Culture, Anger And Tourist Tax: Top Stories From 2016

Google very kindly make available statistics of the number of individual page views that each blog post receives. These are direct views in that they are to the specific URL of the post rather than having been read by regular followers of the blog. They are an indication of popularity, although I wouldn't say they were the best; my personal opinion of the diversity of subjects that appear on the blog would give a different result.

This caveat aside, the story that proved to be the most popular was that of 17 September, Promoting Culture: Where's The Strategy? This was about an agreement between the tourism and culture ministries - a "protocol", as they liked to call it - to promote cultural tourism. This required an investment of 600,000 euros to internationalise the islands' culture via a "tourism strategy". I was scathing of the whole thing, not least because an aspect of this strategy is supposedly to push filming on the islands. The relevant ministers, Biel Barceló and Ruth Mateu, admitted that there aren't the necessary tax incentives to do this, as there are in other parts of Spain. So they were going ahead with a "strategy" without having the wherewithal to implement it. Moreover, the "protocol" only lasts until the end of 2017. Could anyone make any sense of it, I asked. PR nonsense was my conclusion, and we haven't heard anything about it since September.

Number two was from 21 July - A Camel To Design A Camel: Tourist Tax. The introduction read: "How many government departments, local authorities, business associations, unions and others does it take to change the cash collected from the tourist tax into meaningful projects?" One camel was therefore the Commission for the Promotion of Sustainable Tourism, the body which decides how revenue is to be spent. The other was the tax itself with its ill-defined multi-purposes. As things were to turn out, the government used the drought as the justification (not unreasonably) to place emphasis on water projects. We are still waiting, though, to hear what these (and other) projects actually are. When there's a commission with such camel-like ingredients, should this come as any surprise?

In third place was the article about Balearic hotel interests in Cuba - Keep Taking Us To Havana, 1 December - while just behind in fourth spot was the post of 2 May, When Anger Takes Over: Mallorca And Cycling. This was prompted by the general chaos caused by the Mallorca 312 cycle event, which isn't a race as such but a trial. As I noted, it was a trial that "tested the over 4,000 cyclists and tested the patience of many people on the island". The event brought to a head the simmering (and not so simmering) conflict created by cycling. The value and benefit of cycling to Mallorca seems irreconcilable with attitudes of residents. Whether these attitudes are shared by a majority, one doesn't know. Perhaps they should undertake a survey rather than rely on social-media hysteria.

Chaos of a different sort came in at number five - More On Vueling And The Chaotic Spanish Air Industry, 16 July. At six was a subject that crept ever higher up the agenda in 2016. The Pariah Status Of Airbnb from 11 November noted that Airbnb didn't exhibit at London's World Travel Market, despite it being "arguably the most important business in the travel market right at the moment". This was the context for a discussion of the need for the regional government "to take tough and effective action against Airbnb and other such sites". Just how tough will be revealed when the holiday rentals' legislation is approved. Whether it will be effective is a totally different matter.

There was further anger on 23 April. Getting Angry In Puerto Pollensa (number seven) said that "emotions have been allowed to run high; rather too high". They were to do with the pedestrianisation fiasco and the Gelats Valls ice-cream kiosk. There was of course to be even more anger because of the separate fiasco of the sun loungers.

At eight was a tribute to a web-based business which doesn't attract the concerns surrounding Airbnb. Hotelbeds: The Best Of Mallorca from 14 July looked at this successful business, sold by Tui for a fortune, which is headquartered on Palma's Paseo Marítimo. There was a coincidence with this article. Although not the same type of business, Hotelbeds does have some similarity with Low Cost Holidays, which went belly up a few days later.

In ninth spot was The Mess Of Regulating Holiday Rentals, 21 May. "The regional government is getting itself into a right old pickle over holiday rentals' regulation" was the introduction to an article on the difficulties regarding legislation. The pickle has become increasingly pickled, what with the idea to zone Mallorca and the intention to allocate places for holiday rentals that don't coincide with areas of high residential need. The government's problems are such that it ignored the fact, as stated in the May article, that the sustainable tourism tax law mandated it to have regulation in place within six months of that law having been approved: it should have been at the end of September therefore.

And in tenth place was The Environmental Crisis Coming Our Way of 17 May. This quoted a spokesperson from the environmentalists GOB who said that this will be "a crazy year, the infrastructure will not cope". Was it all environmentalist hot air? The prognosis was for: "airport stretched beyond its limit; Palma crowded out by ships and passengers; roads chockful of hire cars; ever more thousands of apartments being rented out; the hotels full; limits needing to be placed on the numbers on unspoiled beaches; supermarket supplies questionable; water supplies threatened; outdated sewage-treatment plants incapable of taking the pressure. Too many planes, too many ships, too many cars, too many people." 2017 will be no different.

There was in fact an eleventh post. It had the second highest number of page views but it wasn't a story, just a very short and simple post. It was the one to say that, after a few days of downtime when the Blogger system changed and I couldn't post, I was back. Heartening, I guess.

Hotelbeds: The best of Mallorca

Hotelbeds is unquestionably a successful business. "The world's bedbank", as it calls itself, is a world player. From having once offered only one destination market - Spain - for one traveller-providing market (the UK), it now has (fifteen years after it was founded) 180 country destination markets offering more than 75,000 hotels and 120 supplier markets. That's impressive stuff, and the all more impressive for being "made in Mallorca".

The business came into being following the purchase of Viajes Barceló (part of the Barceló hotel group and now B the Travel Brand) by First Choice. The travel agency was to be sold back to Barceló, but what was the international event and destination services division, which included Hotelbeds, was kept hold of. When First Choice was formally absorbed by Tui in 2007, Tui Travel Accommodation & Destination was established: its director was the founder and president of Hotelbeds, Joan Vilà.

Because of a strategic restructuring, Tui sought a purchaser for Hotelbeds. It found one in the form of fund managers Cinven and CPPIB, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the Canadian government pension fund managers. There was more to be impressed with. The price. Hotelbeds went for a total of 1,165 million euros; the deal was sealed this spring.

Vilà has said that the business was founded right at the time that the travel industry was about to undergo massive transformation. Hotelbeds caught the initial wave, therefore, of the technologically-driven new age of travel. Value in the business obviously resides in the numbers it can generate. Tui revealed that the price paid to buy the business (almost 50% greater than had originally been hoped for) equated to 1.2 times the 2015 revenue with an underlying operating profit of 69 million euros.

But major acquisitions aren't made solely because of the numbers. Among other factors that attracted Cinven and CPPIB were the quality of senior management (with Vilà at the helm), a strong record of year-on-year growth and the technologies. Cinven understood the value of the latter very clearly. It has been a significant investor in Amadeus, a global leader in IT solutions for the travel industry and a company that is based in Madrid.

One might in fact argue that the greatest value lies with the systems. It is revealing to note that a couple of years ago, Hotelbeds identified another Spanish company, Transhotel, as a main competitor in the domestic market. Transhotel hit the rocks in 2014, and a reason for its problems was the fact that its technologies were said to have been outdated. The travel industry, never slow to change and adapt, has been moving at increasingly rapid speeds for the past fifteen years. Businesses which are slow end up in liquidation.

The combination of travel, tourism and technology is something that the Balearic government is keen to explore as a means of economic diversification, reputation enhancement and job creation. It is totally fitting, therefore, that the government should look upon Hotelbeds as precisely the type of business that it wishes to promote. Totally fitting also that within the government there is a combination of tourism and technology in the portfolios of its vice-president, Biel Barceló.

Since he adopted these responsibilities, we have heard a great deal about the tourism portfolio and very much less about innovation and research. Earlier this week, though, Barceló and President Armengol went to Hotelbeds at the invitation of Joan Vilà. Barceló observed that the company "fits perfectly" with the government's economic plans.

It does so in a variety of ways. It attracts talent to come and live in Mallorca (the purchase is not going to change the location). They add to the sum of knowledge locally, which is in any event already high: around a half of the 1,600 staff at the Palma HQ (there are over 6,000 worldwide) are products of the University of the Balearic Islands. They represent also the government's desire for quality employment. This said, and acknowledging that one review is hardly representative, a current employee reports that while the work atmosphere is good as are opportunities, the salaries are low and there is a high level of employee turnover. This might rather depend on the nature of the job though: call centre jobs (by no means all the employment on offer) are known for their high turnover, while in general this is a company operating in a fast-moving environment with highly competitive demands.

This caveat aside, and the employee who supplied the review does nevertheless give Hotelbeds a four out of five star rating, here is a business which does indeed fit with the government's vision. Moreover, its dedication to technological advances in Mallorca was reinforced last year by the creation and funding of the Hotelbeds Group Chair of Tourism Innovation at the university.

An impressive business, and a model worthy of the government's attention and interest.