently. The transformation of Playa de Palma can’t come soon enough, it would appear. Excusing a touch of the dramatic, the introduction to Gadeso’s 2011 survey states that “every day it becomes more urgent” to improve and modernise Mallorca’s resorts, and Playa de Palma in particular.

It’s not all bad news, unless you happen to run a hotel, tourist apartments or residential tourist accommodation. For each category, the level of satisfaction has gone down since 2009, and the all-inclusive rates lower than the other categories. It’s not surprising: the restaurants are worse than regular hotels; the comfort is worse; the standards of cleanliness and facilities are lower. Customers may demand all-inclusives – the tour operators keep insisting that they do – but they also demand a reasonable level of service.

The satisfaction with Playa de Palma is lower than with the rest of Mallorca and so is the likelihood of people coming back again. The report’s conclusion: could do better, see me!

This year’s survey and that in 2009 are not the only ones that Gadeso has done in Playa de Palma. It hasn’t gone into other resorts, or hadn’t until it went to Cala Bona and Cala Millor last year. The survey there didn’t report in the same way. Though the conclusions said that there was an excessive amount of all-inclusive, it didn’t specifically offer information on hotel satisfaction.

The focus on this factor in Playa de Palma is understandable. Hotels are really at the heart of the whole project to transform Playa de Palma. And much as there is a desire for an overall upgrading of hotels across Mallorca, there has been not insignificant resistance from Playa de Palma hoteliers who argue that the bread-and-butter of the three-star should not be interfered with.

Gadeso has appended documents to its survey. One is a paper that emanates from the University of Barcelona which highlights the fact that, six years on from the creation of a consortium, political scraps, opposition (from hoteliers who should mainly welcome it and some residents who haven’t welcomed it) and general inertia have failed to effect a process of transformation that would make the resort the model for subsequent redevelopments elsewhere and also a model of which Mallorca could be proud. The paper emphasises the fact that the resort is deteriorating, thus reinforcing what Gadeso says in its survey introduction and what the survey itself suggests.

A different document, a letter to the tourism minister, argues that to continue with a consortium that is hamstrung by a lack of government finance is a “nonsense and a waste”. There is a plea that the project should be in the hands of the private sector, given the inability of the politicians to carry out such projects and to wrong priorities.

And one of those priorities, about the only public project that appears to have escaped President Bauzá’s axe, is the Palacio de Congresos, described as a bottomless pit that will do nothing to alleviate seasonality. The Palacio can’t be abandoned now, but it should never have been a priority. Its whole being, apart from the vanity of Palma and Mallorca being able to claim that it has a conference complex – as do many other cities in Spain as well as the Canaries – is predicated on a market, that of “meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE)”, which is largely unknown.

The sun and beach of Playa de Palma is known. It’s been known for years. Hopefully, it will be known for many more years to come, but its future has been placed in the balance by inadequate political supervision. Hand it over to the private sector, and just let them get on with it.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Soft Toilet Paper: Gay hotels

In the Comic Strip’s brilliant pastiche of spaghetti Westerns, “A Fistful Of Travellers’ Cheques”, the proprietor of Hotel Bastardos, Keith Allen, informs his gun-toting guests, Rik Mayall and Peter Richardson, that if they “want de soft-a toilet paper” they should “go to Hotel Gay Boy”. Back in the eighties when this was made, the likelihood of there being a hotel gay boy in non-urban Spain was probably very low. It isn’t much higher nowadays, in Mallorca at any rate. A hotel bastardos on the other hand … .

Mallorca has never seemed, to me, to rank particularly highly as a sun-holiday destination for gay people. Certainly not by comparison with Ibiza or Gran Canaria. Away from Palma, there are few by way of specifically gay venues. A bar did start up in Can Picafort in the autumn of 2008. It may still be there, but there is no obvious information about it. In Palma there are clubs and saunas, but the image of gay life in the capital took a bit of a knock as a result of the scandal involving a Palma councillor and rent boys. Otherwise you tend to be unaware of there being much of a gay scene.

This though may be changing. A report in yesterday’s “Diario” profiles the first hotel in Mallorca which is specifically aimed at a gay and lesbian sun-and-beach market. It is in Playa de Palma and is called Pegasus. Aptly perhaps. The Spanish tourism ministry wants to let fly the winged horse of gay and lesbian tourism. Spain, and presumably therefore Mallorca, should be a leader in this niche, it believes. The fact that the pink pound or euro is worth approximately 50% more than straight wonga might have something to do with this, while the government is keen to cash in – as it were – on the new liberalism of Spain towards homosexuality.

Mallorca is essentially a “family” destination. Its resorts can be described similarly. But the description can appear to exclude other “markets” – single people, couples, senior citizens, gay people. The family is hugely important, but it is not the only market. It is right that provision is shifting in different directions. Nevertheless, some of the information for the gay market is curious. Google “gay Mallorca” and one website lists resorts, such as Alcúdia. Click on this and one is given a profile of a family resort. Hardly talking to the market, you might think.

However, and as the article from the “Diario” makes clear, the gay market is far from being uniform. There may be gay “uniforms”, but not all gay people wear them. Far from it. I have gay friends who wouldn’t be seen dead in a leather bar or as an extra in Frankie’s “Relax”. And so it is with the resorts. I would imagine that Puerto Pollensa would be an attractive destination for some gay people. Puerto Alcúdia, I’m not so sure, but Can Picafort possibly. The rustic beach between Playa de Muro and Can Pic has long had a reputation both as a nudist beach and as a gay beach, though whether it still is as it once was might be questionable. The roping-off of the dunes seemed to serve more than just the purpose of preserving the breeding grounds of certain birds and the fragility of the eco-system. But this implication would be to fall into the trap of stereotyping, and the gay market is far too diverse to justify this.

Mallorca has some way to go, but there is no reason why “markets” cannot flourish alongside each other. Years ago, around the time of the Comic Strip’s pastiche, I was in Amsterdam, in a café. There were families, couples, children. Just another café. But I became aware of the leather men, the clones. I asked the waiter. Yes, it was, first and foremostly, a gay café. It didn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter.

“A Fistful of Travellers’ Cheques”. Watch it, if you haven’t …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGuU79DJAtk

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.