When A Law Isn't A Law

A peculiarity of Balearics legislation is that it isn't as legislative as it might appear. Laws are drafted, debated, red-drafted and then presented, approved and posted onto the Official Bulletin, but they do not end there. Indeed, this can be only the beginning of the process. This, at least, is what we have to accept is the case with Balearics tourism law. Approved in 2012, it seems that it was more of a consultative document than the real thing. Representatives of various tourism and business associations met tourism minister Jaime Martínez on Tuesday and they expressed their approval for the law, three years after it had been approved. Or so we had thought.

The key to all this lies with the word "regulation". This might seem to be synonymous with legislation, but it would appear that legislation needs to be regulated. Confused? You should be. The final and definitive contents of the 2012 law will be revealed next month, and to add to the confusion, we understand from minister Martínez that the 2012 (2015) law will in fact be the first regulated tourism law in the Balearics because the 1999 tourism law "did not develop regulations". Meaning what precisely?

Legislative lunacy aside, it might be noted that not all the associations who met with Martínez or had met with him during the process of regulating the legislation are in total agreement with the regulations. Most are, but then most will be getting what they want, like the hoteliers. Among these associations was APTUR, the one for the renting of tourist apartments (holiday lets). It is probably safe to assume that when April comes they will not be singing the law's praises.

The timing of this regulation has not gone unnoticed. Firstly, it will be issued just as the season gets underway and secondly, it will appear just weeks before the election. The timing is, therefore, both poor but also expedient - the PP is ensuring the law is fully regulated just in case it loses the election and some other lot discovers that the law hadn't been fully regulated and so applies different interpretations.

Martínez maintains that the industry has been willing to work towards achieving "consensus", but as he also says that the law marks commitments to quality and against "illegal supply and unfair competition", one would have to doubt that there is consensus. The holiday lets issue apart, it will be interesting to know exactly how fears of the non-hotel complementary sector have been addressed in respect, for example, of the so-called secondary activities in hotels which pose a direct competitive threat to the complementary sector. The chances are that they won't have been or this would have meant backtracking on what the 2012 law supposedly permitted and which has been taken as the green light by certain hotels: the Cursach BH Hotel being a prime example because its activities will be open to non-hotel guests, which is what secondary activities refer to.

The Law According To Martínez

We finally came to understand this week what Jaime Martínez actually does with himself. He spends long days bunkered in an office drawing up incomprehensible laws or decrees or whatever they're called. Architect by background, he was the architect of the 2012 tourism law and the designer of its 2014 offspring, the new law or decree. Only he probably truly understands the "typologies" of properties outlined in the decreto Martínez. Certainly only he can understanding the thinking. Everyone else was baffled, except his supporters at the islands' hotel federations, and everyone took aim at this new law/decree, with the exception of course of the hoteliers.

While Martínez doublespeak stated that there would be more private tourist accommodation, he was the only one who actually believed this to be the case (though his lackeys in the ministry who are under instruction will also believe it to be so). The UPyD party spoke of the "persecution" of holiday homes. "If Bauzá reckons that tourism is our oil, we do not understand why he persecutes it and drowns it in such a manner." The Més grouping wanted the whole decree withdrawn. El Pi blasted the "battle against tourist rentals", condemning the government as "sectarian and irresponsible". PSOE described the typologies as "arbitrary" and believed that the latest legislation could be unconstitutional.

The government was sneaky. To bring out this draft when it did, slap bang in the middle of August, was a disgracefully undisguised act of contempt for a sector that has other things on its mind. That the consultation period may have been extended does not let the government off the hook. It has acted in bad faith.

And there were other elements that raised the hackles of opposition parties and other organisations. There was the matter of competences that were meant to be transferred to the island councils. These have been scaled back. In Minorca they are especially annoyed. In theory, its council could have introduced its own regulations on tourist rentals. Not now it can't.

Then there were all-inclusives. Martínez was clear that there would be no prohibition. It was one of the few aspects of his explanation of the new decree that made sense. He said that all-inclusives were a matter for Europe, and he is right. Any attempt at prohibition would end up in front of the competition commission, and it will never agree to prohibition. The one small crumb of comfort was that all-inclusives would be subject to quality standards. Possibly so, but how effective will the monitoring be and what exactly are these standards? We've been down this path before, and there are still all-inclusives in Mallorca whose standards are simply awful.

That the hoteliers were the one obvious group who firstly found it perfectly acceptable that the decree should be published at the height of the season and with such a short consultation and who secondly considered the decree to be very positive tells us all we really need to know about the motivation behind many of the decree's provisions. One of these, related to secondary activities in hotels, was confirmed and explained in more detail. I believed that when these activities were first spoken of and then included in the 2012 law they could be as controversial or as damaging as all-inclusives. They have yet to really hit home, but they are in evidence. The Ushuaia Beach in Ibiza is an example. Operated by Abel Matutes' Fiesta Group, it is a blueprint of sorts for what will happen with the Matutes hotels in Magalluf, now that Cursach has replaced Mallorca Rocks. One big club inside a hotel complex. The complementary sector, i.e. the non-hotel tourism sector, is going to be clobbered even harder.

Being For The Benefit Of The Hoteliers

So, CAEB, the Balearics Business Confederation, has announced that this year's bumper tourism season has only benefited the hoteliers. Talk about making a statement of the bleeding obvious. I have a question for CAEB. Why has it not previously been making a song and dance about the imbalances that exist within the island's tourism industry?

One reason may be because of the diverse range of business interests that CAEB represents. Go back to May of last year, as an example, and CAEB was in a state of internal strife, some associations within it backing the regional government's tourism law and others not.

This lack of unity says much for how tourism operates in Mallorca. There are competing groups with competing self-interests which find it hard to create a coherent and single voice to challenge the business voice which is heard with clarity and one purpose - that of the hoteliers. The tourism law, criticised for having been a law for the hoteliers, was exposed to all too little opposition because of the fragmented nature of what opposition there was.

It is only now that this fragmentation is beginning to coalesce into something like a powerful alternative voice. The association which represents attractions was another which had been largely disregarded until the director of Palma Aquarium assumed its leadership and began to push for a far more co-ordinated approach by businesses from the non-hotel complementary sector. CAEB's announcement, one made in fact by the head of its restaurant association, can be seen as further evidence of dissatisfaction belatedly being expressed by this sector. Other groups which have been saying similar things include the Chamber of Commerce and the islands' major retailers.

A current preoccupation with seasonality and the lack of winter tourism produces debate which is a diversion. Regardless of whatever solutions might or more likely would not be arrived at, would similar dynamics to those of the summer not be at play? Open up more hotels and what type of accommodation might be offered? Bring in more tourists off-season and what sort of spend will they have? Why would trends towards more all-inclusive packages and towards lower spend be any less relevant were there more winter tourism?

The winter tourism debate is a diversion away from the underlying weaknesses of summer tourism. There is no weakness in terms of numbers of tourists, and there is unlikely to ever be such a weakness, but the numbers obscure the real issues, something to which CAEB has now alluded when it questions tourism spending statistics. Why question them now? Why has a professional body for so long apparently failed to appreciate that these statistics are compiled for a particular purpose - in order to satisfy a Bank of Spain requirement for balance of payments measures - that does not correspond with the real tourism economy?

It has also taken an inordinately long time for professional, non-hotel bodies to wise up to the contribution that non-hotel tourism accommodation makes to the Mallorcan economy. The Chamber of Commerce produced very revealing research about the levels of such accommodation way back in 2006, but why does it seem that it took the change in the national tenancy law this summer to shake business associations into beginning to voice strong opposition to the government's pro-hotel stance?

For the good of Mallorca's tourism industry, one would hope that there might be a unified voice which expresses the needs of all the industry's sectors, but there seems little chance of such a hope being fulfilled. The tourism ministry, as with the government as a whole, doesn't do dialogue. Witness what happened when Carlos Delgado said he was looking for consensus with regard to holiday rentals in August. He got it, but from whom? Not the business associations but from town halls and island administrations beaten into submission.

The ministry cannot be totally blamed for there not being a unified voice and a unified view of Mallorca's tourism. In the lead-up to the passing of the tourism law, there was a truce between the hoteliers and the complementary sector, the latter hopeful of gaining from the law by presenting a solid front. It was a naïve hope, and the hoteliers and the complementary sector have been at each other's throats ever since, the complementary sector pausing only to try and wring the ministry's neck.

The sadness in all this is that these three agencies - government, hoteliers and complementary sector - should be sitting together in order to come to an understanding of and to create a vision of Mallorca's tourism over the next couple of decades. The tourism market is constantly evolving and developments can be expected to be more rapid, but where is the unity of purpose to facilitate an appreciation of and response to these developments? There isn't one.

The Moving Target: All-inclusives

Sometimes you can't tell the difference between tourists and local business types. An elderly chap wandered into Cheers on Tuesday lunchtime, scanning earnestly the business types, and pulled up a chair at the next table. Wasn't he going to join us? I realised that he wouldn't be when he ordered steak and chips in a broad Brummy accent. Having positioned himself next to the long table of business types, I trust he was well informed as to the latest thinking about all-inclusives. Cheers is a big place. It was not exactly packed on Tuesday lunchtime, but the tourist still chose the next table. I guess had he looked around at the empty tables, he would have got the drift as to what the discussion was about.

There again, Alcúdia's main tourist centre gets fairly quiet in October. You wouldn't expect packed restaurants at lunchtimes. More important, though, is whether you can expect packed lunchtime terraces and dining areas at any time of the season, except in the restaurants of all-inclusive hotels.

The tourist centre, a couple of kilometres away from Alcúdia's port, goes under various names. One of them is "around Bellevue". This massive complex has lent its name to the area because of its imposing importance. Five thousand or so guests when it's full, it now has five thousand or so guests who are all-inclusive, assuming that the figure given by one of the bar owners is accurate. 99%, he said. Which I suppose means 100%. You can never be 100% sure, as Bellevue has long been a breeding ground for rumours, urban myths and outright untruths.

This is hardcore all-inclusive land insofar as there are hotels which are known to be predominantly or exclusively all-inclusive. The all-inclusive tentacles, however, spread out from around Bellevue. They are wrapped around Magic and have crept into the port. In the opposite direction, they have grown into triffids, consumed much of Playa de Muro and swallowed almost whole Can Picafort. 

The resorts of the bay of Alcúdia form a conurbation in which there are similar concerns, the greatest being all-inclusive. I don't know that I had anticipated there being many people at the meeting but I began to appreciate why there weren't very many. From this conurbation (populated with roughly 150 hotels), you might have thought that Cheers would be thronged, but it wasn't, and the reasons why speak volumes as to why opposition to all-inclusives from the complementary sector is so weak.

The principal reason is fragmentation. Even within Alcúdia there is fragmentation. Bars and restaurants represented at Acotur's gathering to discuss all-inclusives were predominantly from around Bellevue. There was only one representative from the port. There were no great delegations from Muro or Can Picafort. One only has to consider how the local hotels are organised to realise just how shambolic the organisation of opposition is; Alcúdia and Can Picafort hoteliers federations joined forces some three years ago, and it is one of the loudest of the island's hotel groupings.

There was discussion about the need for far greater unity and for the creation of a genuine lobbying mechanism to match the all-powerful one of the hotels. It makes eminent sense for there to be one loud voice rather than the many quiet ones that proliferate in Mallorca's business world. Opposition to all-inclusives and indeed other aspects of tourism from within the complementary sector is dogged by fragmentation in terms of different associations, so the sector needs a proper structure before it embarks on a strategy; without a unified lobbying organisation, the detail of opposition is pretty useless.

But if the structure were right, would the strategy be right? One problem is that there is disagreement as to how current moves by the regional government should be responded to. Is the insistence on greater hotel and all-inclusive quality beneficial to the complementary sector? Some say it is, as this will result in a tourist base with greater spending power which doesn't confine itself to the hotel. Others disagree. Raise the quality that much and no one would ever leave a hotel.

If the bars and restaurants are unsure what their position is on facets of tourism policy, it will be difficult to create a coherent strategy of opposition, whatever this might be. And one fears that even with a unified body, nothing would change. There was much talk of the government giving the hotels carte blanche and of the hotels having the government in their pocket, but ultimately does this not miss the point that the real target for opposition is neither the hotels nor the government? It is the tour operators.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

With The Compliments Of The Complementary Sector

The complementary sector has completed the drafting of its complementary demands to be incorporated into the tourism law. With the aid of the Chamber of Commerce, these complementary demands will be dispatched forthwith (after Monday anyway) together no doubt with a pleasant note attached, offering the tourism ministry all the complementary sector's best compliments for the end of the tourism season.

In case you need a definition once again, here it is. The complementary sector is anything in a tourism style which isn't a hotel. It is the "them" of the us and them of the tourism industry. Or is it the "us"? Either would do, I suppose. As such, it is therefore bars, restaurants, clubs, attractions and anything else it might wish to complement itself with.

The complementary sector will doubtless be complimenting itself on a jolly good list of demands. They had been well signalled, and I have helped to signal them. Much though it will sound repetitious, it is probably worth repeating what they are and identifying what has since been added.

There are two aspects. One has to do with so-called secondary activities that hotels will be allowed to engage in; the other concerns all-inclusives. With regard to the latter, the complementary sector is persisting with its pointless demand that a hotel has to have a minimum of three stars in order to offer all-inclusive; it is pointless as there are so few hotels with fewer than three stars and they are meant to be phased out in any event. Less pointless is to try and stop the practice of the day's all-inclusive rate that some hotels offer. A minimum of three days stay is being called for in order that a guest can qualify for all-inclusive.

There is also a reminder that hotels will have to prevent guests leaving the premises with food and drink (a specific provision in the tourism law). While this is also pointless as it will make little or no difference in generating more business for bars and restaurants, the complementary sector is keen to ensure that if hotels fail to prevent guests taking some carry-outs they will get hammered with the fines that are stipulated under the law (and they fall into the category with the maximum sanction).

I am still at a loss to know how this measure is going to work in practice. What are the hotels to do? Man the exits with heavy security? Call the police if Joe All-Inclusive decides to go walkabout with a plastic glass of watered-down foaming lager? Make a citizen's arrest if Josephine All-Inclusive heads off to the beach with a soggy pizza shoved in her bikini top? It all sounds like more trouble than it's worth, and trouble one can well envisage when Joe All-Inclusive, tanked up on his lager, gives security a smack in the gob for trying to prevent him leaving the premises with plastic glass in hand.

The all-inclusive demands amount to very little, and as there is very little the complementary sector can do about all-inclusives, this isn't altogether surprising. But then there are the secondary activities, the likes of discos, restaurants open to anyone, i.e. not just to hotel guests. There is more for the complementary sector to get its teeth into here. It wants to ensure that these activities are only available when the hotel is actually open, so there would be no discos or restaurants in winter. It also wants to ensure that access to these secondary activities requires people to pass through hotel receptions. And why would they want them to do this?

Well, I can think of one reason, and it has Mallorca Rocks written all over it. The complementary sector also wants to limit the number of people who could attend a secondary activity event to 150% of the total number of hotel places. Put this together with entrance only through reception, and you come up with Mallorca Rocks or equivalents. A limit of numbers as is being demanded would make concerts less viable, while insisting that there is no separate entrance would lead to a logistical nightmare.

These demands sound as though they are a rewind to the objections raised against Mallorca Rocks and the discovery by the tourism ministry, once Carlos Delgado had got his feet under the ministerial table, that it could indeed permit concerts at the hotel despite it previously saying that it couldn't. There are attempts to settle some old scores, one fancies, and one also fancies they won't be settled in favour of the complementary sector.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Two Stars In Their Eyes: All-inclusive

If you were looking to limit the effects of all-inclusive, what might be your suggestion? And you can't answer just get rid of the lot of it because that wouldn't happen. If you need some help, then why not seek the views of the complementary sector? You'll remember the complementary sector as I wrote about it the other day and about the fact it was going to come up with proposals to limit all-inclusive. And this is just what has happened. Stand back, everyone, here is the moment you've been waiting for, the moment when the rest of the tourism industry (more or less) which isn't hotels comes up with its great solution to the all-inclusive problem. Drums, please!

All-inclusives should be confined to hotels with a minimum of three stars. Sorry, what was that? All-inclusives should be confined to hotels with a minimum of three stars, so no more all-inclusive in hotels with one or two stars. That's it? That's the solution? Erm, well, yes, is there something wrong? I'll say there's something wrong. Talk about urinating in the wind, but more importantly, are you not aware, complementary sector, that the tourism law envisages the elimination of one and two-star (key) accommodation? That there won't be any within four years and that if it isn't upgraded it will be closed either temporarily or permanently.

Do you know the percentage of total hotel places in Mallorca that is made up by accommodation of lower than three stars? No, you probably don't, so I shall tell you. 7%. At least, this was the percentage in 2008, and there is no reason to believe it would now be greater. So, the complementary sector has come up with a cunning plan to lessen the harm of all-inclusives by suggesting a measure that would affect, at a rough estimate, about 20,000 hotel places in the whole of Mallorca, of which only a proportion would be offered on an all-inclusive basis (which wouldn't be full all-inclusive as there is no way that a one or two-star could offer it) and which won't be around for much longer in any case.

This cunning plan was so cunning that I assumed that I had misunderstood what I was reading when it was reported. So I read it again. No, there was and is no misunderstanding. Frankly, it's bizarre.

The other proposal regarding all-inclusives has more sense. It is one to stop the practice of hotels offering a day's all-inclusive rate, which has always seemed like the principle of free competition being stretched too far, so I have no problem with this proposal, but otherwise, if all that can be conjured up is the one and two-star solution, then I'm sorry but the complementary sector has made itself a laughing stock.

Of course, it could all just be an example of attempting to show muscle (not that there is any) and so feed the media with something with which the unquestioning media will nod its collective head and present as the complementary sector being active for once. The complementary sector must surely know that the proposal is a pointless gesture. Or does it? My worry is that it doesn't.

Like the hoteliers have been prone to making recent eccentric statements about occupancy, we now have their opponents in the complementary sector coming out with some eccentricity of their own. I am so stunned by the proposal that I can't figure out if it is a propaganda ploy, and so in the style of the hoteliers, or if it's a case of being genuinely clueless.

Meanwhile, the attractions part of the complementary sector, which has been reporting in certain cases record numbers of visitors in August (the Palma Aquarium, for example), has been expressing its concerns about this winter's tourism and about losses that are going to be suffered. This isn't anything new, but this winter's problems are going to be compounded by a significant reduction in assistance for the Imserso senior citizens tourism from the mainland.

Though Imserso does help the local tourism industry, this social-services tourism brings only limited benefits. It is not a big-spending tourism and it helps hotels more than it does other parts of the tourism industry. But it may also have contributed to a certain lack of initiative in the past. Because it was there, and could therefore tide over some parts of the industry, there wasn't the motivation to seek other remedies. Knowing what these other remedies are is of course the question, but don't go asking the complementary sector for them.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Un-Complementary Sector

Back in February I wrote about the hatchet having been buried in a war between Mallorca's hoteliers and the complementary sector. The two sides agreed to present a united front in making representations to the government prior to the final drafting of the new tourism law. I suggested at the time that though "the hatchet may have been buried, it (could) just as easily be dug up again". And I wasn't wrong.

It was difficult to understand quite what the complementary sector thought that it stood to gain by getting into bed with the hoteliers, other than to believe that by being nice the hoteliers would be nice in return as in, for instance, persuading the government not to allow them (the hoteliers, that is) to be able to introduce activities open to the general public that were the domain of the complementary sector. If it did believe this, then the complementary sector was incredibly stupid.

In February the hoteliers were making conciliatory noises by implying that the introduction of "secondary activities" (discos, restaurants, whatever) should be limited, but they didn't of course attempt to persuade the government to not allow them. So now the complementary offer finds itself having to try and get some limitations, the tourism law having been approved. It's a bit late but not perhaps too late.

The tourism law does still require that some meat is put on some bones. The complementary sector, comprising restaurants, clubs, attractions and travel agencies, is issuing proposals designed to limit some of the law's damage, as it applies to them. Another aspect of the law other than that regarding secondary activities in hotels which exercised the complementary sector back in February is that to do with all-inclusives. The law is quite vague where they are concerned, precise requirements for quality plans that hotels will be required to draw up not having yet been made clear.

The complementary sector knows that it has to live with all-inclusives but its hope is that requirements of the quality plans will be that tough that some hotels might be forced to abandon the all-inclusive offer. It's a hope but whether it will be anything more than a hope is another matter.

There is a need for such quality plans and for effective ones that hotels are made to implement. In my recent article "Holiday Let Hysteria" I spoke about a generally high standard of hotel stock in Mallorca. It is generally high but there are examples of where it isn't. The hoteliers federation argument against holiday lets falls down, and not for the first time, when it insists that private accommodation can be poor and so present a bad image of Mallorca while at the same time it neglects the examples of poor hotels and their bad image. Some are all-inclusive ghettoes, and we all know which they are. If the hoteliers federation doesn't, then I can help out by pointing its president in the direction of forums and social media which will inform her.

This lack of quality covers sub-standard accommodation, inadequate service provision, repetitious meals, low-grade drinks, lengthy queues. It is a lack of quality that has been known about for years, but what has been a typical government reaction? Under the last government, the then tourism minister Joana Barceló said that inspections had not revealed a lack of quality. God knows what the inspectors were doing or where they were going then.

Such governmental complacency is not entirely unexpected. Genuinely tough quality standards could result in Mallorca's all-inclusive stock being slashed significantly. Tour operators do not benefit from a lack of quality, but they still manage to sell holidays to all-inclusives which fall below standard, and neither they nor the government have a wish to see some hotels removed from the brochures. There are other things to think of such as selling seats on airlines and generating traffic through the airport.

The current government is making much of the new law's provisions for modernising obsolete hotel stock and for overall quality enhancements, but would it really be so insistent on quality for some all-inclusives that might mean they are withdrawn from brochures? I very much doubt it, just as I very much doubt that its inspections would be as rigorous as those it intends to make in order to stamp out illegal holiday accommodation.

The complementary offer might hope that the government will be tough but the complementary sector should look at itself. Only now is it really attempting to get its voice heard after years of ineffective lobbying and after its error in February. There was never any chance of the hatchet having been buried.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Unions delay agreements for 2012 season

Further to yesterday's note regarding union negotiations in respect of agreements with hotels, transport operators and businesses in the complementary sector (restaurants etc.), more is emerging. The unions are holding off on signing off agreements, the next meeting with the hotels not planned until 12 April. What this does is just add to a sense of uncertainty ahead of what is due to be a record year for tourism in Mallorca.

See more: Ultima Hora