Open All Hours

A familiar - very familiar - gripe about Palma is that it is normally shut. Great hordes of tourists would otherwise descend on the Mallorcan capital, handing over large amounts of folding notes in a binge of around-the-clock eating, drinking and shopping. Well, that's the rather hopeful theory. The practice is quite different. Especially at weekends.

Whether a less rigid application of opening hours, or more aptly closing hours, would make much difference to tourism is something of a moot point. Nevertheless, the intrusion of siesta shutting and non-opening after Saturday lunchtime do both seem somewhat anachronistic to visitors, in particular those now conditioned to liberal opening hours, e.g. the British.

One thing that the tourism minister mentioned in the interview I referred to yesterday was that there needs to be a change in terms of attitudes towards working hours and practices. There does, she argues, need to be greater flexibility, and she is absolutely right. And Palma needs such a change more than anywhere, but one could also lump in the major resorts as well.

With this in mind, there was a not uninteresting piece in "The Diario" yesterday which looked at the development of 24-hour Palma. It may have gone unnoticed by many, but the capital is shifting towards the type of model familiar to those who visit or live in capitals and major cities elsewhere. Over the past ten years, so the article explains, there has been a growth in the number of establishments which are open all hours or nearly all hours (closing only for a couple of hours to clean up). These include restaurants, pharmacies and bakeries. They may not include shops, but something has been stirring, and it might also be illuminating to note that one of the more popular places is one serving burgers and tex-mex (they'd love that news in certain parts of the island, e.g. Puerto Pollensa - or possibly not).

The obstacles to more liberal hours of working and opening are obvious enough, and they come from the unions, church, some political parties as well as from entrenched attitudes that place service fairly well down the list of reasons to actually be in business. It is curious that when fiesta comes to town, along with the hordes, some places will choose to close. But more than this, is the attitude towards time. If a shop or bar announces that it will open at a certain time, then that is precisely what it should do. If an appointment is made, it should be for a particular time and not some vague "mediodía" or whenever, which often means that it is not met. The minister also referred to productivity. I'm not sure this word was being used correctly, but it was still appropriate to mention it; the loss of productivity because of the time malaise is incalculable.

An argument that has been trotted out over the past couple of years of "crisis" is that businesses should be prepared to be open much longer. It is an argument that I have sympathy with. The counter-view is that it costs too much, in terms of staff and energy, to do so, expenses that businesses can ill afford. It is also an argument one can sympathise with. But fundamentally, it boils down to attitude and to a greater focus on the customer and on service. It may be taking time for the message to get across, but in parts of Palma at least, it is.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.