The Three Degrees: Mallorca’s winter tourism

I was dreaming of a less-than-white Christmas. No rubbish weather for me. Bronzed, golden brown. I was dreaming and then I was told to stop. By the BBC website home page. Make it real. Make what real? Make a holiday in the Canaries real, courtesy of Iberostar. I clicked the link. Dreams can come true.

You’re given no false impression as to why you would wish to make it real in the Canaries. Off you go with the family, one of whom is the child with the snorkel kit who greets you as you click from the BBC site. And why is he wearing snorkel kit? Because he wants to go snorkelling of course. In the sea. Departing from a beach. In the sun. Sun and beach. In winter.

This is a promotion by the same Iberostar which grew rich on the back of Mallorcan tourism – Mallorcan summer tourism. Once you have scrolled down the list of the 13 four or five-star hotels on the four main Canary islands – all available with special offers to the end of November, for booking through the winter to the end of April – you come to a footnote. It is under “most popular destinations”. Hotels in Majorca. Click.

Well, having clicked, you can probably guess. The red squares on the calendar mean the hotels are closed. All of them. Until April. Mallorca is “most popular”, when it is open. But who can blame Iberostar for flogging the Canaries? They’re doing what has long been one half of the mainstay of winter tourism promoted by tour operators, travel agents and now hotels. What do they all promote? Either snow or winter sun.

Summer tourism means sun and the movement of millions in its pursuit; winter tourism means snow or sun and the movement of millions more. But you move the millions to where you can pretty much guarantee good coverings of snow or good amounts of sun in temperatures of at least 20 degrees.

Sorry, Mallorca, but you fail the 20-degree test. By three degrees. It may not seem much, but the average temperature for the six months of the off-season is only 17. The psychological barrier is 20 degrees (minimum). Tenerife, by comparison and despite having almost as many days of rain if not as much rain as Mallorca (10 millimetres less on average), comes in at 21.9 degrees (which also happens to break the 70 Fahrenheit barrier). This is why the boy has his snorkel kit on, this is why dreams can be made real – in the Canaries – and this is why Iberostar makes them real there, and not in Mallorca.

Weather does matter. In fact, it is all that matters.

Mallorca’s winter tourism. Discuss. Culture, gastronomy, bird-watching, hiking, Nordic walking, cycling, golf, senior tourism. There is much which is available and promoted; it combines to create an under-mass of winter tourism approximately one-tenth the size of that which comes in summer. Unless there were real incentives, such as major, and one means major, attractions, the ratio is unlikely to ever alter fundamentally. And it’s all down to those missing three degrees.

There is a great deal of what one might call apologism for Mallorca in winter. And it is apologism that entails preaching to oneself or the converted. It is apologism that can cover all the list above and more that bring about the around one million off-season visitors. But it can only ever get the apologists so far, because something’s missing. Three degrees’ worth. At least.

This all said, it’s a nonsense when you think about it. A nonsense, not that Iberostar or any other hotel chain, airline or tour operator would choose Tenerife over Mallorca, but that Iberostar and all the other hotel chains are sitting on colossal amounts of prime real estate in Mallorca which sit idle for six months of the year. All that asset being unproductive, being wasted; an asset and an investment that have contributed to the cost of land in Mallorca for everyone else, largely deprived of their own productiveness for twelve months of the year.

The tourism industry in Mallorca would probably like to believe that it is efficient. It isn’t. It is massively inefficient. Inefficient in terms of asset and resources and inefficient in having been singularly incapable of arriving at solutions to make these resources more efficient, twelve months of the year. But then, what can it do about the weather? Not much. It makes efficient use of one resource – the sun – for six months, and that’s it. In the Canaries, on the other hand … .

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Golden Age Of Winter Tourism

Round and round and round we go in ever-decreasing circles of repetition. The main season is coming towards its end, and so it is time for the new season to begin, that of the wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding the winter season. Or rather, what winter season?

The repetition has already begun, partly thanks to Pedro Iriondo, the head of the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorca Tourist Board). Bars, restaurants, shops closed in winter; how can anyone be expected to sell winter tourism if they are all closed?

Sr. Iriondo is someone of a bygone era who, on assuming the presidency of the board, reminisced about a time when everyone in Mallorca was happy, there were parties on the beach and, not that he said this, it cost less than a quid to get absolutely blotto.

Ah yes, this bygone era, when the beaches and hotels were packed to the gunwales in summer and when winter tourists also flocked to the island. There is just one problem with this. The bit about winter tourism. There never was a Golden Age of winter tourism in Mallorca. It is a total myth.

Hardened veterans will insist that the Age did exist and will say, endlessly and repetitiously, that it can be re-created by, amongst other things, opening a few more shops up and keeping some hotels open. However, you can’t re-create something that wasn’t there.

In 2003 the Chamber of Commerce and the Economy Circle of Mallorca (a group of leading businesspeople) produced a report entitled “The current situation of and perspectives on tourism in the Balearic Islands”. It was partly an historical document and partly one that looked forward.

In it, there was a table which showed the percentage of tourists (to the Balearics) who came in the main season (defined as April to October). In 1981 this percentage was 90%. It had gone down to 85% in 1991 and back up again to 88% by 2001. From other information, it had crept back to 90% in 2008.

If the Golden Age of winter tourism ever existed, therefore, it was in the eighties, but in relative terms the level of out-of-season tourism rose only slightly. While there may well have been and were parts of Mallorca which did reasonably well in winter in the eighties, there are factors to take into account. One is that the whole debate about winter tourism, among the British, is seen through British eyes. This is a not unimportant factor.

During the eighties, the overall level of British tourism rose staggeringly (by 250% between 1981 and 1988). This followed a period of significant decline in British tourism on the back of economic difficulties in the seventies. The growth in eighties tourism was also helped by an extremely favourable exchange rate.

Dealing in percentages doesn’t give the whole story. The actual numbers do. In the mid-eighties, the number of tourists per year to the Balearics was around 5 million. The number of winter tourists, peaking at 15% of the total, could never have been greater than 750,000. If this was the Golden Age of winter tourism, then what do we have now? Well, in 2008, for example, over 11 million tourists came to the Balearics, a million or more of them in winter. The Golden Age is now, not then.

How can this be, you ask. Well, partly it’s the British perspective again. In 2003 the Chamber of Commerce referred to air connections from Germany in respect of winter tourism. It made no mention of those from the UK and would be even less likely to now. It has been German tourism that has been largely responsible for Mallorca’s winter tourism. Which is bad news in a way, as Air Berlin is planning to cut some of its routes this winter. Its boss in Spain and Portugal, Álvaro Middelmann, blames hotels for not opening, obsolete and overpriced bars and restaurants and even the airport authority AENA for its inadequate service.

Mallorca’s winter tourism is not something to be re-created but to be created. There are plenty of ideas as to how, and they can be dealt with another time. But we might hope that the Balearics Tourism Agency, augmented by the inclusion of all manner of interested parties, including the Mallorca Tourist Board and airlines, can, for once, get to grips with winter tourism. Not that you should bank on it. In thirty years time the same debate will still be had, and commentators will look back at a Golden Age of winter tourism – in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Smiley, Smile

“The Balearics (are) a summer destination and in winter there are not many alternatives.”

These are words that will not be music to the ears of anyone much in Mallorca or the other Balearic islands. And certainly not to a succession of tourism officials who have sought to promote Mallorca in the winter and to promote specifically its “alternatives”. We are treated, through the words of these officials, to an endless diet of gastronomy, to an endless round of golf, to an endless tour of cultural sites. But to no avail. There aren’t many alternatives. Who says so? TUI. And worse still, TUI Germany.

The moaning that occurs regarding the lack of winter tourism is primarily one inspired by the absence of British tourists and by the absence of aircraft belonging to airlines from the British Isles rumbling along the runway in Palma. There are tourists in winter, however, and they are mainly German, courtesy of Air Berlin’s regular services from all over Germany.

Notwithstanding the winter lifeline that Air Berlin throws Mallorca, for TUI Germany to state that the Balearics are a summer destination should make tourism officialdom and all others who claim that there are alternatives to “sol y playa” (sun and beach) squirm in the vacuity of their endless desires to promote the alternatives. The desires count for little or nothing, as do whatever is meant to have been happening to realise them. “There is a lack of initiative to give life to the (winter) season.” Who says so? TUI.

If it really wanted to, TUI could probably do something about the “many places that are dead” in winter (again, its words). But why should it? There are plenty of other places that aren’t dead. Anywhere but Mallorca, let alone Ibiza or God-forsaken Menorca.

TUI Germany’s director-general and his two able lieutentants were holding court the other day in Palma. The three wise men followed the ibero star to Mallorca, bearing gifts but unable to turn dross into gold. But what gifts they were. The level of all-inclusive will rise to 33% from its current 20. Gifts to the consumer who has driven the demand (says TUI). And the consumer is the gift to Mallorca this summer. “The level of sales is very, very good.” And guess what type of hotel is increasingly enjoying these very, very good sales.

At roughly the same time as the kingdom of TUI and its court was assembling in Palma, elsewhere in the city a different type of court was amassing. The new kingdom of Bauzá. It must be utterly disheartening for a Mallorcan and Balearic leader to know that his own court is largely irrelevant and that the real power has just arrived from the north.

You know that story about the German businessmen who wanted to buy Mallorca. I’ve never known if there was any substance to it or if it was simply an urban myth. It doesn’t really matter, because Germany runs Mallorca anyway. The castle and stripes are not the flag of Mallorca. The real one is a smiley logo. TUI’s.

When TUI puts in its court-like appearance, it is offered tribute by the media and the lickspittles of officialdom. When Völker Böttcher, the TUI boss, speaks, it is as though there were a papal visit and address. What TUI says is far more important than anything that comes out of the Balearic parliament or from the mouths of a Balearic president or tourism minister.

It is in the gift of TUI to do something about winter tourism, were it minded to. And were it minded to, it would simply reinforce the fact that Mallorcan officialdom has been incapable of doing anything. This officialdom talks a good game – of golf, mainly – but knows, or should know, as TUI knows, that the only real game in town and across the island is sun and beach. It always has been and always will be.

It is also in the gift of TUI to do something about summer tourism. Like turning its back on it. It wouldn’t do so, of course it wouldn’t, but it can do pretty much as it wishes. Hence, a 13% increase in all-inclusives. What’s to stop it? TUI can make or break the island. It’s the real power. You just have to lump it, and smiley, smile.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Same Old Rot: Tourism in the off-season

Easter is late this year. Easter Sunday is the 24th of April, three weeks later than 2010, and a week before the real season kicks in on 1 May. An earlier Easter makes life awkward for businesses. Open, and they face the inevitable hiatus of the phoney season before the May lift-off. This year is not quite so awkward.

Nevertheless, many hotels will not be opening for Easter. In Alcúdia, 26 establishments will remain closed. It seems perverse. At a time when Mallorca is reaping the benefits of north African disturbances, should all hotels not be taking the plunge and opening that one week earlier?

This is the headline-grabber. Hotels not opening for Easter, a late Easter at that. This is the headline-grabber that inspires rumblings as to the state of the tourism market, the tourism industry not trying hard enough, and all the other rot that goes with it.

It is rot. What the headline fails to tell you is that 24 hotels will be open at Easter. I make that roughly the same number that will not be open. So what’s the problem? Answer? There isn’t one. Demand, with or without Egyptian uprisings, is not so high that all hotels need to be open at Easter. Moreover, most of the hotels form parts of chains. One, two maybe, are sufficient. All of them? Of course not.

There is also the smell of a rat with the hotel-opening and hotel-not-opening figures. It is one that comes from their source, the local hotel association in Alcúdia. Not all hotels in Alcúdia are listed by the association on its website, as not all hotels are members. One very large complex that isn’t listed is Bellevue. One whole chain, GC, which typically does open its hotels either early or through the winter, is similarly not present.

The point is that when you are fed stories about hotels and consequently the state of the tourism market, you don’t always get a complete picture, while it is easier to be convinced as to the rotten state of the market by the fact of non-opening hotels than to be convinced as to a reasonable state of the market by the fact of a similar number which are open.

But let’s get real. Out of season, only a few hotels being open can be viable. Of the 24 hotels in Alcúdia open by Easter, only six will have opened by the start of March (plus others that are not members of the local association). The Alcúdia hotel association, in releasing the figures as to non-opening hotels, has taken the opportunity to also state that the situation with winter tourism is very bad. Yes, I think we know this, and it applies not only to Alcúdia and the north of the island, but also to the whole of Mallorca. So what’s new?

Well, there are some things that are new. Two different and more positive opportunities to lengthen the season and to make the off-version less “very bad”. One is the “bienestar activo” concept of activities, the other, the “estación náutica” branding of Alcúdia as a watersports resort. The association supports both these initiatives.

It is hopeful that the activities included in “bienestar” (hiking, Nordic walking and so on) will reap some reward this coming season, that the results from this “strategy” and its promotion will bear fruit. But these activities are essentially non-summer activities. What difference are they likely to make in summer? Very little, I would suggest.

Far more important is that this so-called strategy should be aimed at the winter market, but what actually is the strategy? And where is this promotion? Not on the association’s website, as far as I can see, unless you count the absurdly passive question – “have you been to our new Nordic walking park yet?” A word in the association’s shell-like. Do not ask a closed question, the answer to which may well be “no” and which inspires no further interest or action. It’s known in the trade as motivational copy. Or in the association’s case, non-motivational.

The establishment of the “estación náutica” concept, an element of which is an obligation to have hotels open in the off-season (at least from March and to the end of November), presents the opportunity for the hotels to ensure that they are open before Easter. It will also test their resolve. Will they open? And will they make sufficient effort to promote this concept to ensure that it is sensible for them to open?

Here are two initiatives which in theory can lengthen the season and which can reduce the whingeing about the winter season being “very bad”. The theory is one thing; the practice is quite another. Will they really mean that more hotels open earlier? It is very doubtful. How many watersports enthusiasts or Nordic walkers might be expected? Not enough to fill more than a handful of hotels. Around the same number that will be open during this “very bad” off-season, hotel association figures or otherwise.

Rot? You’d better believe it.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Never Mind The Quality – Ever more on so-called quality tourism

There was a very good letter in “The Bulletin” yesterday. It came from Ian Morrison, a name some of you will be familiar with. You might also be familiar with some of the sentiments. They are ones you have heard many times on this blog. Mr. Morrison and I appear to share a similar past-time: banging our heads against the brick-walled numbskulls that populate the tourism authorities in Mallorca.

Here was an “open” letter to the new tourism minister. Another day, another tourism minister. Another tourism minister, another set of statements of the pointless and even the insulting. Here were references to “quality tourists”, the hackneyed, pejorative but ultimately meaningless term used to describe, one supposes, bulging-pocketed tourists who eschew karaoke and lager unlike the poor sods at the “bottom end” of the market. The minister’s bottom end, not mine. This is a massive and not infrequent affront. Here too were references to the promotional spend directed at this quality market and to the irrelevance of it. References to spending some of this promotional money on incentives to tour operators, on promotion via the big online agencies. References to things you will have read here before. References to things that are, if you like, common sense.

Times change, of course they do, but it remains the case that what made Mallorca in the first place still holds true. And that is the sun and beach holiday, one for families, not all of whom are necessarily loaded. This is the Mallorca brand, as I have said so often, one that they try to diminish by alternative marketing and the pursuit of this mythical “quality tourist”. And what is this person anyway? Who knows? The tourism people certainly don’t. It’s just a term, an utterly meaningless and insulting one which has the effect merely of potentially alienating the thousands, nay millions who made and continue to make Mallorca what it is. It is the regular tourist who makes Mallorca. Not some niched ones who might prefer cultural experiences. Who the hell would fill all the hotels otherwise?

The new tourism minister, Sra. Barceló, is simply singing the same old song, as has been sung so many times over the past several years. There must be a script somewhere in the tourism ministry with certain stock phrases and words that must be trotted out at all times, even if the one uttering them hasn’t a clue what he or she is talking about. The revolving door at the ministry may have raised some eyebrows among tour operators, but it doesn’t really matter who’s occupying the ministerial swivel-chair. It is the tour operator who decides what type of tourist comes and when. Elsewhere in the paper, the tame tour operator “inside tourism”, he from the Monarch group, says that discussions are taking place with the same Sra. Barceló to offer more by way of winter tourism. On the face of it, this sounds quite encouraging and is evidence, if more is needed, that it is in the tour operators’ gift to make winter tourism work. Encouraging, except that is when you read the list of the same old stuff that comprises this winter tourism. You don’t need me to tell you again what this is. The tourism ministry is not irrelevant in all this, because it would be the ministry that is charged with much of the promotion that might persuade hotels to bother opening and thereby make winter tourism work – for the tour operators. And so you come back to that promotion and that spend and, in all likelihood, to the so-called quality tourist. And chances are the money would be wasted, if it’s no longer being siphoned off into a political party’s coffers – allegedly.

A different type of encouragement comes from the fact that the Spanish tourism ministry has a Facebook campaign. It’s something. All the resorts should do the same. Using social networks would be an inexpensive alternative and arguably as effective if not more than the Nadalist corporate advertising. I spoke about this back in November (8 November: Same Old Story). Rather than increasing promotional budgets, they should be cut as a way of exercising minds gone flabby with the default thinking of celebrity marketing.

But to come back to winter tourism, you might recall an exchange about cultural (winter) tourism (27 November: The Coffee Culture Club). In this, the points were made that there are high costs associated with its marketing and selling and with the hire of coaches etc, as well as there being the need for volume to make it work for an island with a culture and history which aren’t actually that remarkable, certainly when set against the fact that so many other places offer “culture” which is often more interesting. The point was also made that none of the big tour operators would think it worthwhile and for a very good reason. The ratio between the high costs of marketing and the actual returns would be poor. Here lies the rub. The business rub. Marketing spend for summer, for regular sun and beach holidays may well also be high, but so also are the returns. The ratio is highly favourable. Is Monarch, therefore, willing to lavish money on the marketing? Or would it be the tourism ministry, whose efforts might be better devoted to ensuring that the bread and butter of summer continues to feed Mallorca?

And finally … The guy from Monarch also said the following: “Forget the sun, the Balearics has to give up going down that road.” I’m struggling. Did a representative of Monarch, Cosmos and Co-Op really say this?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

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.