The Lost Ten Per Cent: Tourism Quality

For the first four months of the year, German tourism sales to Mallorca for this year were down by up to ten per cent. The headline to this effect, used by a number of sources, would be designed to surprise or shock: a harbinger of doom for the island's tourism industry.

Figures for increase or decrease in tourism numbers are quoted over and over again. Only some should be taken as being worthy of attention. If a small tour operator makes an announcement, either way, it is of little consequence. If Tui speaks, then far more notice should be taken. But of greater significance still is what is said by organisations which provide aggregate evidence.

Spain's overseas tourism offices are examples of such organisations. They exist in various capital and other major cities. It is their job to provide accuracy and market intelligence. When they speak, they should be listened to.

Álvaro Blanco Volmer is the director of the Munich office. It was he who gave the up to ten per cent news. But was he particularly alarmed? Actually not. The decreasing number was in fact evidence of strategy working. This strategy is to wheedle out the low-spending tourist class in favour of the "quality" end. The disappearing ten per cent seemingly rank among the Cs of the ABC socioeconomic classification.

Who's strategy is this? Mostly everyone's. Tour operators want higher spenders (so long as they can continue to flog volume). Destinations want them. Governments want them. But not all. There are destinations and governments currently desperate for anyone they can attract. Holidays in some places are almost being given away. Tour operators won't like that, much though they might talk up recovering destinations.

You have to therefore be careful with headlines such as the German ten per cent. The wrong conclusions can be drawn if you don't look beyond their surprise value. But there is some surprise insofar as the decrease, assuming it is maintained for the year as a whole, is considered to be a positive because of a greater concentration on the "quality" end of the market. We've been here before, and it was the German market which was once up in arms because of it.

When tourism declined in 2002 to the tune of some half a million visitors, the blame was placed solely on the ecotax. This is one of the great myths about that tax. It might not have helped, but the downturn was predominantly a German one. It fell by 16% (the UK market went down by just over one per cent). The overall decline was 7.6%, which was all but reversed the following year. In addition to the German economy having been in a short recession, there had, just as importantly, been all the outrage over remarks made by Balearic politicians regarding the quality of German tourism - the low-spending end. As a consequence, there was something of a boycott.

Now, however, the situation is different, and as Blanco Volmer pointed out, it is more important to talk about millions of euros rather than millions of tourists. If a low-spending percentage of the German millions doesn't come, then so be it.

His observation was reinforced by the news from the UK. Tourism numbers are up by 3%. However, more doesn't mean better. The hoteliers federation explained that UK tourists spend less than most other nationalities. They aren't quite the poor men of Europe - the French, very much in the doldrums, can probably claim this title - but they are certainly not among the high-flying spenders of, say, the Netherlands. There is, therefore, an issue with the "quality" of part of the UK market.

The hoteliers' president, Inma Benito, gave a presentation towards the end of last month in which she said that Mallorca will never be able to compete on price with the likes of Turkey, once and if they recover. Turkey, it might be noted, doesn't look look as if it is recovering, certainly not where some markets are concerned. The Swedes, for instance, are shunning it. But assuming there is something like full recovery of these other destinations (still a pretty big assumption), the hoteliers won't be taking them on over price. The Benito thesis is multiply rather than add, by which she means that the value of the product has to go up through innovation and competitiveness. And with the value of the product going up, so does the price, thus squeezing out the low-spending end of the market.

The island's tourism industry is heading into uncharted territory. Some politicians would be only too happy to see tourist numbers decrease, but the hoteliers don't see it that way. The numbers can be retained. New markets will compensate for losses in others. Can they be completely confident? How much "quality" will be prepared to back their strategy?

See No Evil, Hear No Evil: Problems in paradise

The other day I was driving past Hidropark. Two local police officers were involved with a woman. I suspect I know why. In the past I have seen local police officers involved with other women. Around the Mile for example. The flower-lady pickpockets. They exist in many parts of Mallorca. They have existed for years in Alcúdia, but Alcúdia doesn't have the same scale of problems that other resorts do. It is neither Magalluf nor Playa de Palma. It isn't even Cala Rajada.

Last year there were any number of complaints in Cala Rajada about the drunkenness and antics of young German tourists. Cala Rajada doesn't usually rank highly in the "dark summer" league table, principally because it has fewer tourists than the Big Two, which vie with each other for dark summer champion dominance, and because it doesn't have the same history of summer darkness. But it is in the league nevertheless, as is Alcúdia.

And so even is nice, quiet, genteel Puerto Pollensa. It has its massage girls and its lookies. It has the local police and the Guardia meeting with the government delegate to the Balearics to discuss operations this summer to combat, among other things, the "venta ambulante" on the beaches. Another resort that is comparatively lowly placed in the summer darkness league table is Playa de Muro, heading ever more to the promised land of five stars and Russian tourism but, as was reported last year, plagued by similar problems to those on the beaches of Puerto Pollensa. 

I am not intimately familiar with every resort of any great size in Mallorca, but I would guess that every resort has similar issues to contend with. It is easy to single out the Big Two and brand them league leaders, but it is an ease that comes partly because of a longer history of problems, partly because of sheer numbers, partly because of a particular type of tourism.

Yet, as the complaints in Cala Rajada revealed last year, Playa de Palma is not the only resort where younger Germans congregate; those with lower net worth but with an abundance of Red Bull-fuelled energy to be spent on getting blind drunk.

"Bild" really has done everyone a favour. There are of course the deniers, but finally the message may just be getting through. It is revealing that, while the immediate aftermath of the "Bild" dark summer splash brought about the inevitable placing of fingers in the ears - "la la la, I can't hear you" - the ears, along with the heads, have now risen out of the sand and blinked through the formerly rose-tinted sunglasses of a looky-looky man and seen that paradise has been lost. 

For too long, the denial has been predicated on a paradisical blindness and deafness to see no evil and hear no evil. This blunting of senses, invaded only periodically and temporarily by the sight of blood and vomit on the streets and the wails of police and ambulance sirens, has induced a quasi-utopian world view, one stripped of a cognitive appreciation that a certain dystopia may exist. It has further induced the disbelief that the voracious Hannibal Lecters of a pap-sensation-seeking media can firstly exist and secondly lead lambs to the slaughter in the way they did in Magalluf.

A prescription for troubles in Playa de Palma is that the tourist profile needs to change. Get rid of the low-cost, low-net-worth, low-20s lumpendrunkenproletariat and all the problems will disappear. Like prostitutes. Really? Replace it with high-cost, high-net-worth, high-40s or 50s and the mugging whores may disappear, but in their place might well come the high-class hookers, hanging around the bars of the newly five-starred Playa de Palma. They would have no need to nick a mobile. Need a new iPhone? Your place or mine?

Tourism attracts crime. This is an unfortunate fact of life. Tourism attracts different types of tourist. This is a fact of tourism life. How does a resort remove its less desirable tourist elements? It doesn't, unless the tour operators remove them and unless local businesses refuse to pander to them.

Problems in the resorts can be both overstated and understated, but they cannot be dismissed. And nor can they be treated by indulging in blame games. There are those who should be exempt from blame. Local police forces, the Guardia, the emergency services; they are the heroes not the villains. They work according to their resources, according to constraints and according to political inertia, business priorities and an historical blindness and deafness - see no evil, hear no evil.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Every "Bild" Tells A Story

"The seventeenth state topples." Germany has sixteen states, its sixteen Bundesländer. These are sixteen states within the borders of Germany. There is a seventeenth. Mallorca. Germany's relationship with Mallorca is not the same as Britain's or any other country's. It is a great deal more intimate. Mallorca is not just a holiday destination, it is as though it is an honorary member of the Bundesrepublik.

"Bild" deals with the sensationalist. It is very popular, but there are plenty of Germans who look down their noses at it, just as there are Germans who would look down their noses at Mallorca.

The German relationship is, in these respects therefore, not dissimilar to Britain's relationship with Mallorca. And as with the British press, "Bild", where Mallorca is concerned, both giveth and taketh away. "Germany's favourite island," it headlined a special feature in May to announce its collaboration with Air Berlin to fly lucky winners to Mallorca for the broadcast of "Wetten dass ...?". With a nod in the direction of Mallorca's culture, it offered mentions of Chopin and Valldemossa before getting down to the real business and a description of the island's "dream beaches".

A month or so on and "Bild" has shown its other side. The taketh away side. The seventeenth state toppling side. The darker side. And Mallorca's "dark summer" side.

It stings when foreign media attack Mallorca. It stung Magalluf when it was discovered that the BBC had exposed its darker side. It has stung in the past when "Bild" has been critical or been sensationalist. It was "Bild" which reckoned that bird flu in Germany had been brought back from Playa de Palma. And once again, it is Playa de Palma that the newspaper has turned its attention to. Playa de Palma, Arenal, the main German tourist centre on the island.

It stings, but who is really stung? Is it the tourist, either regular or prospective? Or is it the sensitive Mallorcan or resident of the island? It depends, in part, on the novelty aspect of the sensationalism; in part, on the accuracy and the truth. The BBC claimed that it would be telling the truth about Magalluf, but then truth was a good word to include in a programme title. You knew what was coming, and it didn't disappoint. But nor did it say anything that wasn't already known. "Bild" has said nothing that isn't already known. Problems in Playa de Palma show, and have shown, that Magalluf's problems are not unique; the main difference lies with the nationality.

Has the BBC's documentary made any noticeable difference to Magalluf, either in terms of numbers or in terms of actions taken to eradicate problems? As to the former, the answer would appear to be no. As to the latter, well possibly it has. The programme was criticised, but it stung; there was truth, even if it was only a certain truth and nothing but the whole truth. Will "Bild", using the oldest journalistic trick in the book, of starting its article with a series of negatives - binge-drinking, mugging whores, criminal gangs, gambling tricks, cheap sex, fatal balcony falls - make any difference to a German public familiar with issues in Playa de Palma and with the "Bild" style? Probably not. But it might just sting Palma and Llucmajor town halls.

The Spanish media does what it typically does when a full-frontal assault is launched by the foreign media. It closes ranks with outraged local authorities and others who would protest that a foul has been committed. It brandishes the "sensationalist" charge (not unreasonably and not inaccurately, admittedly) and, as has happened with the "Bild" article, dissects the facts and stats. Mallorca is not more dangerous than it used to be. Criminal incidents were down last year. "Bild" should get its facts right. This is the reaction.

Of course it should get its facts right, but if the facts are wrong, then why are there people in Magalluf and Playa de Palma who are sick to the back teeth with enduring problems that exist? Why are there petitions to get something done?

Yet, and here is the irony, the Spanish media, while eschewing the sensationalist, feeds the foreign media with its "facts". For instance, if "Bild" uses an image of young tourists drinking from an alcohol-filled bucket, this is no different to images that have been presented in the past by the Spanish press. 

"Bild" is sensationalist, but sensationalism has lost its power to sensationalise because of its ubiquity. Nevertheless, it can have some impact. "Bild" means picture. Every picture tells a story. It may not be the whole story, but it isn't necessarily the wrong story.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Roll Out The Barrel: Mallorca's Oktoberfests

Drunken tourism. Scandalised though the tourism industry in parts of Mallorca is by buckets of booze and bingeing, it is still more than happy to sanction the intake of industrial quantities of beer in the form of "bierfests".

October is nearly upon us and so the Oktoberfests have already begun. And there will be not one, not two, but three: Peguera, Arenal and Palma. Drunken tourism is fine, so long as it has lager slopping over the veneer of tradition, albeit a German one.

Palma has joined the beer festival fray for the first time. It will be a gastronomic and cultural event, the town hall maintains, one that contributes to an ayuntamiento policy of leisure activities, 365 days a year, and so to a reduction of the impact of seasonality. Who are they kidding?

Shove the words "gastronomic" and "cultural" into a sentence and, bingo, you afford an event legitimacy in a peculiarly Mallorcan way, one which demands that events fall into on-message line with tourism of a gastronomic or cultural nature. Substitute the two words with drunken, and legitimacy is the last thing you get. But they amount to the same thing. The bierfest exists for one purpose and one purpose alone - to get absolutely slaughtered.

And what's with this reduction of the impact of seasonality business? The season is still with us, isn't it? Yes, but this outbreak of the rolling out of the Germanic beer barrel will mean more German tourists rolling in, thus ensuring the season does indeed extend beyond a September sell-by date.

Such optimism is based on a gargantuan German thirst for beer and hunger for schnitzel and wurst (which is what the gastronomy presumably refers to) and also on the fact that Mallorca, rather than either Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg, is the southerly most state of Germany. The Germans are as likely to gravitate to specific gravities in Mallorca as they are in Munich.

Well possibly. One great advantage of the Mallorca bierfests is that they go on beyond the Munich Oktoberfest. The Peguera fest, for example, doesn't start until a few days after Munich finishes, so it is definitely an Oktoberfest, whereas Munich's is a September-und-Oktoberfest. Palma's will last for a good week longer than Munich and Arenal's appears to go on forever. It's pretty much a case of being able to drink up in Munich, hop on an Air Berlin beer airbus and shuttle down to Palma in time to get the next round in; the timing of Mallorca's events allow for an entire month's worth of unbroken bierfesting.

But are tourists specifically attracted by the bierfests? In Peguera last year, 60% or so of the reservations in its 1,800 square metre tent (and they love to announce how big these tents are; Palma's is 1,125 square metres in case you're interested, which you almost certainly aren't) were from Spanish drinkers. And for the Spaniard, a bierfest is something of a drinking culture shock, presented as he or she would be by a vessel of a size more appropriate for putting flowers in rather than drinking from. Reporting of the Peguera event last year made a point of stressing that it wasn't possible to drink in a measure less than half a litre; the reporting had the hint of a warning for the average Spaniard schooled on the junior measures of the caña.

But then culture shock for the Spanish there should be, as the Oktoberfest is a cultural experience; Palma town hall says so. It is unlikely, though, that typical Bavarian culture will take hold among the locals. Don't expect the sale of dirndls to suddenly shoot up or for the local fiestas to dispense with pipers and whistlers and replace them with accordion and tuba players.

The Mallorca Oktoberfests aren't really to do with culture. They owe far more to an acknowledgement of the importance of the German market and, in the case of both Peguera and Arenal, that there are parts of Mallorca which will be forever and über alles Deutschland. In Palma, there is a further aspect. It's German culture that is costing the town hall barely a centimo.

One might be inclined to ask why it is that German culture can be exported and that of other countries, Britain for example, isn't. One might ask, but then one might also ask - "what culture"? The Germans have at least retained some. Moreover, there may be a lot of drinking involved in a bierfest, but when it comes to the real thing of drunken tourism, there is only one nation that does it properly. No prizes for guessing.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Cucumbergate

It is the lot of certain fruit and veg that they imply innuendo. Melons, for example, are something other than melons, while any old two veg, accompanied by meat, take on an entirely different meaning to that of simply being placed on a plate.

Which brings us of course to the cucumber. Its capacity for the comedically prurient was highlighted in the scene in "Benidorm" when Martin, thinking he was coming to Kate's aid, burst into a bedroom only to discover Mateo, gagged and strapped to the bed, and Donald and Jacqueline preparing the salad.

The swingers would have been handling a Spanish cucumber. Was Mateo's fate to be to succumb to the E.coli bug? Well no, but had it been, it would have been far worse than what the couple had in mind for him.

There was just a possibility that it wasn't a Spanish cucumber, but a foreign import. This would, though, have been a remote possibility, because, as we know from the tourism-sustainably correct TUI and others, produce in Benidorm and elsewhere is sourced locally, thus establishing the great benefit of the all-inclusive.

The fuss about the Spanish cucumber, wrongly blamed for Germans dropping like flies, has had its repercussions on this local sourcing. Cucumber's off in many a hotel, and there has been an 80% fall in sales. The locals, as well as the hotels, are eschewing any chewing on a pepino. Despite Spanish indignation as to German allegations of contaminated veg, one German supermarket proudly announcing that it is stocking no Spanish produce at present, the Spanish themselves have taken the scare to heart as well.

The Germans, and the German media in particular, have form when it comes to making the blame fall mainly on Spain for health scares. Outbreaks of swine flu in Germany a couple of years ago were attributed, with barely any evidence, to a pocket of the virus in Playa de Palma. And so, as with swine flu, Cucumbergate threatens the German tourism market.

Joan Mesquida, the national secretary-general for tourism, has admitted that damage has been done. TUI, however, reckons that German tourism has been unaffected, but you can probably imagine that it will have been firing off emails to all its hotels in Mallorca and Spain telling them not to let a cucumber within a hundred kilometres.

With health scares come the photo-opp ministerial attempts to convince that all is well. The Andalucia minister for agriculture, suitably but perhaps unfortunately trussed up in plastic anti-contaminant attire, has tucked into a pepino for press photographers and cameras. "Mmm, lecker," she should have been instructed to say, with the footage then supplied to German television. It was her John Selwyn Gummer moment. "Mad cow disease? What mad cow disease?"

Not everyone is convinced though. In an act of solidarity with the Fatherland, Lidl has temporarily stopped stocking cucumbers, including those grown in Mallorca. This, despite the fact that all locally grown pepinos, which mainly come from around Manacor and Porreres, comply with all known sanitary measures.

Cap Rocat
Anyway, moving onto a different subject. The Cap Rocat hotel in Cala Blava, a converted fortress, has been named by the BBC website as one of its five best new hotels of 2011. The accolade for this Mallorcan hotel is welcome, as it is a remarkable hotel which presumably has some remarkable prices as well.

But quite how you arrive at the five best of anything when you have the whole world to choose from is a bit of a mystery. If the BBC's travel chaps have been jetting off across the globe in search of the best five new hotels, this would be licence-fee-payers' money well spent, I'm sure you would agree.

Cap Rocat, and its website is as near to it as I will ever get, other than standing outside its gated entrance, is not untypical, in its publicity, of the way in which the simple use of the definite article can create exclusivity. Thus, the website lists "THE water" (not that which you drink, but the "fantastic" and "crystal clear" Med; oh dear, someone's been at the brochure talk), "THE experiences" (sport), "THE special moments" (private meetings, it would seem). The only part of its offer which isn't "the" is an article-less gastronomy. No mention of THE cucumber being on the menu though, which is probably just as well.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.