You’re So Vain

More right-on environmentalism. German tour operator giant TUI, and I recall mentioning this on occasion before, has been in discussion with the Mallorcan environmental oberleutnant, and is now able to say that its hotels operate in accordance with the European environmental management standard. They are “sustainable” hotels, which indicates that they are more than just able to remain in one piece, they are also eco-sensitive in terms of emissions, energy and water recycling. Apparently there are now more such hotels in Mallorca than in the whole of Germany, which is saying something as there the enviro-polizei operate with a zeal that would make the Mallorcan environmental enforcement agencies seem like a “Dad’s Army” of inconsequential old buffery by comparison. So now guests, leaving their Air Berlin shuttles, can choose to feel self-righteous about their carbon footprints if they have booked in to a sustainable hotel. They’ll be giving them t-shirts with “I’m an eco-friendly tourist” next.

This is not to decry what is being done or to criticise TUI. I’m all in favour of them protecting the environment, but – unless there are hordes of tourists who place hotel sustainability as their first priority in a hierarchy of accommodation needs (which I rather doubt) – the whole thing is more a corporate marketing exercise than just being kind to the planet and to Mallorcan water supplies. The environmental management and environmental audit requirements of business came into vogue in the ‘80s. The audit aspect has become institutionalised. German companies are obliged to report on their environmental responsibility. This is shareholder and corporate governance driven as much as it is anything to do with selling hotel rooms.

Warming to the hotel theme, the Viva chain (viva can mean “long live”) has re-positioned one of its Puerto Alcúdia hotels – the Hotel Golf is dead, long live the Hotel Golf. It is now the Vanity Hotel Golf. What exactly are we supposed to make of a hotel that covers itself in “the conceit and desire for admiration of one’s personal attainments or attractions” (the Concise Oxford) as a name? I have this horrible vision of a Gideon and Jacinta of an image consultancy, armed with Power Point presentations and psychographics, conjuring up the “vanity” moniker as some form of aspirational branding exercise. Connotation there may be with “Vanity Fair”, and the hotel is very nice and no doubt will continue to be very nice, but what on Earth possessed them to come up with the name? I had a look at their website, check it out yourselves if you want – http://www.vanityhotels.com/ – and there are two hotels, the Alcúdia one and another along the coast in Cala Mesquida. The site is full of photography that looks like stock photography – shiny, happy, mature people having fun and, in a couple of photos, looking as they have met at a conference and are contemplating some legover. The hotel is meant to be all pampering, facials (of a cosmetic kind), pina coladas by the spa and not a baby buggy or an England football shirt attached to a bucket of San Miguel in sight. Fair enough, but if a degree of exclusivity is the aim, then why pick a hotel opposite which is a row of “locals” of a distinctly unremarkable style and fronted by an admittedly fine beach but one generally populated by those to whom the word “vain” could not be applied unless it were spelt differently and was accompanied by a “varicose”? Somewhere that really is exclusive, like Son Brull in Pollensa, is stuck in the middle of nowhere with an imposing remoteness that warns off the hoi polloi with an aura that shouts: “don’t even think about coming in here”. Now that’s vanity.


QUIZ
Yesterday – the song was by Powerstation of which Robert Palmer was a member. Today’s title – easy, easy.

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