Pile 'Em High: Hotels

Pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap. Remember this? It's your starter for ten. Whose phrase was it? To give you a clue, he founded a supermarket chain that in the late '60s and early '70s no self-respecting, middle-class housewife would be found dead in. You know who it was. Of course you do. Jack Cohen. Tesco's.

Tesco used to be a by-word for total naffness. Back in the day it was the loon pants and platform heels of retail; the Noddy Holder and Slade of grocery. What saved it was Lord (then plain Ian) MacLaurin's makeover of sophistication, matched by an aspirational style of marketing, as well as its product expansion; Tesco was the first supermarket to become a petrol station as well.

Pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap. Tesco as it once was (and also as it has become) is a metaphor for much of Mallorca's hotel industry, both all-inclusive and conventional. A guest at one of Alcúdia's all-inclusive ghettoes was telling me how he and his wife (they were grandparents) were squeezed into a room with two double beds along with their two grandchildren (girl and boy). The arrangement was not exactly satisfactory, nor was the size of the room. Barely enough space to swing a cat (and there is probably, as an aside, a fiesta event somewhere in Mallorca which involves swinging a cat; but I digress).

A correspondent of mine was telling me of the situation in a Magalluf hotel. Two-bedded rooms have increased in size by 100% in becoming four-bedded rooms. At the prices they're being charged, the guests shouldn't have grounds to complain, went the hotel's explanation.

In the Alcúdia hotel, they were and are being piled in high. But are they being sold that cheap? Three grand for the four of them, I was told. Maybe this is cheap, but when you take into account their circumstances plus the time it takes to get served with a drink or to manage to get into a lift plus the cost of add-ons (this is an all-inclusive, remember), then maybe it isn't.

More than the cost, however, is the philosophy. Pile 'em high with scant regard for any sophistication or aspiration. Some of Mallorca's hotels are locked in a timewarp of old Tesco days, and some of them were built around the time that Tesco was reaching its early-70s, pre-MacLaurin nadir.

Tesco discovered that in order to change its entire business and marketing philosophy some of its older supermarkets had to be done away with or greatly improved. It was no use having outdated stores that didn't stack up with the new aspirational message and which weren't fit for purpose. And in addition to building new supermarkets, Tesco became, in effect, an all-inclusive retailer; everything from petrol to music.

The Tesco metaphor is pertinent because in terms of philosophy and bricks and mortar, a good part of Mallorca's hotels are in precisely the same situation that Tesco once found itself. A key difference is that many moved into the all-inclusive line quite some time ago. So they attempted product expansion but did so without considering any of the rest. Or if they did consider the rest, they were unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

The result of this was, and remains in many cases, that the hotels are not fit for purpose. They were not built or designed with all-inclusive in mind. The facilities simply aren't there. Moreover, some hotels are little more than human processing plants. A mechanistic approach, predicated on the pile 'em high philosophy, induces a mindset which is the antithesis to sophistication or aspiration.

Of course some of the market to which the hotels pander, let's be frank, is or can be low rent. And the low-rent market perpetuates a low-rent attitude among hoteliers, even if, as the Alcúdia case suggests, the rent isn't so low that it can truly qualify as being categorised as cheap.

The problem is that the market, be it low or higher rent, has witnessed for itself or learnt of what exists elsewhere. Mallorca's hotels have not responded, very often because they have been unable or not allowed to respond, to the brand spanking new out-of-town, indeed out-of-Mallorca competition; that of the eastern Med and north Africa.

An expectation has therefore grown, and it is one that is more aspirational and demands greater sophistication. For this reason, plans for hotel renovation, if they ever see the light of day, or changes to use cannot come soon enough. What some of Mallorca's hotels need is to undergo a process of Tesco-isation. The punter can't continue to be piled high.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.