Oh Well (Or Not): Bienestar Activo and Ironman

Three months are a long time in tourism promotion. 20 June - "All Being Well". Now - all's not so well. Strategies are meant to be long-term, but not if they don't even get off the ground.

"Bienestar Activo" is - was - the brand name for a four-year strategic plan unveiled back in June. The plan was for the municipalities of Alcúdia, Muro and Santa Margalida, together with the local hotel associations and the tourism ministries at both central and local government levels, to promote various sporting activities in the resorts as a means of bolstering off-season tourism. The plan envisaged the spending of a tad under 4.5 million euros over the next four years. Annually, the central ministry would have provided 371,000 euros, a sum matched by the local ministry and also by the three town halls between them. The scheme has collapsed.

Soon after the plan was announced, I contacted the Alcúdia-Can Picafort hotel association, looking for an interview. There was an email exchange, Alcúdia's tourism councillor was also contacted, a date provisionally established, and then nothing. At the time I found this slightly strange. As it turns out, maybe it wasn't.

What I wanted to know was the exact nature of the plan, given that the activities - cycling, Nordic walking, hiking, canoeing - were already established. What was the 4.5 million meant to be spent on? I guess that I - we - will never find out. There are no funds to be forthcoming from the ministries.

There was some inkling as to how the money would have been doled out - in general. There were four, vague elements - organisation, specialisation of the destination (whatever that meant), improvement of competitiveness and marketing. But at the presentation which "launched" the project, amongst those attending - mayors, councillors and those as ever hoping for some benefit without actually putting their hands in their pockets, i.e. hoteliers and restaurant owners - there were no representatives of the ministries. The absence of government may tell a story. Had the ministries actually signed up to the whole thing? Or maybe they were going to, and then thought, as I had done, well, what is this all about? Those four aims seemed ill-defined; they may well also have been ill-conceived.

Of course, another explanation is more straightforward, namely government cuts, both nationally and local. Three months in tourism promotion isn't a long time when it is already known that money is tight, so much so that the tourism ministries at regional and central levels have been merged with others as a way of saving money. Was this plan ever a goer or was it just some sort of PR stunt, and a poor one at that, given that it was unclear what it actually entailed?

The mayors, explaining the plan's abandonment, say that they will look at it differently in the hope of bringing it back, which is probably a euphemism for saying that it will be quietly forgotten about. Maybe it should be. And maybe it would have been better had they never gone public, because this is a further embarrassment, certainly where Alcúdia is concerned, in terms of grandish tourism promotional schemes. The estación náutica concept has been quietly forgotten about, despite the fanfare that was blown when it surfaced a year and a half ago.

Fortunately for Alcúdia, something rather more concrete has emerged. Some good news with which to hopefully bury the less good news of the bienestar debacle. Thomas Cook and the regional tourism ministry have announced that an Ironman 70.3 triathlon is to be staged in Alcúdia on 14 May next year and also in 2012. Apart from some 2,500 anticipated competitors, the tour operator reckons the event will attract 20,000 visitors. I'm sceptical, but I'll bow to the company's knowledge. Nevertheless, the triathlon could well prove to be positive, and perhaps its potential does have something to do with the bienestar falling by the wayside. If you want to attract sports tourism, then better to go with a flagship-style event, rather than the vagueness of what was on offer. Relief for Alcúdia then, but what Muro and Santa Margalida make of it, who knows.

QUIZ -
"Oh Well"?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.