The Knowledge

“You know who I had in the back of my cab …”

Ah yes, the London cabbie. Knowledge of the roads and knowledge of any subject you care to mention or indeed don’t care to mention – the knowledge will be imparted regardless. I once knew a London cabbie well. Could talk the backside off the proverbial donkey. He even appeared on “The Price Is Right”. But this is totally tangential.

No self-respecting London cabbie would turn down a free lunch, or a free trip to Thailand. And so when the Thai tourist board comes knocking on the cab window brandishing tickets to Bangkok, he is hardly likely to refuse. This is – more or less – what has been happening. As part of its marketing, the Thais (and the city of Melbourne in Australia), have co-opted London cabbies. A trip to soak up the atmosphere (and anything else that might be soaked up) and of course to also fill the cabbie with knowledge. Always knowledge.

This is not a simple case of an ad on the side of the cab. No, the interior is given the once-over, with brochures available. And, as importantly, there is the cabbie. Stuck at some lights, Capital Radio in the background, and the conversation – even if you didn’t want it to – turns to holidays. Where better and who better to assist in the next holiday choice than in the captive environment of a cab and in the captive arms (so to speak) of the cab driver?

Personally, I am not so sure a London cabbie could sell me anything, let alone a holiday, but the Thais and the Australians clearly think they’re onto something. Maybe they are. Who next? Hairdressers? They take degree courses in discussing holidays.

Daft it might sound, but different it is, and it suggests an attempt to look for new and innovative forms of marketing for tourism. I am not proposing that one should jump in a cab at King’s Cross and be given a sales pitch for Mallorca or one of the resorts, but some different approaches may well be worth exploring and especially where the “alternative” Mallorcan tourism is concerned. While I remain sceptical as to confusing the market with a Mallorcan message that conflicts with how the vast majority perceive Mallorca – sun, sea etc. – if that message is to be conveyed, let’s look at alternative means of doing so.

In Germany, there are often television programmes that feature Mallorca. The island is almost one of the Bundesländer. A typical programme, dire though it might be, would have some female singer in evening wear standing on some Mallorcan rocks, accompanied by a trumpeter on some other rocks. It’s rubbish, but at least you see some of the island. The programmes are, in essence, product placement on an island level.

We are becoming virtual tourists. We want to see and experience the tourism destination. This can be gained at present via the internet, but not on a well-produced scale. To see and experience the island and its different facets, those that the alternative tourism wishes to promote; this is the challenge. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the Balearic Government should have gone to the producers of the film about Jaime 1, shoved a large number of folding euros into their pockets, boosted their budget and insisted it was all filmed on location in Mallorca. What better for the alternative tourism than a bit of history and loads of landscape?

At Christmas, I bought a DVD of Paco de Lucia in concert and gave it to someone in the UK. It was fabulous. Paco, you may recall, is the face of Mallorca at the moment. He is hardly karaoke and the Sea Club boys and girls belting out “Let Me Entertain You”. He is classical, jazz, flamenco – cultural if you like, alternative definitely, in terms of tourist image. What if they were to break the Pollensa town hall’s bank once and for all and get Paco to play the Pollensa music festival? What if they were to make a superb film of Paco and of the area, interspersing it with certain cultural and historical bits and pieces, with the landscape and the traditions? What if they were to market the DVD like crazy and to get it onto TV, just like the Germans have their programmes – except this would be bloody good. It would be so bloody good and of such quality, the alternative tourists would flock in their droves. And they wouldn’t need a London cabbie to tell them either.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Gloria Gaynor. Today’s title – a TV programme, a famous one. Who wrote it?
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