Sun, you may not be surprised to know, is the most important thing for a holiday in Mallorca. This is, in order to dispel any possible confusion, sun in the sky as opposed to The Sun. The latter, if it is of any importance at all, may fall into a category "none of these", which was one of seven options offered to online users of The Bulletin in a recent poll.
The sun, the yellow thing, only made it by a whisker - 23.65% ahead of prices on 22.18%. But sun, of which we have had a fair amount of the hot variety just recently, will always rank high up the list for a predominantly northern European user base, which is what the website has. Without sun, whatever some tourism promoters might believe to the contrary, Mallorca wouldn't have one of its main USPs, albeit that I'm not sure how there can be more than one unique selling point.
Sun, for the purposes of the poll, was divorced from its normal partner - beaches. They ranked almost ten percentage points lower. Perhaps the natural alliance of sun and beach isn't quite as strong as it has always been. If so, the regional tourism ministry will feel satisfied. The more it attempts to diversify tourism away from the warmer months, the more that beaches, except for walking on or looking at, become less central to the tourism mix.
The ministry might also be pleased to discover what came third, namely culture. It scooped 16.9% of the poll and was separated from what can be considered a facet of culture - food and drink, which came in with 11.85%. And it is culture that I found to be one of the two most interesting results. The other was hotels. These came last, with 4.42%.
The point has to be made, as ever, that this was hardly scientific. But the sample size, into the thousands, would have been substantially greater than surveys tend to be. No, there was no margin of error or probability element, but nevertheless the results were somewhat intriguing.
Let's take hotels first. When one considers all the constant reminders of how much has been and is being invested into hotel stock in order to upgrade it (and push its prices up), an importance factor of less than 4.5% doesn't sound terribly encouraging for hoteliers wishing to make huge returns on their investments. Not of course that they will be worrying, because they clearly are making returns, what with levels of profit having risen significantly over the past two to three years.
But can one interpret this lowly importance to the existence of rival accommodation? I think you'll know to what I refer, and I also think that there will be many of you in agreement. Rental accommodation, of whatever sort, can offer a better experience. A further poll might seek to determine this. What does the general holidaymaking (or potential holidaymaking) market prefer? Hotel or not hotel?
The comparatively high importance given to culture differs greatly to a survey that I've dug out from 2010. That one, and I don't know who conducted it as I merely cited the results in an article, found that slightly under two per cent of all tourists who came to Mallorca classified themselves as having been cultural tourists. One has to say that there is a difference between how someone self-classifies him or herself and placing an importance on culture. Even so, there does seem to have been a big shift in the cultural direction, and just to reinforce the point, another survey of 2010 placed Mallorca and the Balearics second bottom among Spain's regions when it came to cultural interest for tourists.
The thing with culture is that it can be difficult to define. It can be the culture of the environment and landscape, the culture of music and the arts, the culture of buildings and physical heritage, the culture of history, or the culture of fiestas. It would probably be a worthwhile exercise to ask people to define culture, but as a collective concept, the importance given to it is, I would suggest, rather encouraging. Mallorca has, for so long, battled to create alternative tourist "products". Perhaps it is finally succeeding.
The poll did exclude an option which may well be more important than all others. Had security and safety been included, one fancies that this would have beaten the rest by some distance. And prices, having run the sun so close, may say something about safety. One interprets the rating for prices as being a desire for value for money and for not being excessive. Which maybe brings us back to hotels and their prices. Safety is paramount, but it can mean only so much price.
At least the sun is free, as indeed is much culture.
Showing posts with label Hotels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hotels. Show all posts
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
How Safe Is Your Hotel?
Nine summers ago, two bombs exploded at beaches in Cantabria in northern Spain. There was a third bomb, which went off outside a branch of Barclays Bank. The devices had been planted by ETA.
None of these bombs caused any injuries. The Guardia Civil had acted on a call to the emergency services from someone who said they represented ETA. The two beaches were those of Laredo and Noja. The areas where the bombs had been planted were cordoned off. The one in Laredo was in sand next to the promenade. The other at Noja was in the dunes.
The locations were chosen because they are popular summer destinations for the Spanish. Cantabria's coast is not one that attracts a high number of foreign tourists. For ETA, its actions were against Spain. Terrorists they were, but theirs was a terror of an interior kind. They weren't exporters, except to France on a couple of occasions. Where foreigners were concerned, they could be targets, if only incidentally. In the summer of 2001, for instance, an ETA militant accidentally blew himself up in Torrevieja; seven people were injured. Three weeks later, a huge car bomb went off in Salou. There were no casualties.
A year on from the bombs in Cantabria, two officers with the Guardia Civil, Carlos Sáenz and Diego Salva, were killed in Palmanova when a bomb that had been placed in a patrol vehicle exploded. ETA terrorism had come to Mallorca, though to be accurate it had come to the island fourteen years before. On that occasion it had failed. Three ETA terrorists, who were renting an apartment near to the Marivent Palace under a false name, were arrested and found to have three submachine guns, two pistols, a rifle with telescopic sight and explosive devices. Their intended target had been the then king, Juan Carlos. They had arrived with their weaponry on a yacht.
Following the Palmanova bomb, four minor devices went off in parts of Palma. A response to them was to install cameras trained on certain beaches in Mallorca. There was to be a fuss about these. The tourism ministry had organised the installations. It hadn't asked for permission to train cameras on the public way. Later it emerged that there was something slightly dubious about the contract for the work; but that was how the tourism ministry was at that time.
The reason for these cameras was a fear that ETA might bomb beaches in the way that it had the previous summer. The fear was to prove to have been unfounded. But the fear resurfaced last year; at least where parts of the more hysterical British press were concerned. So-called Islamic State were going to bomb beaches.
We have had further hysteria this year. The SAS, for example, will be patrolling resorts. Or this was the conclusion one was supposed to draw. It was as preposterous as it was insulting in its implication that Spain's security forces were in need of assistance. These forces have enormous experience. Cooperation, advice and information sharing with British forces, yes; of course, yes. Special British forces on the streets? Hardly.
Security, it is an obvious thing to state, is a high priority for tourists. Mallorca has been reaping the benefits (some will argue the downsides) of terrorism in other parts of the Med. A great deal of emphasis is placed on the island's safety, but there can be no room for complacency.
Beaches and other public places are one thing; hotels are another. The president of the hoteliers federation, Inma Benito, says that hotel security has improved a great deal, although she adds that she is unaware of some hotels organising anti-terrorism audits. Apparently, there are specialist firms which will be conducting these. They will be looking, for example, at access controls, i.e. who comes and goes, and at exterior protection, such as barriers. There are to be other checks - rubbish containers, the level and type of surveillance and so on.
Hotels differ. Some are more easily protectable than others. Some offer open invitations, and not just to buildings; grounds, pools, restaurants, entertainment sites as well. Without naming them, I can think of any number of hotels which can be entered from the beach without any form of control. One just walks straight in. There's no need to enter via reception because access is available at the rear. One complex has public roads going through it. There is no actual entrance because of the nature of the complex. Security? Well, what security, one may well ask.
Accordingly, there is a great deal of vulnerability. But at least with the hotels, there is some control over who is staying in them. The events of 1995 and the failed terrorist attack highlight issues that we have today. Hiring an apartment. Hotels provide guest identity information to the police. They are obliged to. Holiday rentals? Could be anyone.
None of these bombs caused any injuries. The Guardia Civil had acted on a call to the emergency services from someone who said they represented ETA. The two beaches were those of Laredo and Noja. The areas where the bombs had been planted were cordoned off. The one in Laredo was in sand next to the promenade. The other at Noja was in the dunes.
The locations were chosen because they are popular summer destinations for the Spanish. Cantabria's coast is not one that attracts a high number of foreign tourists. For ETA, its actions were against Spain. Terrorists they were, but theirs was a terror of an interior kind. They weren't exporters, except to France on a couple of occasions. Where foreigners were concerned, they could be targets, if only incidentally. In the summer of 2001, for instance, an ETA militant accidentally blew himself up in Torrevieja; seven people were injured. Three weeks later, a huge car bomb went off in Salou. There were no casualties.
A year on from the bombs in Cantabria, two officers with the Guardia Civil, Carlos Sáenz and Diego Salva, were killed in Palmanova when a bomb that had been placed in a patrol vehicle exploded. ETA terrorism had come to Mallorca, though to be accurate it had come to the island fourteen years before. On that occasion it had failed. Three ETA terrorists, who were renting an apartment near to the Marivent Palace under a false name, were arrested and found to have three submachine guns, two pistols, a rifle with telescopic sight and explosive devices. Their intended target had been the then king, Juan Carlos. They had arrived with their weaponry on a yacht.
Following the Palmanova bomb, four minor devices went off in parts of Palma. A response to them was to install cameras trained on certain beaches in Mallorca. There was to be a fuss about these. The tourism ministry had organised the installations. It hadn't asked for permission to train cameras on the public way. Later it emerged that there was something slightly dubious about the contract for the work; but that was how the tourism ministry was at that time.
The reason for these cameras was a fear that ETA might bomb beaches in the way that it had the previous summer. The fear was to prove to have been unfounded. But the fear resurfaced last year; at least where parts of the more hysterical British press were concerned. So-called Islamic State were going to bomb beaches.
We have had further hysteria this year. The SAS, for example, will be patrolling resorts. Or this was the conclusion one was supposed to draw. It was as preposterous as it was insulting in its implication that Spain's security forces were in need of assistance. These forces have enormous experience. Cooperation, advice and information sharing with British forces, yes; of course, yes. Special British forces on the streets? Hardly.
Security, it is an obvious thing to state, is a high priority for tourists. Mallorca has been reaping the benefits (some will argue the downsides) of terrorism in other parts of the Med. A great deal of emphasis is placed on the island's safety, but there can be no room for complacency.
Beaches and other public places are one thing; hotels are another. The president of the hoteliers federation, Inma Benito, says that hotel security has improved a great deal, although she adds that she is unaware of some hotels organising anti-terrorism audits. Apparently, there are specialist firms which will be conducting these. They will be looking, for example, at access controls, i.e. who comes and goes, and at exterior protection, such as barriers. There are to be other checks - rubbish containers, the level and type of surveillance and so on.
Hotels differ. Some are more easily protectable than others. Some offer open invitations, and not just to buildings; grounds, pools, restaurants, entertainment sites as well. Without naming them, I can think of any number of hotels which can be entered from the beach without any form of control. One just walks straight in. There's no need to enter via reception because access is available at the rear. One complex has public roads going through it. There is no actual entrance because of the nature of the complex. Security? Well, what security, one may well ask.
Accordingly, there is a great deal of vulnerability. But at least with the hotels, there is some control over who is staying in them. The events of 1995 and the failed terrorist attack highlight issues that we have today. Hiring an apartment. Hotels provide guest identity information to the police. They are obliged to. Holiday rentals? Could be anyone.
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Arguing Over Price: Hotels v. Tour Operators
The hoteliers and the tour operators have been at it. Rather, they were at it a week ago in Berlin. The hoteliers haven't let things lie, though. They've been keeping things on the boil.
This is an unseemly spat between the two primary institutions of the tourism industry. Or are they? It is a row which does at least owe something to the diminished roles of both. The hoteliers are assaulted by Airbnb. The tour operators carve out nothing like the percentage of the market they once did. It was a Mallorcan hotelier who called Tui a dinosaur this week. He could have said the same about his industry.
It is a row which on the surface is easy to figure out. Mallorca's hoteliers up their prices. The tour operators say their customers (Germans) can't afford these prices. It is less easy to figure out when one goes beneath the surface of the headlines. These are the same tour operators which were grabbing all the places that were available for this year because demand was going (is going) to be so high. The hoteliers said as much, and they were only too happy to tag along. Get exclusive deals, and the job's done.
The beef with the hoteliers' prices didn't just suddenly arise in Berlin last week. If it had previously, then it was when contractual arrangements were being made for this year. They weren't made in Berlin; they were months ago. The tour operators knew the prices, especially their UK divisions. What was it that the hoteliers intimated? If the UK tour operators don't like our prices, we'll sell to tour operators from elsewhere. The German wings seemed only too happy to oblige.
The statements by the tour operators can be explained in different ways. One is that they genuinely are aghast at the higher prices, though this takes some accepting, given that the prices have been known about and factored in. The second is that the tour operators are telling consumers that they shouldn't blame them for higher prices; it's the hoteliers' fault. The third is if the tour operators haven't passed on the prices. If not, then their margins are seriously eroded.
The likes of Tui and Thomas Cook took big hits last year, mainly because of Turkey. It was noticeable that Turkey wasn't being bigged up in Berlin; it was Egypt. That destination may be recovering, but it is still only a modest recovery, and the tour operators have admitted as much. Turkey remains flat, and they know it, because again their own figures suggest this.
Mallorca helped to salvage tour operators' 2016 summers. With the hoteliers seeking payback for the profit flatlining which occurred for several years of crisis, they decided to over-indulge themselves this year, content in the knowledge that the tour operators had been saying all the right things; which they had been. There wasn't going to be a sudden massive revival in the eastern Med trouble spots this summer.
The tour operators, meanwhile, were needing to recoup 2016 losses. With hotel prices going up, the potential for doing this was reduced, if these prices were not wholly passed on. Their spokespeople will have had shareholders whispering in their ears. Senior management will have been taking some fright. One might recall the bashing that Thomas Cook took from shareholders over salaries, especially given the losses it reported.
Both parties have therefore been engaged in the politics of tourism - their own. Ultimately, they both need each other, but different dynamics have changed this historical relationship. There are more holidays for sale than there were twenty years ago, but the tour operators' share of the market has dropped significantly in relative terms. The hoteliers, if not tied by exclusive deals that the tour operators have signed, have the direct channels to sell through or the online agencies.
The relationship may have been weakened, but in another way it has been strengthened, and that is through the investment which tour operators have themselves poured in to hotels. They are not about to see that go west. And the hoteliers, meanwhile, protest that investment (from whatever source) has been made so that quality is raised. The price-quality ratio has therefore been raised: both the price and the quality. Unfortunately for the hoteliers, surveys don't necessarily bear this out. Mallorca's quality hasn't, when tourists are surveyed, leapt up. And this can partially be explained by all the tourists who have been "borrowed" from Egypt and Turkey. They have experienced quality-plus. Mallorca is playing catch-up with quality.
The hoteliers and the tour operators will stick to their sides of the argument, aware that they still have a reliance on each other.
This is an unseemly spat between the two primary institutions of the tourism industry. Or are they? It is a row which does at least owe something to the diminished roles of both. The hoteliers are assaulted by Airbnb. The tour operators carve out nothing like the percentage of the market they once did. It was a Mallorcan hotelier who called Tui a dinosaur this week. He could have said the same about his industry.
It is a row which on the surface is easy to figure out. Mallorca's hoteliers up their prices. The tour operators say their customers (Germans) can't afford these prices. It is less easy to figure out when one goes beneath the surface of the headlines. These are the same tour operators which were grabbing all the places that were available for this year because demand was going (is going) to be so high. The hoteliers said as much, and they were only too happy to tag along. Get exclusive deals, and the job's done.
The beef with the hoteliers' prices didn't just suddenly arise in Berlin last week. If it had previously, then it was when contractual arrangements were being made for this year. They weren't made in Berlin; they were months ago. The tour operators knew the prices, especially their UK divisions. What was it that the hoteliers intimated? If the UK tour operators don't like our prices, we'll sell to tour operators from elsewhere. The German wings seemed only too happy to oblige.
The statements by the tour operators can be explained in different ways. One is that they genuinely are aghast at the higher prices, though this takes some accepting, given that the prices have been known about and factored in. The second is that the tour operators are telling consumers that they shouldn't blame them for higher prices; it's the hoteliers' fault. The third is if the tour operators haven't passed on the prices. If not, then their margins are seriously eroded.
The likes of Tui and Thomas Cook took big hits last year, mainly because of Turkey. It was noticeable that Turkey wasn't being bigged up in Berlin; it was Egypt. That destination may be recovering, but it is still only a modest recovery, and the tour operators have admitted as much. Turkey remains flat, and they know it, because again their own figures suggest this.
Mallorca helped to salvage tour operators' 2016 summers. With the hoteliers seeking payback for the profit flatlining which occurred for several years of crisis, they decided to over-indulge themselves this year, content in the knowledge that the tour operators had been saying all the right things; which they had been. There wasn't going to be a sudden massive revival in the eastern Med trouble spots this summer.
The tour operators, meanwhile, were needing to recoup 2016 losses. With hotel prices going up, the potential for doing this was reduced, if these prices were not wholly passed on. Their spokespeople will have had shareholders whispering in their ears. Senior management will have been taking some fright. One might recall the bashing that Thomas Cook took from shareholders over salaries, especially given the losses it reported.
Both parties have therefore been engaged in the politics of tourism - their own. Ultimately, they both need each other, but different dynamics have changed this historical relationship. There are more holidays for sale than there were twenty years ago, but the tour operators' share of the market has dropped significantly in relative terms. The hoteliers, if not tied by exclusive deals that the tour operators have signed, have the direct channels to sell through or the online agencies.
The relationship may have been weakened, but in another way it has been strengthened, and that is through the investment which tour operators have themselves poured in to hotels. They are not about to see that go west. And the hoteliers, meanwhile, protest that investment (from whatever source) has been made so that quality is raised. The price-quality ratio has therefore been raised: both the price and the quality. Unfortunately for the hoteliers, surveys don't necessarily bear this out. Mallorca's quality hasn't, when tourists are surveyed, leapt up. And this can partially be explained by all the tourists who have been "borrowed" from Egypt and Turkey. They have experienced quality-plus. Mallorca is playing catch-up with quality.
The hoteliers and the tour operators will stick to their sides of the argument, aware that they still have a reliance on each other.
Wednesday, March 01, 2017
Pulling A Fraudulent Holiday Sickie
Comedian Marcus Brigstocke used to do a routine about a particular segment of the daytime television-viewing public and the adverts designed to appeal to them. These were ads for loans for those who would otherwise not get them and claims for compensation, such as for holidays that go wrong. Or rather don't go wrong but are made to appear as if they do.
Brigstocke was biting. The people they get on these ads to sell you this stuff, he observed, "you've never seen more ropey-looking pikey fuckers in your life". It's a good case of empathetic diversity marketing. Brigstocke's, let's abbreviate them to PFs, were appealing to PFs watching the telly. And we all know the type of PF he had in mind: Benefits Street lowlife dragging their knuckles along the floor.
Let's make one thing very clear. These PFs represent only a small minority of those who go to giant, economy-class all-inclusives, but they exist in sufficient number to make the efforts of ambulance chasers, aka claims' farmers, worthwhile. And why is this type of all-inclusive targeted? Because a) there are huge numbers of tourists, b) a lot of them are British, and c) this type of PF doesn't stay anywhere else. In the process, further fuel is added to the prejudice directed at guests who simply don't merit it (because they're honest and decent). Moreover, folk who genuinely do have grounds for complaint and claims are tarred by the same brush.
The sufficient number is costing hotels in Mallorca, Benidorm, the Costa del Sol and Tenerife a small fortune. Exact figures seem elusive, as reports give different ones. According to Cehat, the national hoteliers confederation, the figure nationwide last year was fifty million euros. But now we are told that last year in Mallorca alone the figure was 50 million.
Someone is either exaggerating or underestimating. Let's just accept that the scam is costing hotels a hell of a lot of money, and it is a scam - a total scam. The PF holidaymaker can get his or her holiday paid for (plus more if lucky) simply by filling in a form, provided by the scamming claims' farmers, and offering the weakest of evidence (imodium bought from a chemist's shop). There isn't even a need to file the complaint while on holiday, such is the absurdity of UK law that permits claims to be made long afterwards and which places the burden of proof on the hotel/tour operator.
Where the claim is made via the tour operator, which it typically is, contractual arrangements allow the tour operator - rather than fight a case that might end up costing 50,000 pounds - to cough up and then subtract the compensation payment from a hotel's invoice. Hence, it is the hotels which always lose out.
As far as I am aware, there has as yet not been the type of ambulance - the Claims Clinic - parked up by Mallorcan all-inclusives as there has been in Tenerife. It may only be a matter of time, though, as in this year. Being in the midst of Alcudia all-inclusivana, I have observed what goes on, and have been given chapter and verse by tour operator reps as well. It's despicable, utterly despicable, as bad if not worse than the old scratch-card, time-share try-on and miles, miles worse than anything the lookies get up to.
There is a further major reason why all-inclusives (of a certain type) are targeted. That's because there is a vastly reduced likelihood that PFs who make claims will have eaten anything outside the hotel. Therefore, m'lud, I respectfully submit that the all-inclusive has to be responsible. Quite right, Mr. Claims Farmer, here's a three grand award for your client. From which a commission is taken.
Hoteliers, tour operators are seeking to fight back, informing prospective fraudsters that a false claim is a criminal offence in Spain. And so it is in the UK. Yet, UK courts seem duty bound to accept these frauds without smelling a rat. They will have been presented, as are tour operator reps here, with the same evidence time and time again. The same form, the same imodium.
In what other ways are they fighting back? Jet2 has its gastroenteritis questionnaire, which may well deter PFs who are too stupid to be able to fill it out. Another way is to stop doing business with the British. This may be an extreme solution, it may well not be possible, but it most certainly is being considered.
Mallorca's hoteliers know full well the businesses behind the scams. They also know about the enticements on social media. The only ones who don't seem to know are the UK's legal authorities. It's high time that they accepted their responsibilities for having permitted fraud on a grand scale and for eliminating the pikey fuckers.
Brigstocke was biting. The people they get on these ads to sell you this stuff, he observed, "you've never seen more ropey-looking pikey fuckers in your life". It's a good case of empathetic diversity marketing. Brigstocke's, let's abbreviate them to PFs, were appealing to PFs watching the telly. And we all know the type of PF he had in mind: Benefits Street lowlife dragging their knuckles along the floor.
Let's make one thing very clear. These PFs represent only a small minority of those who go to giant, economy-class all-inclusives, but they exist in sufficient number to make the efforts of ambulance chasers, aka claims' farmers, worthwhile. And why is this type of all-inclusive targeted? Because a) there are huge numbers of tourists, b) a lot of them are British, and c) this type of PF doesn't stay anywhere else. In the process, further fuel is added to the prejudice directed at guests who simply don't merit it (because they're honest and decent). Moreover, folk who genuinely do have grounds for complaint and claims are tarred by the same brush.
The sufficient number is costing hotels in Mallorca, Benidorm, the Costa del Sol and Tenerife a small fortune. Exact figures seem elusive, as reports give different ones. According to Cehat, the national hoteliers confederation, the figure nationwide last year was fifty million euros. But now we are told that last year in Mallorca alone the figure was 50 million.
Someone is either exaggerating or underestimating. Let's just accept that the scam is costing hotels a hell of a lot of money, and it is a scam - a total scam. The PF holidaymaker can get his or her holiday paid for (plus more if lucky) simply by filling in a form, provided by the scamming claims' farmers, and offering the weakest of evidence (imodium bought from a chemist's shop). There isn't even a need to file the complaint while on holiday, such is the absurdity of UK law that permits claims to be made long afterwards and which places the burden of proof on the hotel/tour operator.
Where the claim is made via the tour operator, which it typically is, contractual arrangements allow the tour operator - rather than fight a case that might end up costing 50,000 pounds - to cough up and then subtract the compensation payment from a hotel's invoice. Hence, it is the hotels which always lose out.
As far as I am aware, there has as yet not been the type of ambulance - the Claims Clinic - parked up by Mallorcan all-inclusives as there has been in Tenerife. It may only be a matter of time, though, as in this year. Being in the midst of Alcudia all-inclusivana, I have observed what goes on, and have been given chapter and verse by tour operator reps as well. It's despicable, utterly despicable, as bad if not worse than the old scratch-card, time-share try-on and miles, miles worse than anything the lookies get up to.
There is a further major reason why all-inclusives (of a certain type) are targeted. That's because there is a vastly reduced likelihood that PFs who make claims will have eaten anything outside the hotel. Therefore, m'lud, I respectfully submit that the all-inclusive has to be responsible. Quite right, Mr. Claims Farmer, here's a three grand award for your client. From which a commission is taken.
Hoteliers, tour operators are seeking to fight back, informing prospective fraudsters that a false claim is a criminal offence in Spain. And so it is in the UK. Yet, UK courts seem duty bound to accept these frauds without smelling a rat. They will have been presented, as are tour operator reps here, with the same evidence time and time again. The same form, the same imodium.
In what other ways are they fighting back? Jet2 has its gastroenteritis questionnaire, which may well deter PFs who are too stupid to be able to fill it out. Another way is to stop doing business with the British. This may be an extreme solution, it may well not be possible, but it most certainly is being considered.
Mallorca's hoteliers know full well the businesses behind the scams. They also know about the enticements on social media. The only ones who don't seem to know are the UK's legal authorities. It's high time that they accepted their responsibilities for having permitted fraud on a grand scale and for eliminating the pikey fuckers.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Playing Hardball With Tour Operators
In a book published in 2011 entitled The British On Holiday, author Hazel Andrews wrote that in 1998 the head of the Palmanova-Magalluf hoteliers association had told her that the most important relationship in the resorts was that between hotels and tour operators and that the most important tour operator was Thomson.
Earlier this month, a Frontur report concerning international tourist movement into Spain revealed that slightly under 23 million tourists travelled with a tour operator on a holiday package. That is to say that in 2016 the percentage of holidaymakers relying exclusively on a tour operator was just short of 22%. Twenty years before, so a little time before Hazel Andrews spoke to the hoteliers' president, over 80% of holidaymakers booked packages with a tour operator.
A great deal has therefore happened in the past twenty years, one aspect of which is that Thomson, important or not as a provider of Magalluf tourists, is to be consigned to the brand waste bin.
Another obvious development since the late 1990s is the extent to which holidaymaker booking behaviour has altered. The package holiday's obituary has been written often enough, but - and bearing in mind also the significant increase in the number of tourists in the past twenty years - it remains resilient, not least if it is an all-inclusive one. Moreover, these are figures for Spain, to which low-cost airlines fly in abundance and where there is no shortage of alternative accommodation: alternative to hotels, that is. Other destinations aren't necessarily quite as easy as Spain is for the independent traveller.
The package holiday, for all the predictions of its demise, still holds a decent share of the market, decent enough for tour operators like Tui to snaffle up as many hotel beds as they can. There need be no tears being wept for the tour operators in this shifting scenario. They still exert great power and they still have massive offer to sell.
But can it be said, as it was in 1998, that the hotel-tour operator relationship remains the most important one, and not just in Magalluf and Palmanova? The Frontur figure of 22%, one suspects, is a good deal higher in resorts, so arguably it is, even though it won't be anything like the 80% of 1998. Tour operator power has thus been diminished, if only to a degree, and the scramble for beds (along with increased prices) that has been occurring just recently because of the elevated demand for Mallorca holidays demonstrates how the hotel-tour operator relationship has changed.
Historically, tour operators have always held the whip hand. Mallorca was almost solely reliant on foreign companies at the start of the boom, a fact that was dramatically exposed by the oil crisis of the 1970s and by the collapse of Court Line and Clarkson. This shock to the tourism industry was such that there was a determination to assert Mallorca's own power over it, but this never happened. The package holiday and its selling by foreign tour operators just kept on getting stronger.
Given this strength, tour operators were able to keep control over prices. Although there have long been partnerships with hotel chains - direct ones in certain instances, such as between Tui and Riu - the tour operator was the more powerful partner. It could also dictate the type of offer. Few hotels have genuinely wanted to provide all-inclusive, because of the lower margins and the far lower possibilities for making add-on sales to clients. At the bottom end of the AI market, as a hotel manager once admitted to me, the hotel would have much rather been in a position to provide greater quality. But it couldn't. The quality was crap, and he recognised that it was.
Something else which has significantly altered the scene since the late 1990s is the level of competition, to which can be added the demands of a more critical and sophisticated holidaymaker. It is this context which goes a long way to explaining the apparent abandonment of Mallorca (and the Canaries) by Thomas Cook. While this has been greatly exaggerated, the tour operator is ditching a number of hotels as part of an overall strategy of moving up-market.
Thomas Cook has also taken into account the elevated prices being demanded by hotels. The relationship in terms of power has been disrupted by current circumstances, and while there seems to have been some glee among hoteliers as well as indifference to continuing relationships with certain markets, notably the British, the hoteliers are taking risks. There may not have been such statements in Mallorca, but in the Canaries the president of the hoteliers association has warned against "abuse" of prices. Some hoteliers may believe they can play hardball with tour operators. For the moment maybe they can. In the Canaries at least, there is concern about the harmful effect on the historical relationship.
Earlier this month, a Frontur report concerning international tourist movement into Spain revealed that slightly under 23 million tourists travelled with a tour operator on a holiday package. That is to say that in 2016 the percentage of holidaymakers relying exclusively on a tour operator was just short of 22%. Twenty years before, so a little time before Hazel Andrews spoke to the hoteliers' president, over 80% of holidaymakers booked packages with a tour operator.
A great deal has therefore happened in the past twenty years, one aspect of which is that Thomson, important or not as a provider of Magalluf tourists, is to be consigned to the brand waste bin.
Another obvious development since the late 1990s is the extent to which holidaymaker booking behaviour has altered. The package holiday's obituary has been written often enough, but - and bearing in mind also the significant increase in the number of tourists in the past twenty years - it remains resilient, not least if it is an all-inclusive one. Moreover, these are figures for Spain, to which low-cost airlines fly in abundance and where there is no shortage of alternative accommodation: alternative to hotels, that is. Other destinations aren't necessarily quite as easy as Spain is for the independent traveller.
The package holiday, for all the predictions of its demise, still holds a decent share of the market, decent enough for tour operators like Tui to snaffle up as many hotel beds as they can. There need be no tears being wept for the tour operators in this shifting scenario. They still exert great power and they still have massive offer to sell.
But can it be said, as it was in 1998, that the hotel-tour operator relationship remains the most important one, and not just in Magalluf and Palmanova? The Frontur figure of 22%, one suspects, is a good deal higher in resorts, so arguably it is, even though it won't be anything like the 80% of 1998. Tour operator power has thus been diminished, if only to a degree, and the scramble for beds (along with increased prices) that has been occurring just recently because of the elevated demand for Mallorca holidays demonstrates how the hotel-tour operator relationship has changed.
Historically, tour operators have always held the whip hand. Mallorca was almost solely reliant on foreign companies at the start of the boom, a fact that was dramatically exposed by the oil crisis of the 1970s and by the collapse of Court Line and Clarkson. This shock to the tourism industry was such that there was a determination to assert Mallorca's own power over it, but this never happened. The package holiday and its selling by foreign tour operators just kept on getting stronger.
Given this strength, tour operators were able to keep control over prices. Although there have long been partnerships with hotel chains - direct ones in certain instances, such as between Tui and Riu - the tour operator was the more powerful partner. It could also dictate the type of offer. Few hotels have genuinely wanted to provide all-inclusive, because of the lower margins and the far lower possibilities for making add-on sales to clients. At the bottom end of the AI market, as a hotel manager once admitted to me, the hotel would have much rather been in a position to provide greater quality. But it couldn't. The quality was crap, and he recognised that it was.
Something else which has significantly altered the scene since the late 1990s is the level of competition, to which can be added the demands of a more critical and sophisticated holidaymaker. It is this context which goes a long way to explaining the apparent abandonment of Mallorca (and the Canaries) by Thomas Cook. While this has been greatly exaggerated, the tour operator is ditching a number of hotels as part of an overall strategy of moving up-market.
Thomas Cook has also taken into account the elevated prices being demanded by hotels. The relationship in terms of power has been disrupted by current circumstances, and while there seems to have been some glee among hoteliers as well as indifference to continuing relationships with certain markets, notably the British, the hoteliers are taking risks. There may not have been such statements in Mallorca, but in the Canaries the president of the hoteliers association has warned against "abuse" of prices. Some hoteliers may believe they can play hardball with tour operators. For the moment maybe they can. In the Canaries at least, there is concern about the harmful effect on the historical relationship.
Wednesday, February 01, 2017
1903 And All That: Adults-Only
The date was 17 December, 1903. The place was near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The two men involved were brothers - Orville and Wilbur. The Wright Brothers could not possibly have envisaged what they would unleash, not least the fact that 114 years later in a city across the Atlantic which back then they may or may not have been familiar with, their efforts are to be honoured in the form of an airport lounge.
This isn't any old airport lounge. Manchester Airport's Terminal 3 is to have an adults-only lounge, and it will be known as 1903. Despite the name being in memory of Orville and Wilbur, this isn't a year that otherwise carries particular and popular significance. It thus has an enigmatic, quirky, almost mysterious connotation. The anonymity of the year is what grants the name a uniqueness. Clever people, these marketing types; the use of a year is a neat trick that they often play.
The uniqueness will cost 30 quid if booked in advance or 35 quid if you just turn up on the day. This relatively modest sum will be rewarded with complimentary buffet, free booze, free, unlimited wifi and, most importantly, an absence of anyone under the age of sixteen (one assumes that the sixteen and seventeen year olds will be given a discount because of the booze; or maybe not).
Mischievously, one can already sense that a certain category of adults-only will be eyeing up the thirty quid as a bargain means of facilitating lavish pre-flight getting plastered. But adults-only aren't like that. Are they? Well, in other marketing people's worlds, they most certainly are not. The prevailing image is of couples in their late twenties with good teeth etc., looking deliriously happy as they wallow in the spas and fine wines (in very modest amounts) of their adults-only hotel environment. Thank God we booked adults-only, the images shout.
In a way, this prevailing and predominant age image reveals the adults-only to be enjoying their final flings. Rather like the lads and ladettes on tour to Maga (other untransformed resorts are now available) go through rites of passage and the entire card on a happy hour prior to one day settling down (some of them) to marital bliss, so the adults-only is (are) having their final days in the sun before THEY come along. The kids. There'll be no more adults-only for them until they reach sufficient age to qualify for the older person/senior packages and have grown grey gracefully, still retaining the teeth and the delirium.
The 1903 lounge is just a further milestone along the journey towards adults-only touristic domination. Or does it denote a return to days of yore? 1903 was notable - in Mallorca anyway - for another reason, and that was the opening of Palma's Gran Hotel. Styled on the Ritz, one of its ambitions lay with attracting the early twentieth century tourist. And one can probably safely assume that under-16s would have been in limited supply: they hadn't really invented "the family" back then.
Mallorca's adults-only establishments, of which there is an ever increasing number, are something of a throwback to the grand days of travel, when the tourist most definitely fell into the category marked "quality". It is the unabashed desire to attract this quality tourist - one who's loaded and doesn't get rat arsed - which is one of the reasons for the growth of the adults-only concept. Plus the fact that adults-only is that much more profitable. The family is thus being denigrated to a degree, certainly the degree which arrives with three-star baggage and remains cloistered in the confines of child-hell poolside all-inclusive.
One does of course have to attribute the adults-only movement to the so-called "Cupid of the Caribbean", Gordon "Butch" Stewart, who founded the Sandals Resorts and also made them the first word in all-inclusive heaven: Sandals offered first-class AI. It took a fair old time for adults-only to transport itself to Mallorca and Spain. By 2011 there were only 25 such establishments nationally. They're now all over the place, their critical number meaning that TripAdvisor can have its bests-of, and apparently the Grupotel Playa Camp de Mar is the best of the best in Mallorca.
There have been concerned voices raised about the growing proliferation of adults-only, one being that it is a form of discrimination. If societal mores are such that there cannot be discrimination on the basis of gender, religion or race, then why should children be singled out and excluded?
The marketers will say, and do, that adults-only is all about responding to social and cultural changes. And perhaps so, but if the number of hotels becomes that many, where do the deliriously happy thirty year olds go when THEY do finally come along?
This isn't any old airport lounge. Manchester Airport's Terminal 3 is to have an adults-only lounge, and it will be known as 1903. Despite the name being in memory of Orville and Wilbur, this isn't a year that otherwise carries particular and popular significance. It thus has an enigmatic, quirky, almost mysterious connotation. The anonymity of the year is what grants the name a uniqueness. Clever people, these marketing types; the use of a year is a neat trick that they often play.
The uniqueness will cost 30 quid if booked in advance or 35 quid if you just turn up on the day. This relatively modest sum will be rewarded with complimentary buffet, free booze, free, unlimited wifi and, most importantly, an absence of anyone under the age of sixteen (one assumes that the sixteen and seventeen year olds will be given a discount because of the booze; or maybe not).
Mischievously, one can already sense that a certain category of adults-only will be eyeing up the thirty quid as a bargain means of facilitating lavish pre-flight getting plastered. But adults-only aren't like that. Are they? Well, in other marketing people's worlds, they most certainly are not. The prevailing image is of couples in their late twenties with good teeth etc., looking deliriously happy as they wallow in the spas and fine wines (in very modest amounts) of their adults-only hotel environment. Thank God we booked adults-only, the images shout.
In a way, this prevailing and predominant age image reveals the adults-only to be enjoying their final flings. Rather like the lads and ladettes on tour to Maga (other untransformed resorts are now available) go through rites of passage and the entire card on a happy hour prior to one day settling down (some of them) to marital bliss, so the adults-only is (are) having their final days in the sun before THEY come along. The kids. There'll be no more adults-only for them until they reach sufficient age to qualify for the older person/senior packages and have grown grey gracefully, still retaining the teeth and the delirium.
The 1903 lounge is just a further milestone along the journey towards adults-only touristic domination. Or does it denote a return to days of yore? 1903 was notable - in Mallorca anyway - for another reason, and that was the opening of Palma's Gran Hotel. Styled on the Ritz, one of its ambitions lay with attracting the early twentieth century tourist. And one can probably safely assume that under-16s would have been in limited supply: they hadn't really invented "the family" back then.
Mallorca's adults-only establishments, of which there is an ever increasing number, are something of a throwback to the grand days of travel, when the tourist most definitely fell into the category marked "quality". It is the unabashed desire to attract this quality tourist - one who's loaded and doesn't get rat arsed - which is one of the reasons for the growth of the adults-only concept. Plus the fact that adults-only is that much more profitable. The family is thus being denigrated to a degree, certainly the degree which arrives with three-star baggage and remains cloistered in the confines of child-hell poolside all-inclusive.
One does of course have to attribute the adults-only movement to the so-called "Cupid of the Caribbean", Gordon "Butch" Stewart, who founded the Sandals Resorts and also made them the first word in all-inclusive heaven: Sandals offered first-class AI. It took a fair old time for adults-only to transport itself to Mallorca and Spain. By 2011 there were only 25 such establishments nationally. They're now all over the place, their critical number meaning that TripAdvisor can have its bests-of, and apparently the Grupotel Playa Camp de Mar is the best of the best in Mallorca.
There have been concerned voices raised about the growing proliferation of adults-only, one being that it is a form of discrimination. If societal mores are such that there cannot be discrimination on the basis of gender, religion or race, then why should children be singled out and excluded?
The marketers will say, and do, that adults-only is all about responding to social and cultural changes. And perhaps so, but if the number of hotels becomes that many, where do the deliriously happy thirty year olds go when THEY do finally come along?
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
From Infinity To Infinity: Hotels
My, how hotels have changed. Those of you of a certain vintage will remember how they were. I'm not referring to the likes of the Ritz, but to the holiday hotel of yore, the first recollection of which I have is from the year that England won the World Cup. It was called, may still be for all I know, the Yelton Hotel in Hastings. I'm guessing that they considered this to be a home from home type of family hotel. They were quite wrong. By that time we lived in comparative luxury. Not every part of our home, all furnishings, all walls, all everything smelt of beef lunches. In fact, none of it did, unlike the hotel. Nor did we have Double Diamond on tap, and we most certainly did not have an "entertainment" room which failed to entertain.
Three years later came the great foreign adventure. Arenal. Here was something different: the outdoor pool, for example, which contrasted greatly with the one in Bournemouth during 1967's Summer of Love. Buried in the bowels of the hotel edifice, plunging into it gave the impression that one might disappear into the centre of the Earth. They're probably still hunting for small children even now. Arenal was therefore several notches up on the sophistication ladder, despite there having been a shanty town as a bedroom view.
Sophistication is the keyword. The holidaymaking client nowadays requires sophistication. It comes in different guises, and the appreciation (or not) of its level of sophistication does rather depend on the punter's aspirations and expectations. Generally speaking, though, Mallorca and everywhere else are straining every hotelier sinew to invest in sophistication. Take the infinity pool, for example. Whereas the pool in Bournemouth in 1967 could seemingly oblige by condemning one to an ever-downward-spiralling vortex of infinity, the 2017 model is just infinite on a horizontal plane. Where does it go? What a clever trick.
Although there are still hotels trapped in a 1970s' time warp, the great majority now conform to the demands of 21st Century Tourist Man (and family). Spas are ubiquitous, chill-out zones are de rigueur, wifi has replaced the Double Diamond by being on tap and may well be transmitted by the contemporary beer tap, given the ominous and mysterious advance of the Internet of Things. It is the latter which defines this new age of the hotel experience. Technology has advanced sophistication as much as any competitive threat from Turkey and elsewhere.
The leap is as gigantic as it has been rapid. Back in the day when some people were on the pitch, thinking it was all over, the Yelton's technological aspirations could stretch no further than the telly in the telly room. Harold Wilson may have been announcing that there was a white heat of technology, but here was the tepidity of technology, if that.
Hotel technology took an age to embrace the age of technology. Since its relatively recent discovery, however, it has moved ahead with boundless energy, powering energy-efficient systems through the computations of software, marketing offers in a constant whir of Big Data profiling, converting the real to the less real - virtual reality.
How far can all this go? The possibilities presented by technology create a new infinity, virtual reality being just one aspect but a highly tantalising one. There were those who might have scoffed when some years ago I presented a vision of hotel virtual reality entertainment (Miley Cyrus was being virtually reproduced), but scoff no more.
I am not a futurist. Perhaps I've missed a vocation and the possibility of raking in shedloads purely on the basis of blue-sky thinking, as my vision of hotel robotics and virtual Miley bears a certain similarity with someone who is a futurist and who presumably doesn't come cheap.
James Canton used to work for Apple. He has advised more than a hundred companies as well as the White House. And what does James envisage? Among other things, the current-day theme hotel will be transformed into an immersive environment. Guests will experience live events and interact with them in real time or through virtual reality. In other words, the themed hotel becomes a virtual environment, capable of drawing on imagery from wherever, such as the past. In my vision, that past imagery was of the guest being shown how resorts once were, when guests left their compounds and did things like going to a bar.
Robots, says James, will be programmed in such ways to make guests' stays exceptional and personalised experiences through the provision of information, service and entertainment. And that is not a great distance away from my RepBot and making available virtual Miley entertainment.
Infinite. The possibilities are infinite. Perhaps the re-creation of the past might even be of plunging into the infinity of the Summer of Love.
Three years later came the great foreign adventure. Arenal. Here was something different: the outdoor pool, for example, which contrasted greatly with the one in Bournemouth during 1967's Summer of Love. Buried in the bowels of the hotel edifice, plunging into it gave the impression that one might disappear into the centre of the Earth. They're probably still hunting for small children even now. Arenal was therefore several notches up on the sophistication ladder, despite there having been a shanty town as a bedroom view.
Sophistication is the keyword. The holidaymaking client nowadays requires sophistication. It comes in different guises, and the appreciation (or not) of its level of sophistication does rather depend on the punter's aspirations and expectations. Generally speaking, though, Mallorca and everywhere else are straining every hotelier sinew to invest in sophistication. Take the infinity pool, for example. Whereas the pool in Bournemouth in 1967 could seemingly oblige by condemning one to an ever-downward-spiralling vortex of infinity, the 2017 model is just infinite on a horizontal plane. Where does it go? What a clever trick.
Although there are still hotels trapped in a 1970s' time warp, the great majority now conform to the demands of 21st Century Tourist Man (and family). Spas are ubiquitous, chill-out zones are de rigueur, wifi has replaced the Double Diamond by being on tap and may well be transmitted by the contemporary beer tap, given the ominous and mysterious advance of the Internet of Things. It is the latter which defines this new age of the hotel experience. Technology has advanced sophistication as much as any competitive threat from Turkey and elsewhere.
The leap is as gigantic as it has been rapid. Back in the day when some people were on the pitch, thinking it was all over, the Yelton's technological aspirations could stretch no further than the telly in the telly room. Harold Wilson may have been announcing that there was a white heat of technology, but here was the tepidity of technology, if that.
Hotel technology took an age to embrace the age of technology. Since its relatively recent discovery, however, it has moved ahead with boundless energy, powering energy-efficient systems through the computations of software, marketing offers in a constant whir of Big Data profiling, converting the real to the less real - virtual reality.
How far can all this go? The possibilities presented by technology create a new infinity, virtual reality being just one aspect but a highly tantalising one. There were those who might have scoffed when some years ago I presented a vision of hotel virtual reality entertainment (Miley Cyrus was being virtually reproduced), but scoff no more.
I am not a futurist. Perhaps I've missed a vocation and the possibility of raking in shedloads purely on the basis of blue-sky thinking, as my vision of hotel robotics and virtual Miley bears a certain similarity with someone who is a futurist and who presumably doesn't come cheap.
James Canton used to work for Apple. He has advised more than a hundred companies as well as the White House. And what does James envisage? Among other things, the current-day theme hotel will be transformed into an immersive environment. Guests will experience live events and interact with them in real time or through virtual reality. In other words, the themed hotel becomes a virtual environment, capable of drawing on imagery from wherever, such as the past. In my vision, that past imagery was of the guest being shown how resorts once were, when guests left their compounds and did things like going to a bar.
Robots, says James, will be programmed in such ways to make guests' stays exceptional and personalised experiences through the provision of information, service and entertainment. And that is not a great distance away from my RepBot and making available virtual Miley entertainment.
Infinite. The possibilities are infinite. Perhaps the re-creation of the past might even be of plunging into the infinity of the Summer of Love.
Wednesday, October 05, 2016
The Price Of Quality?: Holidays 2017
The price of Mallorcan holidays is going up. Or so it seems. You can judge only so much from social network comments, but when you learn of increases for packages that involve unremarkable accommodation which are anything from 300 to 2,000 euros more expensive in 2017, then the body of evidence begins to fill.
A reaction to this is that it's all to do with the UK's peculiar circumstances. Such a reaction is, however, conditioned by having a one-eyed view that it is the UK market which matters and no other. There are other markets. In June, the German media were pointing to higher prices for "Mallorca-Urlaub" in 2017.
So what's going on? It's pretty simple. There's a perfect storm driving prices up. Hoteliers upping prices. Tour operators falling over backwards to pay these prices in order to gobble up all available hotel space. (These tour operators do not, incidentally, include Spanish ones who are being totally outgunned and are struggling to find space.) These are the same tour operators which have taken hits this year not because of Mallorca or Spain but because of the well-publicised troubles elsewhere.
We've known about the hoteliers' price rises for several months. Depending on the chain or indeed the hotel, there are average increases of 15%. These rises, the hoteliers will and do argue, are the result of all their investment and hard work in renovation and upping the quality. Consequently, they can talk confidently of improved "price-quality" ratios for the punters. They can talk, but the punters don't automatically see it the same way. The tourist satisfaction survey by Gadeso in the summer indicated that this ratio has not improved. Punters are themselves being conditioned by quality expectations. Some have experienced them first hand in rival destinations. Quality of a similar or higher level and at a lower price. There's your price-quality ratio.
Until the bonanza of the past couple of years, served on a plate by the "troubles" of others, the hoteliers had been moaning about a decade or more of profits having barely increased. They had been running to stand still, such were the economics of the Mallorcan tourism market. Finally, a window opened, and up went the prices. And they are continuing to rise. In some instances by substantial amounts.
There are then hoteliers who insist that the elevated prices are the work of the tour operators. Maybe, but when the hoteliers have negotiated higher prices, what are the tour operators expected to do? Put the price down? It is troubling, though, to learn that major tour operators have been holding back on paying hoteliers' invoices this summer. The only reason that can be offered is the knock-on negative effect on tour operator business from cancellations to the troubled regions. Has Mallorca, therefore, been eyed up as one of the destinations where losses this year can be recouped next year?
One of the great ironies of all this, and again one can find evidence of this on social networks, is that punters, rather than abandoning Mallorca for other shores, are opting for a change. Which means private rentals. So, the hotels put their prices up and drive the client base into the hands of the enemy and into the devil's work that is Airbnb. A crunch may come, where the punter is concerned, when the enemy seeks to profiteer and ups its prices by a few hundred euros.
A further irony may just be that the hoteliers end up doing the regional government's work for them. The government sees price engineering (the tourist tax) as a means of keeping a lid on tourist numbers. The hoteliers are thus, if they're not careful, engaging in the same tactic. There will always be a further argument, one with some justification, that other destinations don't have the capacity that Mallorca has. Another argument is that the holiday is a "necessity". Price matters only so much. Capacity or price, eventually something has to give.
While the UK market does indeed have its peculiarities, so also do other markets. If one ever delves into those tourist spending stats, what one finds is the way in which spending varies significantly across markets. It's not because the Swedes, Norwegians (or even more so, the Russians) are handing out more folding notes in the island's bars and restaurants, it's because the average cost of the actual holidays is way higher than a British holiday: it can range from 25% to 50% more. And none of these other markets will be immune from the scramble for hotel places and the consequent increases.
Celesti Alomar, the tourism minister responsible for the first ecotax, said of that tax that it was a means of Mallorca not engaging in a price war with cheap destinations. Quality was all, and that meant higher prices. He seems to finally be getting his wish.
A reaction to this is that it's all to do with the UK's peculiar circumstances. Such a reaction is, however, conditioned by having a one-eyed view that it is the UK market which matters and no other. There are other markets. In June, the German media were pointing to higher prices for "Mallorca-Urlaub" in 2017.
So what's going on? It's pretty simple. There's a perfect storm driving prices up. Hoteliers upping prices. Tour operators falling over backwards to pay these prices in order to gobble up all available hotel space. (These tour operators do not, incidentally, include Spanish ones who are being totally outgunned and are struggling to find space.) These are the same tour operators which have taken hits this year not because of Mallorca or Spain but because of the well-publicised troubles elsewhere.
We've known about the hoteliers' price rises for several months. Depending on the chain or indeed the hotel, there are average increases of 15%. These rises, the hoteliers will and do argue, are the result of all their investment and hard work in renovation and upping the quality. Consequently, they can talk confidently of improved "price-quality" ratios for the punters. They can talk, but the punters don't automatically see it the same way. The tourist satisfaction survey by Gadeso in the summer indicated that this ratio has not improved. Punters are themselves being conditioned by quality expectations. Some have experienced them first hand in rival destinations. Quality of a similar or higher level and at a lower price. There's your price-quality ratio.
Until the bonanza of the past couple of years, served on a plate by the "troubles" of others, the hoteliers had been moaning about a decade or more of profits having barely increased. They had been running to stand still, such were the economics of the Mallorcan tourism market. Finally, a window opened, and up went the prices. And they are continuing to rise. In some instances by substantial amounts.
There are then hoteliers who insist that the elevated prices are the work of the tour operators. Maybe, but when the hoteliers have negotiated higher prices, what are the tour operators expected to do? Put the price down? It is troubling, though, to learn that major tour operators have been holding back on paying hoteliers' invoices this summer. The only reason that can be offered is the knock-on negative effect on tour operator business from cancellations to the troubled regions. Has Mallorca, therefore, been eyed up as one of the destinations where losses this year can be recouped next year?
One of the great ironies of all this, and again one can find evidence of this on social networks, is that punters, rather than abandoning Mallorca for other shores, are opting for a change. Which means private rentals. So, the hotels put their prices up and drive the client base into the hands of the enemy and into the devil's work that is Airbnb. A crunch may come, where the punter is concerned, when the enemy seeks to profiteer and ups its prices by a few hundred euros.
A further irony may just be that the hoteliers end up doing the regional government's work for them. The government sees price engineering (the tourist tax) as a means of keeping a lid on tourist numbers. The hoteliers are thus, if they're not careful, engaging in the same tactic. There will always be a further argument, one with some justification, that other destinations don't have the capacity that Mallorca has. Another argument is that the holiday is a "necessity". Price matters only so much. Capacity or price, eventually something has to give.
While the UK market does indeed have its peculiarities, so also do other markets. If one ever delves into those tourist spending stats, what one finds is the way in which spending varies significantly across markets. It's not because the Swedes, Norwegians (or even more so, the Russians) are handing out more folding notes in the island's bars and restaurants, it's because the average cost of the actual holidays is way higher than a British holiday: it can range from 25% to 50% more. And none of these other markets will be immune from the scramble for hotel places and the consequent increases.
Celesti Alomar, the tourism minister responsible for the first ecotax, said of that tax that it was a means of Mallorca not engaging in a price war with cheap destinations. Quality was all, and that meant higher prices. He seems to finally be getting his wish.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
The "Sport" Of Holiday Compensation Claims
How many of you reading this are either at an all-inclusive hotel or have been to one? And by all-inclusive, I'm tending towards excluding those which display four or even five stars. Why would I do this? Principally, and do please excuse the generalisation, the three-star all-inclusive might typically house a clientele that is most interested in the pursuit of compensation.
If you are and have been at an all-inclusive, and it does seem to apply mostly to all-inclusives, you may have been aware of some of the individuals who seem to hang around. They can be found inside hotel grounds and on hotel property as well as outside. Security in many a hotel is lax to the point of non-existent.
These individuals can include, inter alia, illegal street sellers. They move in from the streets and inhabit poolside and other areas. How on earth is this allowed to happen? Reasons, one in particular, have been offered to me. I'm not, it has to be said, convinced by allegations that "incentives" are offered to turn a blind eye. The street sellers just don't have that kind of wherewithal, albeit their masters may have. Even then, I frankly doubt it.
There are sellers of a different sort. They don't come armed with fake products (or drugs). They don't want any money as such. They are armed instead with claims' forms, either actual ones or available from websites. They are representatives of one of the most miserable, ethically reprehensible and morally bankrupt lines of business that exists in the holiday market. They come from law firms lining up to press compensation claims. The legal profession ethical? Most of it is, but there are also elements of it who - as the old gag would have it - would fail to distinguish between ethics and a county in eastern England.
The claiming of compensation, often for minor matters or perhaps even trumped up, is nothing new of course, but as a "business" it has more tools at its disposal - social networks - than were generally the case over five years ago when I previously looked into it. The circumstances as they were then have not altered, save for the seemingly greater determination to seek to extract compensation. They are principally of British making, involve British law firms and tour operators and British tourists from a culture that has been consumed by the pernicious influence of what was once mainly promoted at appropriate times on UK television and radio but which has now spread to social media.
The hotels are almost invariably the victims. Hard though it may be for some to feel sorry for them - and there are examples of their being their own worst enemies - the hotels are caught by contractual arrangements with tour operators and by the massive costs of challenging claims, which themselves will typically be greatly in excess of what a Spanish court might permit: there are caps under Spanish law but aren't under UK law. And it is UK law and UK courts which decide. It simply isn't worth hotels making challenges. Instead, they find that arrangements with tour operators are such that claims levelled against tour operators are deducted from the invoices the hotels send to the tour operators.
Hotels complain that tour operators are far too compliant in accepting claims. They are, after all, in a better position to fight claims in court, but generally tend not to, challenging only the obviously fraudulent attempts, such as trying to claim for something at a hotel that the holidaymaker had not been staying at.
This is an issue which doesn't affect only Mallorca. It is one that is evident in all the sun-and-beach regions where there is a mass of British tourism - Benidorm, Tenerife and elsewhere. Hosteltur magazine online reports that Ashotel, which is the association for hoteliers in Tenerife as well as in La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro, has sent out a communication to its members in which it identifies one particular firm in north-west England as allegedly encouraging British tourists to press claims for the likes of food poisoning. Hosteltur also reports that Tui and Jet2 are making hotels aware of individuals who are knocking around hotels looking for likely claimants, with law firms operating on a no win, no fee basis.
There are, of course, genuine cases and very serious ones, such as claims against Thomson by holidaymakers who contracted cryptosporidium at a hotel in Can Picafort in June 2003 and which took until January 2011 to be settled. But many are anything but reasonable; they are what the tourism industry in Mallorca refers to as the "sport" of the holiday compensation claim, and one played principally by the British.
Coming back to those loitering around hotels, perhaps some holidaymakers will claim for the annoyance caused by illegal sellers. As I say, some hotels are their own worst enemies.
If you are and have been at an all-inclusive, and it does seem to apply mostly to all-inclusives, you may have been aware of some of the individuals who seem to hang around. They can be found inside hotel grounds and on hotel property as well as outside. Security in many a hotel is lax to the point of non-existent.
These individuals can include, inter alia, illegal street sellers. They move in from the streets and inhabit poolside and other areas. How on earth is this allowed to happen? Reasons, one in particular, have been offered to me. I'm not, it has to be said, convinced by allegations that "incentives" are offered to turn a blind eye. The street sellers just don't have that kind of wherewithal, albeit their masters may have. Even then, I frankly doubt it.
There are sellers of a different sort. They don't come armed with fake products (or drugs). They don't want any money as such. They are armed instead with claims' forms, either actual ones or available from websites. They are representatives of one of the most miserable, ethically reprehensible and morally bankrupt lines of business that exists in the holiday market. They come from law firms lining up to press compensation claims. The legal profession ethical? Most of it is, but there are also elements of it who - as the old gag would have it - would fail to distinguish between ethics and a county in eastern England.
The claiming of compensation, often for minor matters or perhaps even trumped up, is nothing new of course, but as a "business" it has more tools at its disposal - social networks - than were generally the case over five years ago when I previously looked into it. The circumstances as they were then have not altered, save for the seemingly greater determination to seek to extract compensation. They are principally of British making, involve British law firms and tour operators and British tourists from a culture that has been consumed by the pernicious influence of what was once mainly promoted at appropriate times on UK television and radio but which has now spread to social media.
The hotels are almost invariably the victims. Hard though it may be for some to feel sorry for them - and there are examples of their being their own worst enemies - the hotels are caught by contractual arrangements with tour operators and by the massive costs of challenging claims, which themselves will typically be greatly in excess of what a Spanish court might permit: there are caps under Spanish law but aren't under UK law. And it is UK law and UK courts which decide. It simply isn't worth hotels making challenges. Instead, they find that arrangements with tour operators are such that claims levelled against tour operators are deducted from the invoices the hotels send to the tour operators.
Hotels complain that tour operators are far too compliant in accepting claims. They are, after all, in a better position to fight claims in court, but generally tend not to, challenging only the obviously fraudulent attempts, such as trying to claim for something at a hotel that the holidaymaker had not been staying at.
This is an issue which doesn't affect only Mallorca. It is one that is evident in all the sun-and-beach regions where there is a mass of British tourism - Benidorm, Tenerife and elsewhere. Hosteltur magazine online reports that Ashotel, which is the association for hoteliers in Tenerife as well as in La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro, has sent out a communication to its members in which it identifies one particular firm in north-west England as allegedly encouraging British tourists to press claims for the likes of food poisoning. Hosteltur also reports that Tui and Jet2 are making hotels aware of individuals who are knocking around hotels looking for likely claimants, with law firms operating on a no win, no fee basis.
There are, of course, genuine cases and very serious ones, such as claims against Thomson by holidaymakers who contracted cryptosporidium at a hotel in Can Picafort in June 2003 and which took until January 2011 to be settled. But many are anything but reasonable; they are what the tourism industry in Mallorca refers to as the "sport" of the holiday compensation claim, and one played principally by the British.
Coming back to those loitering around hotels, perhaps some holidaymakers will claim for the annoyance caused by illegal sellers. As I say, some hotels are their own worst enemies.
Tuesday, August 02, 2016
Eradication Politics: Tourism Quality
In the summer of 2012, the Partido Popular government passed the second general tourism law for the Balearics. The PP had been responsible for the passage of the first law in 1999, and the two bills bore some similarity in terms of general aims and objectives. Among these were provisions for modernisation of resorts and of hotel accommodation described variously as mature, obsolete or outmoded.
In the preamble to the 2012 law, there is an explanation as to the lack of regulation that characterised the building of tourist establishments from the 1960s. It says that there was "some kind of urban planning" in the 1980s, followed by a "proliferation of regulations" in the 1990s. The 1999 act sought to try and draw all these together, recognising that hotel modernisation during the '90s was anything but consistent. By 1999, therefore, there was a percentage of Balearic hotel stock not conforming to regulations as they had become. It was obsolete and given that much of this stock dated from the '60s and '70s, when there was precious little regulation, it could have been argued that this stock had in-built obsolescence right from the very outset.
By 2012, the stock was still very much in existence. The intentions of the 1999 law had not been followed through, so Carlos Delgado, who was the tourism minister who introduced the 2012 law, took aim at low-grade accommodation. Of nine key points contained in that law, there was one directed specifically at the modernisation of one and two-star establishments. These were to be given a maximum period of four years to upgrade. If they didn't, they would be closed, if only temporarily.
The thrust of this had been to eliminate anything under three stars, and yet, almost exactly four years after the law was approved, the tourist tax was introduced, and it contained rates for one and two-star establishments. In theory, there should no longer be any. Revealingly enough, the one and two-star hotels are lumped in with three stars for the purpose of the tax - each of them carrying a day rate of one euro. This is revealing in the context of what the now tourism minister, Biel Barceló, as well as some hoteliers are saying or at least implying: any hotel with a classification below three-star superior (which attracts a 1.50 rate of tax) is obsolete and exists only to attract an inferior type of tourist.
There is no doubting the fact that a great deal of the current three-star stock (which is vastly greater than one or two-stars) dates to the days when there was little regulation. Likewise, much of it has not been modernised. Consequently, one gets the conclusions of Barceló and Magalluf and Playa de Palma hoteliers: these are rough hotels, more often than not all-inclusive, bringing in a rough tourist with no money. Therefore, these hotels must be "eradicated" together with their clientele.
As ever, we are fed a view biased towards the resorts of twin obsession. Nowhere else in Mallorca or indeed the Balearics appears to matter. Moreover, we are given an impression that all tourists opting for a hotel with a lower-star rating are, by definition, low quality. This is a disgraceful generalisation, one with strong echoes of the start of the century when Maria Munar and Celesti Alomar (the tourism minister who oversaw the introduction of the old eco-tax) were seeking a similar eradication of low-quality tourists. So outraged were the Germans by an impression conveyed that a whole class of tourists was being made to feel unwelcome, that they temporarily boycotted Mallorca. The falsehoods reported with hindsight about the old eco-tax always neglect this fact when claiming that the tax was a disaster.
One can defend the tourist who chooses a lower-star hotel on the grounds that he or she prefers that type of accommodation and that the lower cost of the actual holiday in fact permits greater spending. Nevertheless, we can't kid ourselves that there isn't the rough element which contributes little or nothing and parades itself in unseemly fashion.
But there is nothing new about this. What should have been taken as landmark research by the university at the start of the 1990s into the percentage of tourism which was actually a net loss maker for Mallorca was totally ignored. This research predated all-inclusives. They, with the exception of the one Club Med hotel that used to be in Mallorca, were a phenomenon born out of early '90s recession.
This "rough" element has always been there, and attempts to legislate against it through insistence on standards of accommodation have existed for nigh on twenty years. Will the new "eradication" be any different? If there is a failure, as has been the case until now, to rigorously apply provisions under law, then one might conclude that it won't be.
In the preamble to the 2012 law, there is an explanation as to the lack of regulation that characterised the building of tourist establishments from the 1960s. It says that there was "some kind of urban planning" in the 1980s, followed by a "proliferation of regulations" in the 1990s. The 1999 act sought to try and draw all these together, recognising that hotel modernisation during the '90s was anything but consistent. By 1999, therefore, there was a percentage of Balearic hotel stock not conforming to regulations as they had become. It was obsolete and given that much of this stock dated from the '60s and '70s, when there was precious little regulation, it could have been argued that this stock had in-built obsolescence right from the very outset.
By 2012, the stock was still very much in existence. The intentions of the 1999 law had not been followed through, so Carlos Delgado, who was the tourism minister who introduced the 2012 law, took aim at low-grade accommodation. Of nine key points contained in that law, there was one directed specifically at the modernisation of one and two-star establishments. These were to be given a maximum period of four years to upgrade. If they didn't, they would be closed, if only temporarily.
The thrust of this had been to eliminate anything under three stars, and yet, almost exactly four years after the law was approved, the tourist tax was introduced, and it contained rates for one and two-star establishments. In theory, there should no longer be any. Revealingly enough, the one and two-star hotels are lumped in with three stars for the purpose of the tax - each of them carrying a day rate of one euro. This is revealing in the context of what the now tourism minister, Biel Barceló, as well as some hoteliers are saying or at least implying: any hotel with a classification below three-star superior (which attracts a 1.50 rate of tax) is obsolete and exists only to attract an inferior type of tourist.
There is no doubting the fact that a great deal of the current three-star stock (which is vastly greater than one or two-stars) dates to the days when there was little regulation. Likewise, much of it has not been modernised. Consequently, one gets the conclusions of Barceló and Magalluf and Playa de Palma hoteliers: these are rough hotels, more often than not all-inclusive, bringing in a rough tourist with no money. Therefore, these hotels must be "eradicated" together with their clientele.
As ever, we are fed a view biased towards the resorts of twin obsession. Nowhere else in Mallorca or indeed the Balearics appears to matter. Moreover, we are given an impression that all tourists opting for a hotel with a lower-star rating are, by definition, low quality. This is a disgraceful generalisation, one with strong echoes of the start of the century when Maria Munar and Celesti Alomar (the tourism minister who oversaw the introduction of the old eco-tax) were seeking a similar eradication of low-quality tourists. So outraged were the Germans by an impression conveyed that a whole class of tourists was being made to feel unwelcome, that they temporarily boycotted Mallorca. The falsehoods reported with hindsight about the old eco-tax always neglect this fact when claiming that the tax was a disaster.
One can defend the tourist who chooses a lower-star hotel on the grounds that he or she prefers that type of accommodation and that the lower cost of the actual holiday in fact permits greater spending. Nevertheless, we can't kid ourselves that there isn't the rough element which contributes little or nothing and parades itself in unseemly fashion.
But there is nothing new about this. What should have been taken as landmark research by the university at the start of the 1990s into the percentage of tourism which was actually a net loss maker for Mallorca was totally ignored. This research predated all-inclusives. They, with the exception of the one Club Med hotel that used to be in Mallorca, were a phenomenon born out of early '90s recession.
This "rough" element has always been there, and attempts to legislate against it through insistence on standards of accommodation have existed for nigh on twenty years. Will the new "eradication" be any different? If there is a failure, as has been the case until now, to rigorously apply provisions under law, then one might conclude that it won't be.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
The Island That Lost Control
I'm looking at a one-litre bottle of olive oil, the light variety, not the extra virgin type. I'm not sure if it would make a difference which sort it was for something I'm trying to figure out without going and trying it. How much oil do you suppose you need to make a hotel corridor (not carpeted) slippery enough in order to ensure that guests slip over? I'm guessing that a litre - of whatever type - wouldn't be adequate. You could do part of a corridor, but the whole corridor ...?
Now I'm looking at a chopping-board and at a ring on the cooker. How long would it take, I'm wondering, for the chopping-board to catch light on a full ring (electric)? Wooden, plastic: I reckon the plastic one would go up quicker. I'm not about to find out. To be honest, until only a short while before writing this, it had never occurred to me that one might put a chopping-board on a ring, go out and trust that it catches light - in a hotel apartment. Nor had it ever struck me that one might pour oil along a hotel corridor.
I've been looking, millions have been looking, at a video. Have you seen it? Fancy seeing someone being beaten and kicked senseless by security guards? A hotel's security guards? A hotel to the fore of a transformation. I don't need to tell you which one, do I. You already know. You'll have seen the video. As I say, millions have. The Mail has seen it too. As has The Star. The victim wasn't a guest as such. The hotel has explained this. What the hell difference does that make? You'll know the hotel. It invites the public in to enjoy its facilities. That makes the public guests. This is a hotel asked, by its relevant town hall, to assist in sending out positive messages for somewhere undergoing transformation. Here's the message: end up black and blue. What does the mayor say?
This is not the same hotel as the one with the items from the kitchen. Which one do you reckon that is? Do you suppose it's the same one that apparently only has one security guard at night for a complex of ... Of, ooh, quite a large size. It is.
Tourism is booming. But you know that. With or without booming tourism there is a need for control. Control of different types. Though when things are booming, you don't really want the absence of control or the wrong type of control to go and cock everything up. I know, I know, it's always been the case that where there has been tourism in Mallorca there has also been its less savoury side: its violence, its misbehaviour, its crime. It's just that I have an uneasy feeling. Far from there being greater and better control, there seems to be a deterioration. This uneasiness stems in part from a further sense of impotence - not mine but that of the rightful authorities, be they police or administrations.
Impunity. That's the word. The point is that efforts are made in one way, and the target of those efforts (the anti-social behaviour or whatever) move somewhere else. You can take the lads off the streets of Magalluf, but you can't take the lads out of Magalluf, except by party boat aka booze cruise. You'll have seen the videos of that as well, no doubt. And no one appears to know how or to be able to enforce control. Impunity. You take the lads off the streets of Magalluf, stick 'em in a hotel, and they (one at any rate) get their heads kicked in by security. Done with impunity, but captured on video. What in God's name were those security guards thinking? Do they think? Or are they incapable of thought? It would appear so.
You put lads and lasses in another hotel with all but non-existent security, and they run riot. Maximum control is to be exerted, says the town hall. Really? One security guard? There's your booming tourism for you. Kerching! Take the money, stick 'em in your crumbling hotel and don't bother to engage any security.
There's something else. It's quite extraordinary. The nightclubs association has been complaining about it. Private houses are being used as nightclubs. People are paying to get in and for drinks. All illegal, and to make matters worse for the association, whose members have to charge the top rate of IVA (VAT) for entrance and drinks, there is not one cent of tax paid. Well, of course there isn't. Impunity.
In this instance, there is also an absence of inspection, from whichever government department or other agency might be relevant: as with hotels, for which there is a total under-resourcing for inspection. So things just happen. Noses are thumbed. We don't care. There's your boom for you.
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Water And Tourism Overcrowding
If the Balearic government had said that they were introducing a tax for tourists that would go directly on paying for water, would there be the same hue and cry as there currently is (and still to be) with the tourist tax? Maybe there would be, but the message would be an awful lot simpler. Water is a precious resource and it might just be getting scarcer. Thank you, tourist, for coming to Mallorca, but could you help us with getting you showered and ridding you of the sand that has stuck to suntan lotion and the salt that has encrusted your body and hair? Is it too much to ask for such a precious resource?
A water tax would satisfy Biel Barceló's "finalista" usage, though just one specific purpose and not a host of purposes (vague in their definition). No, there wouldn't be a tax for those purposes, but have a water tax and revenue is freed up elsewhere to be spent on agroforestry modernisation and whatever else.
Palma's Antoni Noguera, a councillor (nay, deputy mayor and due to become mayor in 2017) for whom the words sustainable and model are obliged to feature in every single utterance, may well actually have a point. Are over 3,500 new hotel places in Playa de Palma consistent with a model of sustainable tourism? Did anyone, as he has suggested, stop to ask what impact this increase in places and so humanity would have on services? They're sticking some of these 3,500 plus places on top of existing hotels. Common sense demands that a bottom-up approach is taken instead. Can the bottom, water pipes for instance, sustain the top?
It could all be, of course, one of those things - the current lack of water. Or maybe it will prove not to be. The desalination plants are finally going to really come into their own, and someone has to pay for their output. Palma is preparing almost six million euros for desalinated water this year. A tourist water tax, anyone? And if Palma continues to succeed in making itself Europe's all-year destination darling, water becomes ever more of an issue, especially if rain were to remain as limited in its supply as at present. Mallorca, the tourist industry, would not bemoan the absence of a paddle. The creek wouldn't require one.
This all said, the Noguera criticism of these additional hotel places needs to be seen in the context of how the hotel industry has evolved over the past generation. Inma de Benito, the president of the hoteliers' federation, is never slow in bringing forward a killer statistic or several, and so here is one. Since 1989, the increase in the number of hotel places in the whole of Balearics has been in the order of 3%.
This figure can be questioned, and so I will question it. A key report that the Mallorca Chamber of Commerce published in 2003 showed that from 1991 to 2001 the number of hotel places had risen by 11% to 226,000. However, there had also been a 10% drop in the number of places in hotels with some of apartment classification. The overall rise in places, taking these different categories into account, was more like 4%. Since 2001, there has been comparatively little building activity, but the increase in number of places has not been as limited as the federation might like us to believe: there are 3,700 in Playa de Palma that will require an adjustment of the Benito percentage.
Still, the point that Benito is making is that hotel expansion has not been of anything like the same order as that for residential tourism - villas and other accommodation. Its legitimate growth over the same period since 1989 has been 28%. To this can be added all the properties which are not regulated.
Government and hoteliers, Barceló and Benito, are on much the same hymn sheet when it comes to this regulation. Where they principally differ is on the consequences. For Barceló it is one of overcrowding, as much if not more than being unregulated. But this difference in emphasis is important in the argument over resources. Yes, the additional places in Playa de Palma require a response from services, but nothing like to the same degree as the consumption of water from all the additional private accommodation that has been made available.
The thing is that you, as a politician, can choose your targets to suit your cause. Noguera is right, but he's not right. His is the hotel demonisation argument, but the hoteliers are far from being the only devils in the battle for water.
A water tax would satisfy Biel Barceló's "finalista" usage, though just one specific purpose and not a host of purposes (vague in their definition). No, there wouldn't be a tax for those purposes, but have a water tax and revenue is freed up elsewhere to be spent on agroforestry modernisation and whatever else.
Palma's Antoni Noguera, a councillor (nay, deputy mayor and due to become mayor in 2017) for whom the words sustainable and model are obliged to feature in every single utterance, may well actually have a point. Are over 3,500 new hotel places in Playa de Palma consistent with a model of sustainable tourism? Did anyone, as he has suggested, stop to ask what impact this increase in places and so humanity would have on services? They're sticking some of these 3,500 plus places on top of existing hotels. Common sense demands that a bottom-up approach is taken instead. Can the bottom, water pipes for instance, sustain the top?
It could all be, of course, one of those things - the current lack of water. Or maybe it will prove not to be. The desalination plants are finally going to really come into their own, and someone has to pay for their output. Palma is preparing almost six million euros for desalinated water this year. A tourist water tax, anyone? And if Palma continues to succeed in making itself Europe's all-year destination darling, water becomes ever more of an issue, especially if rain were to remain as limited in its supply as at present. Mallorca, the tourist industry, would not bemoan the absence of a paddle. The creek wouldn't require one.
This all said, the Noguera criticism of these additional hotel places needs to be seen in the context of how the hotel industry has evolved over the past generation. Inma de Benito, the president of the hoteliers' federation, is never slow in bringing forward a killer statistic or several, and so here is one. Since 1989, the increase in the number of hotel places in the whole of Balearics has been in the order of 3%.
This figure can be questioned, and so I will question it. A key report that the Mallorca Chamber of Commerce published in 2003 showed that from 1991 to 2001 the number of hotel places had risen by 11% to 226,000. However, there had also been a 10% drop in the number of places in hotels with some of apartment classification. The overall rise in places, taking these different categories into account, was more like 4%. Since 2001, there has been comparatively little building activity, but the increase in number of places has not been as limited as the federation might like us to believe: there are 3,700 in Playa de Palma that will require an adjustment of the Benito percentage.
Still, the point that Benito is making is that hotel expansion has not been of anything like the same order as that for residential tourism - villas and other accommodation. Its legitimate growth over the same period since 1989 has been 28%. To this can be added all the properties which are not regulated.
Government and hoteliers, Barceló and Benito, are on much the same hymn sheet when it comes to this regulation. Where they principally differ is on the consequences. For Barceló it is one of overcrowding, as much if not more than being unregulated. But this difference in emphasis is important in the argument over resources. Yes, the additional places in Playa de Palma require a response from services, but nothing like to the same degree as the consumption of water from all the additional private accommodation that has been made available.
The thing is that you, as a politician, can choose your targets to suit your cause. Noguera is right, but he's not right. His is the hotel demonisation argument, but the hoteliers are far from being the only devils in the battle for water.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Actions Of A Vindictive Government
You can cut a government so much slack. Or perhaps it's a case of giving it enough rope with which to hang itself. There will be no hanging or lynching, though. There are too many willing to give it all the slack it wants as retaliation for the Partido Popular. Which is understandable, until you begin to appreciate just what this government is up to. This assumes, however, that the government itself knows, because it is giving an excellent impression of not knowing. Instead it glosses its policies with vagueness. There's a new economic model rising. Is there? And what economy might be left to be modelled?
The tourist tax was one thing, but now we have a series of measures that have emerged from the most ominous sounding of the government's raft of legislative devices - the decree. It has decreed. The very term smacks of finality, albeit that parliament needs to apply a compliant rubber stamp. It also has a sense of taking no regard of any alternative interests. For a government whose motto contains the insistent dialogue, it seems to be short on conversation, except with itself. It is pulling a fast one.
The decree of "urgent measures" that the government has announced in suspending or quashing elements of three key bills introduced by the Bauzá administration - farming, land and tourism - has echoes of a similarly urgent decree that the previous PSOE-led government passed. It was one from 2008 which dealt with, among other things, building on land deemed to be wetland. From that decree came all manner of complications, most of which still exist. A major one is the Ses Fontanelles commercial centre development in Playa de Palma. The Bauzá regime was left with the consequence of the decree. If it were to deny construction, there was a massive compensation claim to be paid. There are other examples, such as in Puerto Pollensa. Somewhere along the line, these are issues which will have to be resolved, with the Ses Fontanelles development now seemingly an impossibility.
The 2008 decree created legal uncertainty. The current government is creating the same. It says that it is not, but its certainty can only ever be short-term. If there were to be a change in government in 2019 and a return of the right, then its decree will be overturned. This is tit-for-tat politics, something which Mallorca is highly adept at. The decree oozes vindictiveness directed at Carlos Delgado and Biel Company, the ministers responsible for the three laws in question. In the case of Company and his farming law, the government has succeeded in ostracising one of the very few business associations that operate in harmony with other parts of its industry. Asaja, the agricultural businesses association (of which Company was once president), has long worked from the same script as unions in seeking to improve opportunities.
Asaja has declined an invitation to form part of a committee which will have as one of its briefs the current serious problem of lack of water. It has done so because it objects to the government decree which puts a halt to development of farm land for purposes other than just farming. While it's true that the Company act may have favoured larger landowners, the thinking behind it was sound. There is a vast amount of land devoted to agriculture, and yet the primary sector is responsible for not much more than one per cent of GDP. The law wanted to improve productivity, to create new opportunities and jobs. The decree will do precisely the opposite.
Farming unions like the fact that the government will be dedicating some of the tourist tax to agroforestry in order to "modernise" it. But what does the government mean by this? It talks of modernisation in one regard and turns it back on it in another. Joined-up thinking? Hardly.
While the hoteliers are the usual suspects when it comes to opposing the government, the farming businesses and the builders have not been. Now they are. The builders are warning of a collapse of recovery because of restrictions the decree imposes on redevelopment and some new construction in the tourism sector. The two industries - tourism and construction - go hand in hand in Mallorca. Attack one, and you attack the other. For a government - any government for that matter - looking to boost employment, the decree makes little sense. Except that it does, if you are a vindictive government.
And an aspect of this restriction will limit the room for manoeuvre in transforming mature (obsolete) parts of the resorts. In this regard, the hoteliers are absolutely right in saying that the government lacks an overall strategy for tourism. It can wish to assign some of the tourist tax to resort infrastructure, but then puts a clamp on the means of doing this. Joined-up thinking? It most certainly is not.
The tourist tax was one thing, but now we have a series of measures that have emerged from the most ominous sounding of the government's raft of legislative devices - the decree. It has decreed. The very term smacks of finality, albeit that parliament needs to apply a compliant rubber stamp. It also has a sense of taking no regard of any alternative interests. For a government whose motto contains the insistent dialogue, it seems to be short on conversation, except with itself. It is pulling a fast one.
The decree of "urgent measures" that the government has announced in suspending or quashing elements of three key bills introduced by the Bauzá administration - farming, land and tourism - has echoes of a similarly urgent decree that the previous PSOE-led government passed. It was one from 2008 which dealt with, among other things, building on land deemed to be wetland. From that decree came all manner of complications, most of which still exist. A major one is the Ses Fontanelles commercial centre development in Playa de Palma. The Bauzá regime was left with the consequence of the decree. If it were to deny construction, there was a massive compensation claim to be paid. There are other examples, such as in Puerto Pollensa. Somewhere along the line, these are issues which will have to be resolved, with the Ses Fontanelles development now seemingly an impossibility.
The 2008 decree created legal uncertainty. The current government is creating the same. It says that it is not, but its certainty can only ever be short-term. If there were to be a change in government in 2019 and a return of the right, then its decree will be overturned. This is tit-for-tat politics, something which Mallorca is highly adept at. The decree oozes vindictiveness directed at Carlos Delgado and Biel Company, the ministers responsible for the three laws in question. In the case of Company and his farming law, the government has succeeded in ostracising one of the very few business associations that operate in harmony with other parts of its industry. Asaja, the agricultural businesses association (of which Company was once president), has long worked from the same script as unions in seeking to improve opportunities.
Asaja has declined an invitation to form part of a committee which will have as one of its briefs the current serious problem of lack of water. It has done so because it objects to the government decree which puts a halt to development of farm land for purposes other than just farming. While it's true that the Company act may have favoured larger landowners, the thinking behind it was sound. There is a vast amount of land devoted to agriculture, and yet the primary sector is responsible for not much more than one per cent of GDP. The law wanted to improve productivity, to create new opportunities and jobs. The decree will do precisely the opposite.
Farming unions like the fact that the government will be dedicating some of the tourist tax to agroforestry in order to "modernise" it. But what does the government mean by this? It talks of modernisation in one regard and turns it back on it in another. Joined-up thinking? Hardly.
While the hoteliers are the usual suspects when it comes to opposing the government, the farming businesses and the builders have not been. Now they are. The builders are warning of a collapse of recovery because of restrictions the decree imposes on redevelopment and some new construction in the tourism sector. The two industries - tourism and construction - go hand in hand in Mallorca. Attack one, and you attack the other. For a government - any government for that matter - looking to boost employment, the decree makes little sense. Except that it does, if you are a vindictive government.
And an aspect of this restriction will limit the room for manoeuvre in transforming mature (obsolete) parts of the resorts. In this regard, the hoteliers are absolutely right in saying that the government lacks an overall strategy for tourism. It can wish to assign some of the tourist tax to resort infrastructure, but then puts a clamp on the means of doing this. Joined-up thinking? It most certainly is not.
Saturday, October 31, 2015
A Tax Isn't For A Lifetime
As we stumble ever on, still not getting clarity from the government over the tourist tax, the voices of discontent grow louder. The meeting at the tourism ministry this week revealed just how great the opposition from business is: only one association - Aptur, the holiday apartments' association - lining up behind Pilar Carbonell, the tourism director-general. There is other business support, which was not represented at that meeting, but it is minimal.
This was the first occasion on which Carbonell went publicly head to head with Inma Benito of the hoteliers. Both of them charming, they are both also determined to stand their ground, and in Carbonell's case, it has been suggested that minister Barceló chose her for the position precisely because she would lock horns with the hoteliers and Benito. She had, after all, previously headed up the restaurants' association.
Benito was clever in making the link between the tax and the government's need for general revenues and in therefore asking that the tax be scrapped by 2019. If there is a current shortfall in revenue, then it should have been addressed by the time the government is heading for what it might hope will be re-election. It was also not unreasonable in suggesting that the tax does not have to be for all time in any event. It almost certainly won't be if the PP return in 2019, but if there is the current urgent need to balance the books, why not look upon the tax as something of an emergency measure with a finite lifetime?
One business sector that was represented was the shipping industry, and the cruise operators have been making it clear just how much they reject the tax. An urgent meeting with President Armengol has been called for, the director of the CLIA (Cruise Lines International Association) España warning that ships can quite easily find other ports to visit than those of the Balearics. Among the objections are the fact that the tax would be levied on all passengers, including those who don't come ashore. Then there are the logistics of its charging, which seemingly the ship operators would not be able to make to the "end customer", i.e. the passenger, implying that they would have to carry the burden for the tax. There again, a tax applies in Barcelona, and the volume of passengers there only keeps rising.
A further source of opposition is the Deutscher ReiseVerband (DRV), the German body that is roughly equivalent to ABTA. Its British counterpart has itself fired off a letter to the Balearic government regarding the tax, and the DRV has done likewise, while it has also sought to involve Madrid. The national government has told the DRV that it is totally opposed to the Balearic tax, not that this does a great deal of good in that Madrid can't prevent its introduction. The DRV president, Norbert Fiebig, is warning that Mallorca's status as the most popular destination for German holidaymakers is threatened by the tax, while he has also referred to its giving a "negative impression that not all guests are welcome any longer". This is something with firm echoes of the old eco-tax and the state of high dudgeon that the Germans sensed when it appeared that tourists - certain ones anyway - were not welcome in Mallorca.
Watching on from across the sea will be the government in Valencia. While another primary tourism region - the Canaries - has dismissed the idea of introducing a tourist tax, Valencia, meaning Benidorm and all, is considering one. Its notion of the tax is one firmly aimed at the environment. It would be "re-educative" rather than being a revenue generator, which is a fairly odd logic. "Simulations" of tax introduction are being made, according to the region's finance ministry, to see if the economic benefits of the tax would outweigh what is described as "inevitable political attrition within the tourism sector". What curious language they use sometimes.
Index for October 2015
Balearic finances - 15 October 2015
Balearic government one hundred days - 6 October 2015
Catalonia, Mallorca nationalism - 7 October 2015
Clocks back in Mallorca - 20 October 2015
Corruption and local police - 29 October 2015
Dancing politicians - 12 October 2015
Esporles sweets fair - 4 October 2015
Feudal tax in Mallorca - 1 October 2015
Holiday rental regulation - 3 October 2015
IB3 broadcaster and political interference - 8 October 2015
Inca - General Luque - 22 October 2015
Joana Camps' trips to Menorca - 13 October 2015
Llucmajor fairs - 18 October 2015
Magalluf and resort obsolescence - 21 October 2015
Mallorca season 2015 - 28 October 2015
Manacor town hall - no confidence - 23 October 2015
Palma's political intrigues - 27 October 2015
Partido Popular Balearics leadership - 5 October 2015
Podemos divisions - 26 October 2015
Self-service alcohol - 10 October 2015
Spain National Day - 14 October 2015
Skype and personal space - 9 October 2015
Swing music in Mallorca - 25 October 2015
Tourist tax - 17 October 2015, 19 October 2015, 24 October 2015, 30 October 2015, 31 October 2015
Walking on Words - 11 October 2015
What's On - 16 October 2015
Zombies in the Balearics - 2 October 2015
This was the first occasion on which Carbonell went publicly head to head with Inma Benito of the hoteliers. Both of them charming, they are both also determined to stand their ground, and in Carbonell's case, it has been suggested that minister Barceló chose her for the position precisely because she would lock horns with the hoteliers and Benito. She had, after all, previously headed up the restaurants' association.
Benito was clever in making the link between the tax and the government's need for general revenues and in therefore asking that the tax be scrapped by 2019. If there is a current shortfall in revenue, then it should have been addressed by the time the government is heading for what it might hope will be re-election. It was also not unreasonable in suggesting that the tax does not have to be for all time in any event. It almost certainly won't be if the PP return in 2019, but if there is the current urgent need to balance the books, why not look upon the tax as something of an emergency measure with a finite lifetime?
One business sector that was represented was the shipping industry, and the cruise operators have been making it clear just how much they reject the tax. An urgent meeting with President Armengol has been called for, the director of the CLIA (Cruise Lines International Association) España warning that ships can quite easily find other ports to visit than those of the Balearics. Among the objections are the fact that the tax would be levied on all passengers, including those who don't come ashore. Then there are the logistics of its charging, which seemingly the ship operators would not be able to make to the "end customer", i.e. the passenger, implying that they would have to carry the burden for the tax. There again, a tax applies in Barcelona, and the volume of passengers there only keeps rising.
A further source of opposition is the Deutscher ReiseVerband (DRV), the German body that is roughly equivalent to ABTA. Its British counterpart has itself fired off a letter to the Balearic government regarding the tax, and the DRV has done likewise, while it has also sought to involve Madrid. The national government has told the DRV that it is totally opposed to the Balearic tax, not that this does a great deal of good in that Madrid can't prevent its introduction. The DRV president, Norbert Fiebig, is warning that Mallorca's status as the most popular destination for German holidaymakers is threatened by the tax, while he has also referred to its giving a "negative impression that not all guests are welcome any longer". This is something with firm echoes of the old eco-tax and the state of high dudgeon that the Germans sensed when it appeared that tourists - certain ones anyway - were not welcome in Mallorca.
Watching on from across the sea will be the government in Valencia. While another primary tourism region - the Canaries - has dismissed the idea of introducing a tourist tax, Valencia, meaning Benidorm and all, is considering one. Its notion of the tax is one firmly aimed at the environment. It would be "re-educative" rather than being a revenue generator, which is a fairly odd logic. "Simulations" of tax introduction are being made, according to the region's finance ministry, to see if the economic benefits of the tax would outweigh what is described as "inevitable political attrition within the tourism sector". What curious language they use sometimes.
Index for October 2015
Balearic finances - 15 October 2015
Balearic government one hundred days - 6 October 2015
Catalonia, Mallorca nationalism - 7 October 2015
Clocks back in Mallorca - 20 October 2015
Corruption and local police - 29 October 2015
Dancing politicians - 12 October 2015
Esporles sweets fair - 4 October 2015
Feudal tax in Mallorca - 1 October 2015
Holiday rental regulation - 3 October 2015
IB3 broadcaster and political interference - 8 October 2015
Inca - General Luque - 22 October 2015
Joana Camps' trips to Menorca - 13 October 2015
Llucmajor fairs - 18 October 2015
Magalluf and resort obsolescence - 21 October 2015
Mallorca season 2015 - 28 October 2015
Manacor town hall - no confidence - 23 October 2015
Palma's political intrigues - 27 October 2015
Partido Popular Balearics leadership - 5 October 2015
Podemos divisions - 26 October 2015
Self-service alcohol - 10 October 2015
Spain National Day - 14 October 2015
Skype and personal space - 9 October 2015
Swing music in Mallorca - 25 October 2015
Tourist tax - 17 October 2015, 19 October 2015, 24 October 2015, 30 October 2015, 31 October 2015
Walking on Words - 11 October 2015
What's On - 16 October 2015
Zombies in the Balearics - 2 October 2015
Friday, September 04, 2015
The Sophistication Of Malice: Online reviews
Once upon a time, in the days of Jack Warner and a clip round the earhole, it was probably the case that, if a British seaside hotel had an issue with a particular guest, then the local bobby would be despatched to calm matters down. "Have we had a few drinks, sir?" But in those days of yore, it was also probable that the badly behaved guest was thin on the ground. Having a few too many drinks was normally resolved by sleeping it off, possibly with the advice of the local bobby, while there were few other reasons for conflict with the hotel. Service? Quality? Neither of them existed in ways that they now do. Guest sophistication was low. Guest demands were low. A good bed, a decent bathroom, a reasonable beef lunch on a Sunday, and the guest was usually more than happy.
Maybe it can all be pinpointed to a time when pop and rock groups of the 1960s began trashing hotel rooms and attracted the publicity and notoriety that went with the television set in several pieces on the street below. But then, there are all sorts of behavioural examples that can be factored into the equation. Drinking went from being a social activity to being a national pastime to be indulged in as often and as intensely as possible. Going on holiday was no longer reserved for the family and, more often than not, one from specific socioeconomic groups. Society shifted its moral axes in all manner of ways. Guests ceased to be guests and became customers or clients, and it was this marketing realisation which heralded the new age, one that the internet was to compound, develop and to unleash. Sophistication, demand had arrived. And so also had customer power, be it well behaved or otherwise.
Going on holiday, rather like most of contemporary living, is a technological phenomenon. No one goes anywhere, moves, sits still without the aid of the world powers that are Google, Facebook and Trip Advisor, three businesses which have engrained themselves so deeply into the consciousness that they are no longer tools but things - ways of life. There are other search engines, other forms of social media, but this trinity is dominant, and from such power comes all sorts of risk.
The tyranny of Trip Advisor has been well enough chronicled, as have legal moves against it. It inveigles its way into the consciousness in a variety of ways, such as with the often crass "best ofs" which can appear to bear little relationship with reality. But these lists are the consequence of the rest of its existence. Fundamentally, it is an automated operation, driven by the user. Greater controls will never be applied. Yes, there is the right of reply, but the damage can already be done.
Trip Advisor isn't totally at fault. There are hotels, some of them Mallorcan, which fully deserve and justify the excoriation they receive. Likewise, there are bars or restaurants which only have themselves to blame. But amidst this criticism (and also the praise, it must be noted), there is the blackmail game. Everyone knows it exists, because it is so transparent. The compensation seeker, the payment avoider, the simply obnoxious, they all issue the threat of a bad review.
Hotels and tour operators, though they may not so say publicly, have blacklists, and hotels now also tools with which they can fight back. Guestscan started in the UK four years ago. As its website says it was created to safeguard hotels and other businesses from "nightmare" guests. Troublemakers can be identified for their misdemeanours, and these troublemakers can very often be the ones who engage in the blackmail game or who take to Trip Advisor and post a condemnatory review because the hotel has had the temerity to give them a rollicking or even booted them out because of their poor behaviour.
In Spain, there is a similar system. It's called EliteBook. It was created through a hotelier necessity to protect against - as the website says - theft, vandalism, excessive or destructive criticism through media on the internet, and blackmail. Subscribers to the service can see who the miscreants are. Information is shared and reputation is, hopefully therefore, maintained.
Reputation has become the theme of contemporary tourism, and it has been made so by the likes of Trip Advisor. There is an upside and a downside to the reviews' system, and the smart business responds effectively to criticism as well as to praise or uses an online reputation management service.
The technological realities of holidaying are a fact of life. They aren't going to go away. And nor are bad behaviour and the malicious reviewer. EliteBook and Guestscan offer ways of fighting back, but even they must know that a blacklisted "customer" can always reply with another malicious review. Sometimes you have to wonder if too much sophistication is a bad thing.
Maybe it can all be pinpointed to a time when pop and rock groups of the 1960s began trashing hotel rooms and attracted the publicity and notoriety that went with the television set in several pieces on the street below. But then, there are all sorts of behavioural examples that can be factored into the equation. Drinking went from being a social activity to being a national pastime to be indulged in as often and as intensely as possible. Going on holiday was no longer reserved for the family and, more often than not, one from specific socioeconomic groups. Society shifted its moral axes in all manner of ways. Guests ceased to be guests and became customers or clients, and it was this marketing realisation which heralded the new age, one that the internet was to compound, develop and to unleash. Sophistication, demand had arrived. And so also had customer power, be it well behaved or otherwise.
Going on holiday, rather like most of contemporary living, is a technological phenomenon. No one goes anywhere, moves, sits still without the aid of the world powers that are Google, Facebook and Trip Advisor, three businesses which have engrained themselves so deeply into the consciousness that they are no longer tools but things - ways of life. There are other search engines, other forms of social media, but this trinity is dominant, and from such power comes all sorts of risk.
The tyranny of Trip Advisor has been well enough chronicled, as have legal moves against it. It inveigles its way into the consciousness in a variety of ways, such as with the often crass "best ofs" which can appear to bear little relationship with reality. But these lists are the consequence of the rest of its existence. Fundamentally, it is an automated operation, driven by the user. Greater controls will never be applied. Yes, there is the right of reply, but the damage can already be done.
Trip Advisor isn't totally at fault. There are hotels, some of them Mallorcan, which fully deserve and justify the excoriation they receive. Likewise, there are bars or restaurants which only have themselves to blame. But amidst this criticism (and also the praise, it must be noted), there is the blackmail game. Everyone knows it exists, because it is so transparent. The compensation seeker, the payment avoider, the simply obnoxious, they all issue the threat of a bad review.
Hotels and tour operators, though they may not so say publicly, have blacklists, and hotels now also tools with which they can fight back. Guestscan started in the UK four years ago. As its website says it was created to safeguard hotels and other businesses from "nightmare" guests. Troublemakers can be identified for their misdemeanours, and these troublemakers can very often be the ones who engage in the blackmail game or who take to Trip Advisor and post a condemnatory review because the hotel has had the temerity to give them a rollicking or even booted them out because of their poor behaviour.
In Spain, there is a similar system. It's called EliteBook. It was created through a hotelier necessity to protect against - as the website says - theft, vandalism, excessive or destructive criticism through media on the internet, and blackmail. Subscribers to the service can see who the miscreants are. Information is shared and reputation is, hopefully therefore, maintained.
Reputation has become the theme of contemporary tourism, and it has been made so by the likes of Trip Advisor. There is an upside and a downside to the reviews' system, and the smart business responds effectively to criticism as well as to praise or uses an online reputation management service.
The technological realities of holidaying are a fact of life. They aren't going to go away. And nor are bad behaviour and the malicious reviewer. EliteBook and Guestscan offer ways of fighting back, but even they must know that a blacklisted "customer" can always reply with another malicious review. Sometimes you have to wonder if too much sophistication is a bad thing.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
The Rush To Legalise
If a week is a long time in politics, in the politics of tourism it can seem like an eternity. The negotiations regarding the formation of the next government in the Balearics drag on and on, maintaining the period of uncertainty for the island's immediate (and perhaps longer) tourism future and leaving up in the air issues to do with possible policy and current projects - anything from all-inclusives, tourist tax, legalisation of hotel places and investment to the Palacio de Congresos convention centre.
There is an admission that there are "thorny" topics that the negotiations have had to contend with. One of them is the eco-tax. Though PSOE had said in their manifesto that they would consider this, they would do so only in the context of general financing arrangements for the Balearics. If these are to alter, they won't do until after the general election. PSOE, aware of the hash that was made with the old eco-tax, would really rather not go there again unless they are forced to.
One of the issues that has received considerably less attention than others has been that of the legalisation of hotel places. You may or may not be surprised to learn that there are such things as illegal hotel places, rooms or entire floors that were created without the requisite permission having been obtained. These illegal places have been proving to be a useful little earner for the regional government: making them legal demands payment, and the funds raised have gone into the tourism ministry's special fund for use on resorts' infrastructures. Applications to legalise places have been proceeding calmly for several years. All of a sudden, however, there has been an avalanche of requests. There were almost as many in May alone as there were for 2013 and 2014 combined. The reason for this flurry of activity is obvious: hoteliers fear what a new government might do in preventing legalisation and indeed what the ultimate sanctions might be.
The hoteliers have also feverishly been putting in place what they can for projects to expand hotels. They are reckoning on restrictions being introduced but are also bargaining on the fact that any new legislation would take a few months to enact.
As yet, there is no way of knowing precisely what a regime of the left would do with regard to all-inclusives and holiday lets. On the latter, a more permissive regulatory regime would be highly likely, and APTUR, the Balearic association for holiday apartments and accommodation, has worked out that some 15,000 apartments would be legalised under changes that a pact of the left would introduce. As for all-inclusives, does one detect an attempt to pre-empt any moves on behalf of the tourism ministry, from which the minister and others will soon be departing once new government jobs have been divvied up?
The ministry has issued some stats about all-inclusives, and quite frankly they appear to be a complete work of fiction. According to the ministry, the past three years have witnessed a change in strategy on behalf of hotels, i.e. abandoning all-inclusive. So much so that all-inclusive equates to only 12% of the entire hotel stock.
First thing to ask about this is, has the ministry, therefore, received all the information about all-inclusives that it said it was going to under a registration plan announced only a few weeks ago? Seems unlikely. Second thing to say is that this registration was supposedly coming in because there hadn't previously been one. In which case, how can the ministry state with any accuracy that the last time it counted - in 2010 - all-inclusive amounted to 18% of hotel stock?
Thirdly, and rather more importantly, the ministry says that the 18% in 2010 was made up of 165 establishments in Mallorca which offered all-inclusive - a total of 81,078 hotel places. That would mean that there were in all 450,000 hotel places in Mallorca. There weren't and there still aren't: the figure is around 290,000: 30% all-inclusive is the number which has generally been quoted over the past few years
Even this number is hard to believe, and it certainly doesn't apply to specific resorts. There may indeed be some decline in the level of all-inclusive because hotels are realising they can make more money by not offering AI, but the ministry's figures are not to be believed. If the intention had been to try and make the "problem" of AI seem less great than it is, it hasn't worked.
There is an admission that there are "thorny" topics that the negotiations have had to contend with. One of them is the eco-tax. Though PSOE had said in their manifesto that they would consider this, they would do so only in the context of general financing arrangements for the Balearics. If these are to alter, they won't do until after the general election. PSOE, aware of the hash that was made with the old eco-tax, would really rather not go there again unless they are forced to.
One of the issues that has received considerably less attention than others has been that of the legalisation of hotel places. You may or may not be surprised to learn that there are such things as illegal hotel places, rooms or entire floors that were created without the requisite permission having been obtained. These illegal places have been proving to be a useful little earner for the regional government: making them legal demands payment, and the funds raised have gone into the tourism ministry's special fund for use on resorts' infrastructures. Applications to legalise places have been proceeding calmly for several years. All of a sudden, however, there has been an avalanche of requests. There were almost as many in May alone as there were for 2013 and 2014 combined. The reason for this flurry of activity is obvious: hoteliers fear what a new government might do in preventing legalisation and indeed what the ultimate sanctions might be.
The hoteliers have also feverishly been putting in place what they can for projects to expand hotels. They are reckoning on restrictions being introduced but are also bargaining on the fact that any new legislation would take a few months to enact.
As yet, there is no way of knowing precisely what a regime of the left would do with regard to all-inclusives and holiday lets. On the latter, a more permissive regulatory regime would be highly likely, and APTUR, the Balearic association for holiday apartments and accommodation, has worked out that some 15,000 apartments would be legalised under changes that a pact of the left would introduce. As for all-inclusives, does one detect an attempt to pre-empt any moves on behalf of the tourism ministry, from which the minister and others will soon be departing once new government jobs have been divvied up?
The ministry has issued some stats about all-inclusives, and quite frankly they appear to be a complete work of fiction. According to the ministry, the past three years have witnessed a change in strategy on behalf of hotels, i.e. abandoning all-inclusive. So much so that all-inclusive equates to only 12% of the entire hotel stock.
First thing to ask about this is, has the ministry, therefore, received all the information about all-inclusives that it said it was going to under a registration plan announced only a few weeks ago? Seems unlikely. Second thing to say is that this registration was supposedly coming in because there hadn't previously been one. In which case, how can the ministry state with any accuracy that the last time it counted - in 2010 - all-inclusive amounted to 18% of hotel stock?
Thirdly, and rather more importantly, the ministry says that the 18% in 2010 was made up of 165 establishments in Mallorca which offered all-inclusive - a total of 81,078 hotel places. That would mean that there were in all 450,000 hotel places in Mallorca. There weren't and there still aren't: the figure is around 290,000: 30% all-inclusive is the number which has generally been quoted over the past few years
Even this number is hard to believe, and it certainly doesn't apply to specific resorts. There may indeed be some decline in the level of all-inclusive because hotels are realising they can make more money by not offering AI, but the ministry's figures are not to be believed. If the intention had been to try and make the "problem" of AI seem less great than it is, it hasn't worked.
Friday, May 22, 2015
Tackling Seasonality
Unsurprisingly, there has been a fair amount of politics dominating the tourism scene over the past few days, but it hasn't all been local politics. Consultants Grant Thornton have issued a report which has found that businesses in Spain are, after those in Ireland, the most concerned about the possibility that the UK might exit the European Union. The concern stems largely from the fact that of the 65 million tourists who come to Spain, 15 million of them are from the UK. It's not clear why the UK being in or out of the EU should make any real difference to tourism, but the uncertainty that an exit might provoke is probably at the heart of these concerns and, as ever, business does not like uncertainty.
Back here in Mallorca, the politics of a possible eco-tax was high on the agenda of a meeting of representatives of the hotel industry in Palma. It would be "detrimental" and especially to ambitions to tackle Mallorca's seasonality. This observation came from Bernat Vicens of Fergus Hotels who also had things to say about hoteliers' abilities to adapt what they have to offer to an out-of-season tourist client: he appeared to be unconvinced that they possessed such abilities or the self-analysis that might bring about some adaptation. Fergus is following in the footsteps of Cursach in seeking to introduce a different and better class of younger tourism to Magalluf, and Vicens, while admitting that Magalluf has its hooligan element, argued that the resort was not dangerous and that it had a bright future, thanks to investments like those by Fergus and Meliá. Meanwhile, there were reports from Magalluf about how bars are trying to attract more business by making happy hour offers of drink as much as you like for only five euros. The bars might be criticised for doing so, but then they are, after all, in competition with all-inclusives.
Others at the Palma meeting stressed the need for there to be greater imagination in hotel marketing in order to attract a winter tourist to Mallorca, while the leadership of Palma as an all-year destination was seen as a model through which it could spread winter tourism elsewhere, though the elsewhere was only as far as Playa de Palma and Calvia: at least it might be a spread though. The Palacio de Congresos was cited as an example of how off-season tourism could be increased, but the Palacio, yet again, was in the news for all the wrong reasons. Because of the need to revalue the hotel, the adjudication of the complex's management in favour of Barceló will now have to be revisited once a new administration is in situ at Palma City Council, but the whole future for the Palacio was once more brought into question by the Més spokesperson at the council who suggested that there should be a feasibility study, one which might lead to the Palacio's demolition. It seems extraordinary that there would even be mention of feasibility at this stage of the Palacio's development, but then such has been the less than ordinary history of the complex.
While there was uncertainty surrounding the Palacio, the International Congress and Convention Association was issuing its annual report into conference destinations. Spain remains third in terms of the total number of meetings behind the US and Germany, with Madrid and Barcelona in, respectively, third and fifth positions when it comes to cities. What is noticeable about this listing is that all the top-twenty cities are those which are served by significant levels of direct air traffic: Palma is in no position to compete in this regard.
Back here in Mallorca, the politics of a possible eco-tax was high on the agenda of a meeting of representatives of the hotel industry in Palma. It would be "detrimental" and especially to ambitions to tackle Mallorca's seasonality. This observation came from Bernat Vicens of Fergus Hotels who also had things to say about hoteliers' abilities to adapt what they have to offer to an out-of-season tourist client: he appeared to be unconvinced that they possessed such abilities or the self-analysis that might bring about some adaptation. Fergus is following in the footsteps of Cursach in seeking to introduce a different and better class of younger tourism to Magalluf, and Vicens, while admitting that Magalluf has its hooligan element, argued that the resort was not dangerous and that it had a bright future, thanks to investments like those by Fergus and Meliá. Meanwhile, there were reports from Magalluf about how bars are trying to attract more business by making happy hour offers of drink as much as you like for only five euros. The bars might be criticised for doing so, but then they are, after all, in competition with all-inclusives.
Others at the Palma meeting stressed the need for there to be greater imagination in hotel marketing in order to attract a winter tourist to Mallorca, while the leadership of Palma as an all-year destination was seen as a model through which it could spread winter tourism elsewhere, though the elsewhere was only as far as Playa de Palma and Calvia: at least it might be a spread though. The Palacio de Congresos was cited as an example of how off-season tourism could be increased, but the Palacio, yet again, was in the news for all the wrong reasons. Because of the need to revalue the hotel, the adjudication of the complex's management in favour of Barceló will now have to be revisited once a new administration is in situ at Palma City Council, but the whole future for the Palacio was once more brought into question by the Més spokesperson at the council who suggested that there should be a feasibility study, one which might lead to the Palacio's demolition. It seems extraordinary that there would even be mention of feasibility at this stage of the Palacio's development, but then such has been the less than ordinary history of the complex.
While there was uncertainty surrounding the Palacio, the International Congress and Convention Association was issuing its annual report into conference destinations. Spain remains third in terms of the total number of meetings behind the US and Germany, with Madrid and Barcelona in, respectively, third and fifth positions when it comes to cities. What is noticeable about this listing is that all the top-twenty cities are those which are served by significant levels of direct air traffic: Palma is in no position to compete in this regard.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
The Worst Hotels In Mallorca
Trip Advisor, bless it, offers a useful means of filling newspaper columns. Short of some copy? Why not use some Trip Advisor Travellers' Choice best-of info? The local media loves this stuff, even if the result of the choice is relatively unremarkable, such as being ranked seventh. I mean, why would you bother mentioning being seventh? Little is the kudos to he had, even if Mallorca can revel in the glory of being the seventh top island in Europe (Santorini is number one).
While Trip Advisor floods media inboxes and news feeds with its top-of-whatever lists, it doesn't make a habit of considering the other side of the travelling choice coin: the lowest of. Such rankings might, I would suggest, be of rather greater interest than the top ones. Rather than the best, which are the worst?
Ever one to undertake a more arduous task than merely regurgitating something from a press release, I have given Trip Advisor a bit of a hand. Want to know the worst hotels in Mallorca? Well, they're coming up right here. Sort of.
I was inspired to delve into the depths of Trip Advisor rankings by a correspondent who informed me that a particular hotel was a "health hazard", where "staff physically and verbally abuse tourists", where robberies are "commonplace" and where the unofficial all-inclusive offer allows guests to drink as much local vodka as they like at a rate of six euros an hour. Pretty good, eh?
With the proviso that, in order to get a good sample, a hotel had to have more than 100 reviews, I set to work. In fact, it wasn't that arduous. There may be over 1,000 Mallorcan hotels reviewed on Trip Advisor but its rankings system very conveniently puts those with no or few reviews at the end together with the lousy hotels. Click on the places with over a century of reviews, home in on the number of terribles, calculate the percentage and, bingo, you've got the worst. It took far less time than I had imagined.
There is, therefore, a worst top five. My apologies for any hotels that I may have overlooked, but fifth worst is ... . Er, should I actually name and shame? Should diplomacy get the better of me? Perhaps it should. So, being circumspect, I can reveal that the fifth worst is in S'Illot with a 26% terrible rating. "Avoid at all costs," remarked a reviewer. Fourth worst, well, this one's in Alcúdia: 26.2% terrible with "arrogant, ignorant and rude staff". In at number three, we're back in S'Illot, 33% terrible: "we left after two days and paid to fly home". In the runners-up slot, it's Cala Ratjada. 33.8% terrible, and proving that the Germans can be as critical as the Brits, "einfach widerlich" (simply disgusting). And at number one? Yes, it's my correspondent's hotel. Congratulations go to Santa Ponsa. 35% terrible: "if I could, I wouldn't even give this place a one star".
None of this is of course scientific, and one man's hellhole can just as easily be another's little piece of heaven (even our winner manages a 10.3% excellent rating). Moreover, there will be some reviewers who are trying it on: it's the Trip Advisor blackmail game. But when there is a critical mass of rubbish reviews, these have to amount to some proof of poor quality and standards. and it is this - quality - which is a key theme for the island's tourism industry. It needs to be upped. Urgently. And the regional government is demanding that it is.
Overall, the impression from Trip Advisor is that low standards of quality are confined to relatively few hotels, but the few can drag down the reputation of the many. So, what, if anything, can be done?
Certain hotel chains - Meliá is an example - now use reviews as a basis for senior management performance pay. But Meliá is the exception and not the rule. If hotels
won't themselves take action, what about the government? The tourism ministry should be monitoring reviews' sites. It should take note of the poor hotels. It should send in inspectors. It should have powers to apply sanctions, the ultimate one being closure.
Would the government do this? It's doubtful. There aren't enough inspectors, while these are hotels and not easier targets for inspectors, such as bars. As I have previously noted, it is inspection which is likely to be a reason why the new tourism law will not live up to its content. Take the unofficial all-inclusive offers as an example. Will they be registered, as hotels are now required to register any all-inclusive element? And if they're not, who is going to check?
Opinions on reviews' sites cannot be taken as being definitive, but when the level of poor reviews and ratings is as it is with some hotels, they should prompt action. Does Mallorca want quality or not?
While Trip Advisor floods media inboxes and news feeds with its top-of-whatever lists, it doesn't make a habit of considering the other side of the travelling choice coin: the lowest of. Such rankings might, I would suggest, be of rather greater interest than the top ones. Rather than the best, which are the worst?
Ever one to undertake a more arduous task than merely regurgitating something from a press release, I have given Trip Advisor a bit of a hand. Want to know the worst hotels in Mallorca? Well, they're coming up right here. Sort of.
I was inspired to delve into the depths of Trip Advisor rankings by a correspondent who informed me that a particular hotel was a "health hazard", where "staff physically and verbally abuse tourists", where robberies are "commonplace" and where the unofficial all-inclusive offer allows guests to drink as much local vodka as they like at a rate of six euros an hour. Pretty good, eh?
With the proviso that, in order to get a good sample, a hotel had to have more than 100 reviews, I set to work. In fact, it wasn't that arduous. There may be over 1,000 Mallorcan hotels reviewed on Trip Advisor but its rankings system very conveniently puts those with no or few reviews at the end together with the lousy hotels. Click on the places with over a century of reviews, home in on the number of terribles, calculate the percentage and, bingo, you've got the worst. It took far less time than I had imagined.
There is, therefore, a worst top five. My apologies for any hotels that I may have overlooked, but fifth worst is ... . Er, should I actually name and shame? Should diplomacy get the better of me? Perhaps it should. So, being circumspect, I can reveal that the fifth worst is in S'Illot with a 26% terrible rating. "Avoid at all costs," remarked a reviewer. Fourth worst, well, this one's in Alcúdia: 26.2% terrible with "arrogant, ignorant and rude staff". In at number three, we're back in S'Illot, 33% terrible: "we left after two days and paid to fly home". In the runners-up slot, it's Cala Ratjada. 33.8% terrible, and proving that the Germans can be as critical as the Brits, "einfach widerlich" (simply disgusting). And at number one? Yes, it's my correspondent's hotel. Congratulations go to Santa Ponsa. 35% terrible: "if I could, I wouldn't even give this place a one star".
None of this is of course scientific, and one man's hellhole can just as easily be another's little piece of heaven (even our winner manages a 10.3% excellent rating). Moreover, there will be some reviewers who are trying it on: it's the Trip Advisor blackmail game. But when there is a critical mass of rubbish reviews, these have to amount to some proof of poor quality and standards. and it is this - quality - which is a key theme for the island's tourism industry. It needs to be upped. Urgently. And the regional government is demanding that it is.
Overall, the impression from Trip Advisor is that low standards of quality are confined to relatively few hotels, but the few can drag down the reputation of the many. So, what, if anything, can be done?
Certain hotel chains - Meliá is an example - now use reviews as a basis for senior management performance pay. But Meliá is the exception and not the rule. If hotels
won't themselves take action, what about the government? The tourism ministry should be monitoring reviews' sites. It should take note of the poor hotels. It should send in inspectors. It should have powers to apply sanctions, the ultimate one being closure.
Would the government do this? It's doubtful. There aren't enough inspectors, while these are hotels and not easier targets for inspectors, such as bars. As I have previously noted, it is inspection which is likely to be a reason why the new tourism law will not live up to its content. Take the unofficial all-inclusive offers as an example. Will they be registered, as hotels are now required to register any all-inclusive element? And if they're not, who is going to check?
Opinions on reviews' sites cannot be taken as being definitive, but when the level of poor reviews and ratings is as it is with some hotels, they should prompt action. Does Mallorca want quality or not?
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Lousy Review, Less Pay
Once upon a time, employees would be assessed only by their managers. This was the traditional performance appraisal, an often worthless exercise if, as happened to me on one occasion, it was conducted over a lunch at which the boss, a couple of pre-lunch G&Ts on board followed by a whole bottle of wine to himself, forgot why we were having lunch.
Other systems of appraisal were introduced. There was the upward feedback. Staff could assess the manager, a process which had inherent risks. If Employee A didn't like Manager B, then Manager B could well get a bum assessment. But the purveyors of appraisal systems would insist that these systems would filter out such subjectivity without ever truly convincing everyone that they did, and this was also the case when so-called 360-degree feedback became popular. Anyone could have his or her say. Customers, suppliers, colleagues: they could all have a pop.
These systems weren't of course a free-for-all. Bias was ironed out as much as possible. They wouldn't have been effective or have become as widespread as they did had they just been means of expressing dislike. But they were something of a culture shock for employees or managers who were to discover that there were a number of "stakeholders" whose assessment of performance fell some way short of how the employee or manager would have assessed his or her own performance.
These broader systems of appraisal were all part of a wider culture shock, that of changes to organisations' culture and their ways of doing things. By subjecting personnel to closer scrutiny by these different stakeholders, performance would improve and do so in line with new cultures that were more open to the needs of customers and others.
Into this appraisal mix came technology, and now there is the technology of social media. Customers can have their say like never before, and certain businesses are embracing this customer voice in their assessment of individuals' performance. Comments on Trip Advisor and similar websites are now being used to determine just how much people get paid.
Since the explosion of social media and review and comments' sites in particular, a whole industry of online reputation management has grown up. ReviewPro is one of the leading examples of this monitoring, and its Spanish division works with a whole host of hotel chains. Look at its clients and very familiar names appear: Meliá, Iberostar, Viva and so on.
Meliá is said to be one of the pioneers of using customer comments as part of a quality system through which performance can be measured and remuneration adjusted. Variable pay is partially determined on the basis of these comments; variable pay meaning performance pay, i.e. meeting and exceeding personal and company performance targets. At Meliá, this pay can apparently equate to as much as 20% of overall remuneration, so there is a strong incentive for management to ensure that customer satisfaction is high and also to respond in a thoughtful fashion to any negative comments.
The underlying philosophy is or should be obvious. Customers are at the heart of everything Meliá does, as is the case with any hotel chain. But how well this philosophy is understood by other chains or within Mallorca's tourism industry as a whole is open to some debate. Even among the clients that ReviewPro has, there are individual hotels which are part of certain chains that receive numerous negative comments and little or no response from management.
From surveys that Trip Advisor has done, it has been shown that responding to comments, both negative and positive, is as powerful as the comment itself. Yet, too often there are no responses and when there are they are standard ones issued not by, say, the hotel's director but by someone with a vague public relations job title.
As with any system of appraisal, using online comments is probably not foolproof. There is greater scope through social media for biased or malicious assessments than there ever was with more traditional appraisal methods. There is also the potential, once it becomes widely known that pay is directly being influenced, for online blackmail, something which does already occur. But then this is something for devisers of systems to take account of.
In principle, using customer comments is a very good tool for chains to not just monitor management and hotel performance but also to improve it as part of ongoing quality management systems. It should, therefore, be far more widely adopted by the Mallorcan tourism industry which, despite criticisms of standards, is using other methods to improve quality, the SICTED system of quality being one of them.
But there are limits to how useful such a tool is. Many negative comments stem not from poor management at specific hotels but from a lack of investment by chains which leave hotels open to such negativity.
Other systems of appraisal were introduced. There was the upward feedback. Staff could assess the manager, a process which had inherent risks. If Employee A didn't like Manager B, then Manager B could well get a bum assessment. But the purveyors of appraisal systems would insist that these systems would filter out such subjectivity without ever truly convincing everyone that they did, and this was also the case when so-called 360-degree feedback became popular. Anyone could have his or her say. Customers, suppliers, colleagues: they could all have a pop.
These systems weren't of course a free-for-all. Bias was ironed out as much as possible. They wouldn't have been effective or have become as widespread as they did had they just been means of expressing dislike. But they were something of a culture shock for employees or managers who were to discover that there were a number of "stakeholders" whose assessment of performance fell some way short of how the employee or manager would have assessed his or her own performance.
These broader systems of appraisal were all part of a wider culture shock, that of changes to organisations' culture and their ways of doing things. By subjecting personnel to closer scrutiny by these different stakeholders, performance would improve and do so in line with new cultures that were more open to the needs of customers and others.
Into this appraisal mix came technology, and now there is the technology of social media. Customers can have their say like never before, and certain businesses are embracing this customer voice in their assessment of individuals' performance. Comments on Trip Advisor and similar websites are now being used to determine just how much people get paid.
Since the explosion of social media and review and comments' sites in particular, a whole industry of online reputation management has grown up. ReviewPro is one of the leading examples of this monitoring, and its Spanish division works with a whole host of hotel chains. Look at its clients and very familiar names appear: Meliá, Iberostar, Viva and so on.
Meliá is said to be one of the pioneers of using customer comments as part of a quality system through which performance can be measured and remuneration adjusted. Variable pay is partially determined on the basis of these comments; variable pay meaning performance pay, i.e. meeting and exceeding personal and company performance targets. At Meliá, this pay can apparently equate to as much as 20% of overall remuneration, so there is a strong incentive for management to ensure that customer satisfaction is high and also to respond in a thoughtful fashion to any negative comments.
The underlying philosophy is or should be obvious. Customers are at the heart of everything Meliá does, as is the case with any hotel chain. But how well this philosophy is understood by other chains or within Mallorca's tourism industry as a whole is open to some debate. Even among the clients that ReviewPro has, there are individual hotels which are part of certain chains that receive numerous negative comments and little or no response from management.
From surveys that Trip Advisor has done, it has been shown that responding to comments, both negative and positive, is as powerful as the comment itself. Yet, too often there are no responses and when there are they are standard ones issued not by, say, the hotel's director but by someone with a vague public relations job title.
As with any system of appraisal, using online comments is probably not foolproof. There is greater scope through social media for biased or malicious assessments than there ever was with more traditional appraisal methods. There is also the potential, once it becomes widely known that pay is directly being influenced, for online blackmail, something which does already occur. But then this is something for devisers of systems to take account of.
In principle, using customer comments is a very good tool for chains to not just monitor management and hotel performance but also to improve it as part of ongoing quality management systems. It should, therefore, be far more widely adopted by the Mallorcan tourism industry which, despite criticisms of standards, is using other methods to improve quality, the SICTED system of quality being one of them.
But there are limits to how useful such a tool is. Many negative comments stem not from poor management at specific hotels but from a lack of investment by chains which leave hotels open to such negativity.
Friday, March 20, 2015
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 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.
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