The Pirates Of Ponsance

I blame Robert Newton. Did he ever actually utter the line – “belay there, Jim lad”? Probably not. You can go further back – to J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan and Captain Hook – but Newton’s portrayal of Long John Silver was what propelled the pirate into the common Sunday-afternoon-black-and-white-film-on-telly consciousness, thus setting off a trail that has passed through the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Johnny Depp to now a hotel in Santa Ponsa.

Mallorca has long done pirates. Many of its old fortifications were designed with them in mind, not as entertainment but as a means of defence. Actual pirates, rather than pretend ones, remained on the scene until alarmingly recently. There is the marvellous story of the Jolly Roger bar in Puerto Alcúdia which, when it first opened in the early 1970s, was told to take down its skull-and-crossbones flag. Presumably, passing post-Newtonian Silvers (and there were some then) might have mistaken it as an invitation for a spot of pirating.

The island’s culture is wrapped up in tales of derring-do involving pirates and their being repelled. The grand entertainment that is the annual street theatre of the Moors and Christians battle during Pollensa’s Patrona fiesta is a pirate adventure without the entrance fee. Dragut (Turgut) is often portrayed as a sixteenth-century chancer, a pirate in other words. He was far from being so; he was in fact the commander of the Ottoman navy. But the pirate myth has come to suit.

Santa Ponsa has its own Moors and Christians thrash. But it is not one that has been subjected to piratical revisionism. It’s the real clash-of-the-religions thing, in that it celebrates the taking of Mallorca by Jaume I and the defeat of the Moors in the thirteenth century as part of the re-conquest of Spain.

A short journey down the Calvia coast, to Magalluf, and there is the Pirates Adventure, the contemporisation for stage of an island history rich in pirate legend.

Santa Ponsa, without a pirate theme as such, now wants to get in on the pirates’ act. It is to be the site for more of this stuff of legend and for its commercialisation. The Gran Santa Ponsa Apartments are to become pirate-themed.

“Complementary things” are needed, so says the head of the local hotel association, in order to ward off the competition from other destinations. Like Turkey, for example. Which is where Dragut came from. There’s a coals to Newcastle metaphor lurking in this latest piratisation.

Santa Ponsa, it would appear, is to undergo a thematic transformation. The Gran Santa Ponsa will be followed by other theme hotels, thus, according to the hotel association, securing the support of tour operators in guaranteeing flights in March and November. The pirate ships will fly for longer than they currently do. Will they really? Are the pirates not more for the kiddies? How many school holidays are there in November? Or will there be an out-of-season pirates uncut in Santa Ponsa?

The pirates of Ponsance follow in the wake of the Magalluf tourism-reinvention mothership. One of the hotels in line for the Magalluf makeover is already themed; the modern stone-age family hotel, the Antillas Barbados, where you meet The Flintstones – Pedro, Vilma, Pablo and Betty, as they are usually not known.

From the rubble of prehistoric Mallorcan tourism rises the modern stone work of its new age, and it is one full of pirates. The Euro, fast disappearing into the Mediterranean, locked in chests of buried un-treasure, will be replaced by pieces of eight, always assuming they are required and that the pirates are not all-inclusive.

Theming is all well and good, but doesn’t it run the risk of becoming a bit out of date? The pirates thing has been done to death. Or maybe it hasn’t been. The Flintstones really do now seem like they’re from the stone age.

Where next for the theme hotel, then? Bearing in mind a need for internationalism, it would need to make sense to more than just the Brits (or the Irish in Santa Ponsa). A Big Brother-themed hotel perhaps. An X Factor theme maybe, a sort of Eurovision Song Contest hotel; every night is karaoke night with text voting. Dinosaurs and planets of the apes must surely already be being lined up for hotels across Mallorca.

But for now, the pirates have it, so if you go to the Gran Santa Ponsa and see some bloke with one leg and a parrot on his shoulder, be sure to introduce yourself. “I’m Jim Hawkins.” “Belay there, Jim lad.”

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

New For Old: The all-inclusive mixed message

“Mallorca has worked as an example of tourism development except in the case of all-inclusive.”

So says Michael Tenzer, a senior director of Thomas Cook. A different company director had suggested that the “battle for the all-inclusive” had ended. It would appear not to have; next year will witness a 10% increase in the number of places Thomas Cook offers which are all-inclusive. In the name of tourism development, one takes it, comes more all-inclusive.

When Herr Tenzer suggests all-inclusive underperformance, he is not talking solely about the volume of AI. There is also the issue of its quality. Never fear. There is always Joana Barceló and her tourism ministry quality inspectorate which has stepped up its scrutiny of the low-grade lager.

Whether the all-inclusive “battle” is over or still being waged, at the same time as Thomas Cook is announcing an increase in its AI offer, the research organisation, the Gadeso Foundation, is reporting that the so-called complementary offer (bars, restaurants etc.) appears “mortally wounded”. Every battle has its victims.

It befits a victor to be magnanimous. Thomas Cook is due to roll out a project in Santa Ponsa in 2011 which is designed to take all-inclusive out of the confines of the hotel and onto the terraces of neighbouring bars and restaurants. It sounds a good idea, but how on earth is it supposed to work?

The notion of a sort of mixed all-inclusive whereby guests could go to nearby establishments and still benefit from brandishing their wristbands was flagged up back in March this year. A “nuevo concepto” of all-inclusive was how it was being branded. I understand that such a system already operates in a limited way in Playa de Palma, but there it involves hotels and outside restaurants within the same group of ownership. In March, the reaction to the new concept from the hotel federations, the association of small- to medium-sized businesses and restaurant associations was underwhelming. They couldn’t see how it could be viable, given the complexity of administration.

Why is such a system being contemplated? The altruistic interpretation is that tour operators wish to help the mortally wounded bars and restaurants. I can break thee, but I can re-make thee. For all the lambasting of hotels that subscribe to the AI doctrine, it might be considered who have been driving it – the tour operators. One can also interpret the mixed AI as an admission of responsibility for problems that have arisen within the bar and restaurant sector.

A second interpretation is that the tour operators are acting as economic engineers, assuming leadership for establishing arrangements which benefit more than simply themselves and the hotels. Sound social responsibility perhaps, but one based on countering the endless moans of a complementary sector that has done precious little for itself in trying to combat the onward march of AI. If they, the bars and restaurants, can’t do it for themselves, i.e. forge relationships with hotels and/or new products, then someone has to do it for them.

Then, however, there is the issue of quality. Anecdotes in resorts such as the AI-abundant Alcúdia or Can Picafort are legion when it comes to holidaymakers seeking out better food and drink than that served up in many an all-inclusive hotel. Notwithstanding Sra. Barceló’s army of inspectors, perhaps there is a recognition that some hotels are simply incapable of providing good service. And this isn’t totally their fault. They have to work within the constraints of their own economics.

And then there are the guests themselves. True, there are those who are totally disinclined to shift themselves from the poolside. It’s the mentality that “Benidorm” captured so perfectly. “Why go outside, when it’s all free?” It might remain “free” under the mixed AI arrangement, but it creates an impulse to step outside the hotel walls, even if it would be to just go across the street. There are though many AI guests who don’t want to remain confined, and it is the recognition of this fact that speaks volumes for why Mallorca has not developed in terms of AI as Thomas Cook might have liked it to.

All-inclusive in Mallorca both works and doesn’t work. And it doesn’t work for the very simple reason that there is so much outside the hotel. Neither the island’s resorts nor many of its hotels are designed with AI in mind. The symbiosis between the hotels and the outside bars and restaurants and their shared living space are fundamental to the ongoing success of Mallorca. Disrupt this relationship, wound it so badly, and you cease to have resorts. The new concept of AI is something of the old concept of mutual benefit that worked well for so many years dressed up in newspeak.

How this new concept could work, whether it could work is yet to be answered. The practicalities are not insignificant, and quite what benefits the bars and restaurants would derive, and which bars and restaurants would derive them, are open to question. But the concept deserves to be given a go. The experiences in Santa Ponsa in 2011 could be very important.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.