Mallorca and the Balearics are an economic curiosity. Even compared to the principal tourism competitors in Spain - the Canaries, Andalusia, Valencia and Catalonia - this curiosity is at its most extreme. Nowhere else in Spain has the same weighting in favour of the tourism economy in GDP figures.
The dominance of this economy breeds its own curiosities. Just one of these is the high profile given to the manufacturers of this economy. Where economies and societies are more diverse, and so therefore more balanced, this profile is lessened. The words, thoughts and deeds of industrialists, financiers and others are reported, but they do not have the same power. The manufacturers of the Mallorcan economy speak as if they are the scribes of tablets of stone. They don't tend to utter commandments, but their words are spoken with an intention that they are not ignored. They don't command the economy as such, but they hold it within their hands to be able to do so.
This command does, however, undergo phases when it is diluted. Mallorca has experienced such a phase in recent years. Just as the Mallorcan economy would really be better served by not having the 40%-plus direct GDP reliance it has on tourism, so these economic manufacturers don't wish to have a reliance that creeps over the 40% level.
Thomas Cook is one of these manufacturers: one of the most powerful. In 2017, its sales for Spain as a whole have been 42%. Mallorca, despite what was said by tour operators before and and at times during the last season about prices, has been at the heart of this 42%. Thomas Cook was one of those tour operators. It spoke darkly about the upping of prices, as though there were a veiled threat.
The ideal, where Thomas Cook is concerned, would be to have around 30% of its sales in the Spanish market; historically this has been the sort of ballpark. This means a better distribution and a better balance. It also means that it is not being held over a barrel in quite the same way, because that was what happened as a result of the major increase in demand for Mallorca and Spain, which was the consequence of instability elsewhere.
Representatives of Thomas Cook, Tui and other tour operators as well as leading hoteliers are frequently quoted in the local media. They hold a position almost on a a par with politicians. They are a reflection of the curious Balearic economy, one that they manufactured. They demand to be quoted, they demand to be listened to. And they are; in a way that they wouldn't be elsewhere. Mallorca is the perfect publicity patch for the tourism economy's manufacturers, and this publicity spreads beyond the island's waters.
When the tour operators were moaning about increased prices, what were they really after? Well, lower prices perhaps, but by drawing the attention they did to prices, there would have been an underlying hope that they could effect a shift in demand. More stable politics in other destinations are granting them this wish, but they were nonetheless seeking a return to the greater balance that previously existed. When sales were at a balanced 30%, the hoteliers were not holding them over a barrel.
But although they were wanting to reduce this dependence, at the same time they couldn't afford to distance themselves. Consequently, having complained about prices and having dropped the hints about reviving destinations (hints now turning into fact), they then started to praise. Mallorca's hoteliers, Spain's hoteliers have really made an effort. They have invested well and wisely. They can justify their prices.
For all the talk about rival destinations, tour operators know as well as anyone that they can't live without Mallorca and Spain. Those other destinations don't have the kind of capacity and infrastructure. There will also be ongoing holidaymaker wariness. Not about Bulgaria, Croatia or Greece, but about those countries where things could suddenly get nasty again. Three hundred or so slain in Egypt is a reminder.
In 2018, the expectation, the hope for Thomas Cook is that sales in Spain will move back towards that more acceptable 30%. The prices are, nevertheless, still going up, and don't holidaymakers just know it, as the tour operators reflect these in their own margin calculations. But in 2019, so it is said, this situation will change. The prices are not sustainable in the face of renewed competition.
We will see. And we will also hear. It is extraordinary but it is not so extraordinary that there can be the kind of almost weekly feed of what tour operators and major tourism sector players think. The monoculture of tourism in Mallorca allows these thoughts to flourish and to constantly reinforce the curiosity of the economy. But behind these thoughts, we should sometimes stop and ask ourselves exactly why they are being expressed.
Showing posts with label Tour operators. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tour operators. Show all posts
Monday, November 27, 2017
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.
Sunday, March 12, 2017
The Former Tui State Of Mallorca
I don't wish to alarm anyone, but war has been declared against Mallorca. You may not have noticed as this is a war that exists in its own separate Mallorcan universe, the inhabitants of which are tour operators and hoteliers. You will also be less than familiar with some of the names. They include, inter alia, Baumert, Frankenberg and Müller. These are among the commandants of the massed ranks of German tour operators who issued the Declaration of War in Berlin the other day. But you don't need to be too worried. They're not about to invade. Precisely the opposite.
The German occupation of Mallorca, which has existed for some fifty years, is drawing to a close. German tourists will cease to be. At last! Sun lounger liberation. The policy of "Sunbedsraum" is going into reverse. And once the retreat has been completed, Mallorca will be wholly de-saturated, save for the last remaining Brits before Brexit pulls down the shutters on their fifty-plus years of Mallorcan occupation as well. Resorts will become all-year ghost towns. The transformation of Magalluf will be another transformation. Tumbleweed will roll along the boulevard. Weeds will grow on the poolsides. Wild goats will come from the hills and colonise BCM.
Well, not quite all year, as Mallorca will sustain itself by being "Better in Winter" (registered slogan, reproduced courtesy of the Balearic Tourism Agency). The tourism ministry, which must surely be about to be renamed the Barceló Ministry of Sustainability, will have its wish. Pensioners will be warmly greeted at the airport, which will come under Balearic government co-management and see to it that flights will in any event be reduced by some three-quarters. These wintering pensioners, when not drowning in a January flood, will discover how much better Mallorca is in winter by being whisked off to Algaida to be given instruction in all things Ramon Llull. The occasional cyclist may pass them by, all the others having been warned off a Mallorca tainted by Team Sky brown packages.
German tourists, you see, prefer to go on holiday to actual war zones. Or at least to places where terrorism has seemingly become a tourist attraction. This is one of the conclusions of Tui, Thomas Cook, DER, Alltours and the rest. The Berlin Declaration of War makes it clear that Mallorca's hoteliers are to blame. Their prices are so high, so exorbitant that not a single German can afford to come to Mallorca. Ditto all other tourists, except the winter pensioners on subsidised deals.
There was, it must be said, something slightly peculiar about this declaration. This was the fact that before it was made last week in Berlin, the massed ranks of German tour operators had been insisting that Mallorca was all but sold out for this summer. Moreover, such was the motivation to head off to terrorism tourist attractions that sales to Turkey had barely scraped past the 30% mark.
All very weird, but not if you are a German tour operator (or any other one) who has no wish to meet the price demands of avaricious hoteliers. And there we were, thinking that it was the British tour operators who were aghast at the prices (well, they are more or less the same tour operators anyway). But the hoteliers can't really be blamed. They do after all need all the Mallorcan profit they can muster in order to invest it in Aruba and Vietnam.
Somewhat redundant in all this war declaration were the representatives of Balearic administrations, such as Barceló and Hila. In fact, they would have been hiding in the shadows lest they were spied fraternising with the hoteliers. With hoteliers putting prices up sky high, the Ministry of Sustainability is having its work done for it. There'll be no need for tourist limits, as there won't be any tourists anyway. Job done, albeit there'll be a hole in the tourist tax budget.
Moreover, the Minister of Sustainability will have been heartened by environmentalists GOB warning any German tourists who might be dithering in their choice between IS and Illetas that saturation is such that they will be trampled underfoot because of touristic "massification" this summer. Which of course they won't be, as there won't be any tourists, if one follows the logic of the tour operators' declaration, which one shouldn't.
Might this apocalyptic vision come to pass? Nah. Not a bit of it. Berlin was the stage for some propaganda, which has become the purpose for holding travel/tourism fairs (remember the tourist tax propaganda in London in 2015?). It'll all be forgotten by Easter, when the stories will be about rat-arsed Germans in Playa de Palma being chased by local police waving fines for anti-social behaviour. Sunbedsraum will never cease.
The German occupation of Mallorca, which has existed for some fifty years, is drawing to a close. German tourists will cease to be. At last! Sun lounger liberation. The policy of "Sunbedsraum" is going into reverse. And once the retreat has been completed, Mallorca will be wholly de-saturated, save for the last remaining Brits before Brexit pulls down the shutters on their fifty-plus years of Mallorcan occupation as well. Resorts will become all-year ghost towns. The transformation of Magalluf will be another transformation. Tumbleweed will roll along the boulevard. Weeds will grow on the poolsides. Wild goats will come from the hills and colonise BCM.
Well, not quite all year, as Mallorca will sustain itself by being "Better in Winter" (registered slogan, reproduced courtesy of the Balearic Tourism Agency). The tourism ministry, which must surely be about to be renamed the Barceló Ministry of Sustainability, will have its wish. Pensioners will be warmly greeted at the airport, which will come under Balearic government co-management and see to it that flights will in any event be reduced by some three-quarters. These wintering pensioners, when not drowning in a January flood, will discover how much better Mallorca is in winter by being whisked off to Algaida to be given instruction in all things Ramon Llull. The occasional cyclist may pass them by, all the others having been warned off a Mallorca tainted by Team Sky brown packages.
German tourists, you see, prefer to go on holiday to actual war zones. Or at least to places where terrorism has seemingly become a tourist attraction. This is one of the conclusions of Tui, Thomas Cook, DER, Alltours and the rest. The Berlin Declaration of War makes it clear that Mallorca's hoteliers are to blame. Their prices are so high, so exorbitant that not a single German can afford to come to Mallorca. Ditto all other tourists, except the winter pensioners on subsidised deals.
There was, it must be said, something slightly peculiar about this declaration. This was the fact that before it was made last week in Berlin, the massed ranks of German tour operators had been insisting that Mallorca was all but sold out for this summer. Moreover, such was the motivation to head off to terrorism tourist attractions that sales to Turkey had barely scraped past the 30% mark.
All very weird, but not if you are a German tour operator (or any other one) who has no wish to meet the price demands of avaricious hoteliers. And there we were, thinking that it was the British tour operators who were aghast at the prices (well, they are more or less the same tour operators anyway). But the hoteliers can't really be blamed. They do after all need all the Mallorcan profit they can muster in order to invest it in Aruba and Vietnam.
Somewhat redundant in all this war declaration were the representatives of Balearic administrations, such as Barceló and Hila. In fact, they would have been hiding in the shadows lest they were spied fraternising with the hoteliers. With hoteliers putting prices up sky high, the Ministry of Sustainability is having its work done for it. There'll be no need for tourist limits, as there won't be any tourists anyway. Job done, albeit there'll be a hole in the tourist tax budget.
Moreover, the Minister of Sustainability will have been heartened by environmentalists GOB warning any German tourists who might be dithering in their choice between IS and Illetas that saturation is such that they will be trampled underfoot because of touristic "massification" this summer. Which of course they won't be, as there won't be any tourists, if one follows the logic of the tour operators' declaration, which one shouldn't.
Might this apocalyptic vision come to pass? Nah. Not a bit of it. Berlin was the stage for some propaganda, which has become the purpose for holding travel/tourism fairs (remember the tourist tax propaganda in London in 2015?). It'll all be forgotten by Easter, when the stories will be about rat-arsed Germans in Playa de Palma being chased by local police waving fines for anti-social behaviour. Sunbedsraum will never cease.
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, 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.
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Tour Operators Unclear About The Tourist Tax
As we prepare for the July storm to break, the tourist tax is slowly finding its way into the travelling public's consciousness. Trip Advisor has been quite useful in this regard with the sharing of information pleasingly accurate. Less pleasing is a generally negative attitude towards the tax, which is hardly surprising.
Thomson, like Jet2, have been emailing clients to tell them about the tax, but from a quick glance at tour operator websites, the news of the tax doesn't feature prominently. Thomas Cook does at least have a full explanation, though one has to go to Travel Updates to find it listed as "sustainable tourism tax". What is revealing, though, is that Thomas Cook is unable to give totally certain information. This is because it doesn't have it. No one does. On "when and how to pay", it says that it is "likely" that travellers will have to pay when checking in at their accommodation. "The government haven't advised how this should be paid." A recommendation is made to take sufficient euros to cover the cost.
Thomas Cook also can't say whether the tax will apply if travellers arrive before 1 July and then stay beyond the introduction date of 1 July. Again, the recommendation is to have money just in case. As for "why do I have to pay?", Thomas Cook points out that the tax is specifically aimed at tourists, that it is a cost beyond its control. The tour operator accepts that the tax is "something you probably weren't expecting to pay and is sorry the government has decided to bring this in so quickly".
Whatever communications the tourism ministry is sending to the tour operators, they are clearly incomplete and partly this is the result of the tax having been rushed in. Thomas Cook is absolutely right in this regard, and it is more than just regrettable that the ministry (and government) is leaving even the major players, like the big tour operators, in the dark and unable to give complete information. The government's handling of the tax's introduction has been incompetent.
There have been some criticisms of tour operators. If they knew about the tax before, why did they not say anything earlier? It's true enough that the tour operators were well aware of the intention to bring in the tax. It was, for instance, given a good airing at London's Travel Market last November but had been spoken about more or less from the moment the new government took office in late June. In the tour operators' defence, though, until the tax was officially and definitively approved by parliament, it was difficult for them to say anything to their clients. The approval wasn't until the week before Easter, and it might be remembered that there was just a chance - right up until the last minute - that Podemos might have scuppered it.
Thomson, like Jet2, have been emailing clients to tell them about the tax, but from a quick glance at tour operator websites, the news of the tax doesn't feature prominently. Thomas Cook does at least have a full explanation, though one has to go to Travel Updates to find it listed as "sustainable tourism tax". What is revealing, though, is that Thomas Cook is unable to give totally certain information. This is because it doesn't have it. No one does. On "when and how to pay", it says that it is "likely" that travellers will have to pay when checking in at their accommodation. "The government haven't advised how this should be paid." A recommendation is made to take sufficient euros to cover the cost.
Thomas Cook also can't say whether the tax will apply if travellers arrive before 1 July and then stay beyond the introduction date of 1 July. Again, the recommendation is to have money just in case. As for "why do I have to pay?", Thomas Cook points out that the tax is specifically aimed at tourists, that it is a cost beyond its control. The tour operator accepts that the tax is "something you probably weren't expecting to pay and is sorry the government has decided to bring this in so quickly".
Whatever communications the tourism ministry is sending to the tour operators, they are clearly incomplete and partly this is the result of the tax having been rushed in. Thomas Cook is absolutely right in this regard, and it is more than just regrettable that the ministry (and government) is leaving even the major players, like the big tour operators, in the dark and unable to give complete information. The government's handling of the tax's introduction has been incompetent.
There have been some criticisms of tour operators. If they knew about the tax before, why did they not say anything earlier? It's true enough that the tour operators were well aware of the intention to bring in the tax. It was, for instance, given a good airing at London's Travel Market last November but had been spoken about more or less from the moment the new government took office in late June. In the tour operators' defence, though, until the tax was officially and definitively approved by parliament, it was difficult for them to say anything to their clients. The approval wasn't until the week before Easter, and it might be remembered that there was just a chance - right up until the last minute - that Podemos might have scuppered it.
Saturday, August 01, 2015
The Neglect Of Calas de Mallorca
Calas de Mallorca is a resort that has for years suffered from neglect. Partly this has been because of its origins as an essentially private development which still creates issues for the town hall in Manacor in terms of services. Nevertheless, last year the town hall was stung into taking action when examples of neglect began to appear in the media. So, it showed some initiative, the lack of which has been the focus of criticism of regimes at the town hall over several years when it has come to tourism infrastructure (and not just Calas de Mallorca). It is a resort which has also become a dumping ground for all-inclusive. In this regard it is not unique, but the almost total economy nature of its some 6,000 or so hotel places has bred a form of all-inclusive that reflects the hotel stock and a level of all-inclusive which is said to represent anywhere between 80% and 90% of those places.
The quoting of such figures is always something in which holes can be picked. Data from the Balearic tourism ministry (such as they are) and information from studies give varying percentages as to the level of all-inclusive. A typical figure has been around 33% for the whole of Mallorca, which might just be believable when one takes account of the island's entire hotel stock but is most definitely not believable at the micro level of individual resorts, of which Calas de Mallorca is a good example.
With a new regime at the town hall, the issue of all-inclusive, as it is in other municipalities, has come to the top of the agenda. But like other municipalities, Calvia for example where the mayor has spoken of regulation, Manacor cannot effect any municipal legislation that limits or bars all-inclusive. It can introduce bylaws that might influence aspects of the all-inclusive offer but it can do no more: it is otherwise a matter for regional government.
If the volume of all-inclusive is as it is quoted, there should be a fundamental question being asked: what is the point of Calas de Mallorca as a resort? If general economic welfare is so limited as a consequence of one particular type of accommodation board, then its purpose as a resort is diminished. It is not sustainable, and in the mantra of the current day, it therefore runs counter to the notions of sustainable (aka responsible) tourism that tour operators and some hoteliers make a big issue of, yet singularly fail to practise.
The new regional administration, with its twin policy items of the eco-tax and all-inclusive regulation (yet to be defined), may well have an underlying strategy aimed at reducing tourist numbers. It is a strategy littered with risks, but if these policies, allied to tactics such as the declaration of far more "mature zones" in tourist resorts, were to result in a decline in the number of places in a resort like Calas de Mallorca but the removal of a great deal of that 80 or 90%, then the cost-benefit equation would in all likelihood weigh heavily in favour of general economic benefit for the local economy.
The mature zones, a mechanism for liberalising and incentivising redevelopment but also forcing it, should be applied widely across Mallorca, but it is a tactic which might itself run up against government antagonism towards in-resort investment. What we are not seeing at present is a clear vision of what Biel Barceló, the tourism minister, wants. When he speaks of tourism re-investment facilitated by the eco-tax, how much of this would be directed at the resorts? Even if it were to be, mature zones rely massively on private investment for the tactic to succeed or be given the chance to succeed, and neither Més (certain members of the party at any rate) nor Podemos are currently endearing themselves to the principal sources of such investment - the hoteliers and their backers.
There is a great deal of muddled thinking at present. While reducing tourist numbers, limiting all-inclusive but raising general standards in terms of the type of tourism that Mallorca has are not in themselves bad policies, another side of the coin is that of employment. And into this equation comes the issue of wages, employment conditions and contracts. A report this week that reveals that increased employment levels in the Balearics are predominantly due to short-term, seasonal tourism contracts will come as absolutely no surprise. Podemos, in attacking the hoteliers for a lack of job security, has to accept certain realities of the tourism industry. Firstly, it is seasonal and secondly, there is a very good reason why wages are as they are - low. Podemos (and the government) wants there to be higher quality employment in the industry, implying higher wages, full contracts and so on. But then what is this employment? For the most part, it is unskilled or low-skilled. This shouldn't be an excuse for worker exploitation, but tourism jobs are like they are in Mallorca the world over: that's the reality.
To return to the theme of all-inclusive regulation, it is not one that is only exercising the minds of councillors in Manacor and Calvia and Balearic government ministers. In Benidorm, a commission is being set up to analyse the impact of all-inclusive. The conclusions of its findings will be sent to the regional government (Valencia in this instance). What is significant about this commission is the fact that it involves all interested parties, including the Benidorm hoteliers. Absent from its membership, however, are any tour operators, and as we all know it is they who hold the key, not the hoteliers, many of whom would rather not have to offer all-inclusive (a sentiment which exists in Mallorca as well).
But with the Canaries also setting all-inclusives in their sights, there is a discernible shift in political and business perspective. Finally, after a good couple of decades of all-inclusive there is some momentum and desire to address its impact, and it is a momentum being felt in different parts of Spain. Ultimately, however, the tour operators need to be included, as it is they who wield much of the power. But might they finally wake up to the responsibilities they claim in the marketing-speak of their responsible/sustainable tourism mission statements? Don't hold your breath.
The quoting of such figures is always something in which holes can be picked. Data from the Balearic tourism ministry (such as they are) and information from studies give varying percentages as to the level of all-inclusive. A typical figure has been around 33% for the whole of Mallorca, which might just be believable when one takes account of the island's entire hotel stock but is most definitely not believable at the micro level of individual resorts, of which Calas de Mallorca is a good example.
With a new regime at the town hall, the issue of all-inclusive, as it is in other municipalities, has come to the top of the agenda. But like other municipalities, Calvia for example where the mayor has spoken of regulation, Manacor cannot effect any municipal legislation that limits or bars all-inclusive. It can introduce bylaws that might influence aspects of the all-inclusive offer but it can do no more: it is otherwise a matter for regional government.
If the volume of all-inclusive is as it is quoted, there should be a fundamental question being asked: what is the point of Calas de Mallorca as a resort? If general economic welfare is so limited as a consequence of one particular type of accommodation board, then its purpose as a resort is diminished. It is not sustainable, and in the mantra of the current day, it therefore runs counter to the notions of sustainable (aka responsible) tourism that tour operators and some hoteliers make a big issue of, yet singularly fail to practise.
The new regional administration, with its twin policy items of the eco-tax and all-inclusive regulation (yet to be defined), may well have an underlying strategy aimed at reducing tourist numbers. It is a strategy littered with risks, but if these policies, allied to tactics such as the declaration of far more "mature zones" in tourist resorts, were to result in a decline in the number of places in a resort like Calas de Mallorca but the removal of a great deal of that 80 or 90%, then the cost-benefit equation would in all likelihood weigh heavily in favour of general economic benefit for the local economy.
The mature zones, a mechanism for liberalising and incentivising redevelopment but also forcing it, should be applied widely across Mallorca, but it is a tactic which might itself run up against government antagonism towards in-resort investment. What we are not seeing at present is a clear vision of what Biel Barceló, the tourism minister, wants. When he speaks of tourism re-investment facilitated by the eco-tax, how much of this would be directed at the resorts? Even if it were to be, mature zones rely massively on private investment for the tactic to succeed or be given the chance to succeed, and neither Més (certain members of the party at any rate) nor Podemos are currently endearing themselves to the principal sources of such investment - the hoteliers and their backers.
There is a great deal of muddled thinking at present. While reducing tourist numbers, limiting all-inclusive but raising general standards in terms of the type of tourism that Mallorca has are not in themselves bad policies, another side of the coin is that of employment. And into this equation comes the issue of wages, employment conditions and contracts. A report this week that reveals that increased employment levels in the Balearics are predominantly due to short-term, seasonal tourism contracts will come as absolutely no surprise. Podemos, in attacking the hoteliers for a lack of job security, has to accept certain realities of the tourism industry. Firstly, it is seasonal and secondly, there is a very good reason why wages are as they are - low. Podemos (and the government) wants there to be higher quality employment in the industry, implying higher wages, full contracts and so on. But then what is this employment? For the most part, it is unskilled or low-skilled. This shouldn't be an excuse for worker exploitation, but tourism jobs are like they are in Mallorca the world over: that's the reality.
To return to the theme of all-inclusive regulation, it is not one that is only exercising the minds of councillors in Manacor and Calvia and Balearic government ministers. In Benidorm, a commission is being set up to analyse the impact of all-inclusive. The conclusions of its findings will be sent to the regional government (Valencia in this instance). What is significant about this commission is the fact that it involves all interested parties, including the Benidorm hoteliers. Absent from its membership, however, are any tour operators, and as we all know it is they who hold the key, not the hoteliers, many of whom would rather not have to offer all-inclusive (a sentiment which exists in Mallorca as well).
But with the Canaries also setting all-inclusives in their sights, there is a discernible shift in political and business perspective. Finally, after a good couple of decades of all-inclusive there is some momentum and desire to address its impact, and it is a momentum being felt in different parts of Spain. Ultimately, however, the tour operators need to be included, as it is they who wield much of the power. But might they finally wake up to the responsibilities they claim in the marketing-speak of their responsible/sustainable tourism mission statements? Don't hold your breath.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
The Propaganda Of Sustainable Tourism
In June 1992 world leaders and representatives of non-governmental organisations gathered in Rio de Janeiro for what was officially called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development but which unofficially became known as the Earth Summit. There had never been a gathering like it, there had never been an agenda like it. The results of the deliberations were summed up in the Rio Declaration. Its 27 principles ranged from "the role of man" through environmental legislation and impact assessments, the roles of women and youth to co-operation between the state and its people.
At that time, my interest in the Earth Summit was that of business and management applications. Together with two leading business journalists, I tried to make sense of the volume of papers and documents that the summit produced and to publish in a cogent and greatly summarised form what they meant or might mean for business. And from all the thousands upon thousands of words that Rio spawned, two words came out. The world had truly discovered the notion of "sustainable development".
With this term firmly embedded into the business lexicon, industries within industries were formed. The genuine and the charlatan leapt aboard the sustainable bandwagon. Consultants, advisors, Harvard scholars were offering business solutions to save the planet and local communities. Some meant it; others didn't. This post-Rio feverishness found no greater expression in and no better business activity than tourism. The Rio principles could have been written with tourism in mind.
Thus, sustainable development - simplified to sustainability - became specific. The leitmotif of sustainable tourism emerged, championed by those with environmental and social-consciousness integrity but also bastardised as platitudinous propaganda by elements of the tourism industry forever on the lookout for a marketing and competitive edge.
Sustainable tourism morphed into responsible tourism, the latter a more comprehensible term; comprehensible, that is, to a consumer base for whom "sustainable" was too abstract a word. The two terms are interchangeable, but whichever is used they mean the same thing or they can mean very little or nothing. It all depends on how genuine those who promote them are. A consequence is that today's tourism industry - not all of it certainly - is characterised not by sustainable development but by what I would call sustainable dissonance: an inconsistency between what is claimed and what is practised. Dissonance demands that individuals find a way of reconciling competing notions or beliefs. Thus, the tourism industry is inhabited by sustainability propagandists who, were they to be truthful, know that it is little more than propaganda.
Two years after the Rio summit, a Swedish hotel chain, Scandic, embraced sustainability in a way that no other chain had done. This commitment has been carried on, and every aspect of its business is guided by environmental and social consciousness. I was reminded of Scandic by an article for the "Hosteltur" magazine community in which the author, Arturo Cuenllas Soler, questioned how well rooted this responsibility is in the Spanish tourism industry and how committed the industry actually is to it. He recognised, as do I, that there are hotel chains and tour operators that have done a great deal in terms of environmental programmes and energy management, but the point he makes is my own: sustainability, responsibility go way beyond environmental factors and they embrace all sorts of stakeholders - employees, local people, local governments, customers, suppliers. Everyone.
If you go back to 1992, this was a time of economic recession. For the tourism industry, recession gave rise to what in the Mediterranean was then a rarely offered tourism package - the all-inclusive. Subsequent downturns have reinforced this offer, but coincidental with the rise of AI (and now also a quasi-AI) was that of sustainability. Here was something which, in public relations terms, could be used to offset the negativity of AI. Hotels and tour operators have pinned their colours to an environmental agenda mast but not to the full sustainability package. They might claim to - sourcing local produce, generating employment etc. - but all types of hotel can do this. For local communities, such as Mallorca's resorts, this has been specious propaganda, but it is propaganda that has been developed because the tourism industry and government know only too well that AI does not adhere to principles of sustainability. Sustainable dissonance, therefore.
The point about AIs and sustainability is that once upon a time in Mallorca, although the environment was treated with disrespect, certain sustainability conditions did exist. Local resort economies could flourish because of a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship. Now, however, there is tourism - and a great deal of it - which is parasitic. It leeches off resources such as sun and water and gives too little back in return. How, therefore, does this square with messages from hotels and tour operators regarding responsible or sustainable tourism?
Whether you call it sustainable or responsible, if this brand of tourism is to be genuinely meaningful it has to be far more open to the needs not just of the environment but also to those of local people and local communities. But it has to go further still. As Arturo Cuenllas notes, there are the customers as well. The tourists. Their attitudes have to change, as do those of tour operators. Corralling people into AI or quasi-AI is the antithesis of sustainability, and they know it.
Will such a change come about? It is highly unlikely, and so while it remains improbable, claims made for sustainability and responsibility are empty ones.
At that time, my interest in the Earth Summit was that of business and management applications. Together with two leading business journalists, I tried to make sense of the volume of papers and documents that the summit produced and to publish in a cogent and greatly summarised form what they meant or might mean for business. And from all the thousands upon thousands of words that Rio spawned, two words came out. The world had truly discovered the notion of "sustainable development".
With this term firmly embedded into the business lexicon, industries within industries were formed. The genuine and the charlatan leapt aboard the sustainable bandwagon. Consultants, advisors, Harvard scholars were offering business solutions to save the planet and local communities. Some meant it; others didn't. This post-Rio feverishness found no greater expression in and no better business activity than tourism. The Rio principles could have been written with tourism in mind.
Thus, sustainable development - simplified to sustainability - became specific. The leitmotif of sustainable tourism emerged, championed by those with environmental and social-consciousness integrity but also bastardised as platitudinous propaganda by elements of the tourism industry forever on the lookout for a marketing and competitive edge.
Sustainable tourism morphed into responsible tourism, the latter a more comprehensible term; comprehensible, that is, to a consumer base for whom "sustainable" was too abstract a word. The two terms are interchangeable, but whichever is used they mean the same thing or they can mean very little or nothing. It all depends on how genuine those who promote them are. A consequence is that today's tourism industry - not all of it certainly - is characterised not by sustainable development but by what I would call sustainable dissonance: an inconsistency between what is claimed and what is practised. Dissonance demands that individuals find a way of reconciling competing notions or beliefs. Thus, the tourism industry is inhabited by sustainability propagandists who, were they to be truthful, know that it is little more than propaganda.
Two years after the Rio summit, a Swedish hotel chain, Scandic, embraced sustainability in a way that no other chain had done. This commitment has been carried on, and every aspect of its business is guided by environmental and social consciousness. I was reminded of Scandic by an article for the "Hosteltur" magazine community in which the author, Arturo Cuenllas Soler, questioned how well rooted this responsibility is in the Spanish tourism industry and how committed the industry actually is to it. He recognised, as do I, that there are hotel chains and tour operators that have done a great deal in terms of environmental programmes and energy management, but the point he makes is my own: sustainability, responsibility go way beyond environmental factors and they embrace all sorts of stakeholders - employees, local people, local governments, customers, suppliers. Everyone.
If you go back to 1992, this was a time of economic recession. For the tourism industry, recession gave rise to what in the Mediterranean was then a rarely offered tourism package - the all-inclusive. Subsequent downturns have reinforced this offer, but coincidental with the rise of AI (and now also a quasi-AI) was that of sustainability. Here was something which, in public relations terms, could be used to offset the negativity of AI. Hotels and tour operators have pinned their colours to an environmental agenda mast but not to the full sustainability package. They might claim to - sourcing local produce, generating employment etc. - but all types of hotel can do this. For local communities, such as Mallorca's resorts, this has been specious propaganda, but it is propaganda that has been developed because the tourism industry and government know only too well that AI does not adhere to principles of sustainability. Sustainable dissonance, therefore.
The point about AIs and sustainability is that once upon a time in Mallorca, although the environment was treated with disrespect, certain sustainability conditions did exist. Local resort economies could flourish because of a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship. Now, however, there is tourism - and a great deal of it - which is parasitic. It leeches off resources such as sun and water and gives too little back in return. How, therefore, does this square with messages from hotels and tour operators regarding responsible or sustainable tourism?
Whether you call it sustainable or responsible, if this brand of tourism is to be genuinely meaningful it has to be far more open to the needs not just of the environment but also to those of local people and local communities. But it has to go further still. As Arturo Cuenllas notes, there are the customers as well. The tourists. Their attitudes have to change, as do those of tour operators. Corralling people into AI or quasi-AI is the antithesis of sustainability, and they know it.
Will such a change come about? It is highly unlikely, and so while it remains improbable, claims made for sustainability and responsibility are empty ones.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Defending Loyalty To Mallorca
April Rinne is a name that probably won't mean anything to you. She is the chief strategy officer for something called Collaborative Lab, "the leading source of expertise for companies and governments that want to embrace the collaborative economy". Among other things, she is a "young global leader" at the World Economic Forum and has been an adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She has, says her biog, "illustrated her thought leadership" in various publications. Thought leadership? What on earth is that?
Depending on your perspective, Rinne is either one of those infuriating Americans who come along on a regular basis and appear to invent entire alternative universes of business and marketing replete with jargonese and gurudom or a crystal-clear visionary of a brave new future world. Whatever your perspective, these are universes or worlds remote from the man or woman booking holidays to Mallorca. They appear divorced from everyday realities but sometimes they can be important, and what April Rinne deals in is important.
The notion of the collaborative or sharing economy is simple enough. You have something to share - let's say it's an apartment that you own - and someone wants to take up your offer. This is an economy that has always been with us, but technology has vastly expanded its potential, so much so that - at its most extreme -what you might have to share can be shared with anyone from anywhere. Middlemen cease to exist. All that is needed is a facilitator, a third party which enables the sharer to be in touch with his or her potential market. This is the world of P2P, peer to peer or people to people. This is the world of Airbnb property sharing, Uber car sharing and many others.
Rinne has made an observation which sums up the rise of P2P. It has taken Airbnb, the world's leading internet portal for tourist property rental, just six years to reach a level of users (customers) that Hilton needed over 90 years to attain. It is a stark observation of the battle between hotels and private accommodation that is going on across the globe and so not just in Mallorca, and it is a battle which, despite moves to legislate, appears to be one that the hotels cannot win. Rinne believes that the onslaught from the likes of Airbnb has only just begun.
Confronted with this competition - typically decried by the hoteliers as "unfair" - how can hotels fight back? A clue as to how they can lies with understanding the appeal of P2P and the apparent shifts in consumer thinking and behaviour, in particular those of the so-called Millennial generation. Tourism, according to accepted P2P wisdom, is about personalisation, about "experiences", about contact with local people in destinations. It is the depersonalised nature of hotels which turns the traveller on to a P2P "experience" and which also deters those Millennials who supposedly are also interested principally in experiences.
Of course, much of this sounds and often is marketing gobbledegook, but there is nevertheless a good deal of truth about depersonalisation and especially that which comes with the package holiday. This said, hotels have woken up to the need for greater personalisation and also to the need for "experiences". Many can't help telling potential clients about the experiences that await them or shoehorning them in to brand sloganising. And it is this branding which holds the key for hotels and, more importantly, tour operators.
Experiences and personalisation have become the hotelier and tour operator zeitgeist as has the need for branding and so brand loyalty, but in emphasising the brand, tour operators and indeed some hotel chains shift the focus away from the destination. What is being sold, therefore, is the brand, and where it is located is secondary. A consequence is that loyalty to the destination, be it Mallorca, its individual resorts is potentially loosened. And experiences and personalisation for the P2P traveller can also undermine specific destinations. These travellers place a premium on the social-media aspect of sharing information and recommendations. If they are for somewhere other than Mallorca, then so be it.
The importance of these trends can be over-exaggerated. The traditional package holiday, for instance, and despite repeated reports of its death, is not about to disappear any time soon. But they are trends which cannot be ignored and so make it imperative that Mallorca acts to confirm and reinforce tourist loyalty to it.
There was a statement the other day that the "summer sells itself". Well yes, it does, but to believe, against the background of these trends, that "selling" is not required is wrongheaded. It is needed as never before, and so Mallorca needs its own assault, one it is currently failing to deliver, that of loyalty building through social media. And, moreover, it is an assault that needs to embrace, not deny, the P2P revolution.
Depending on your perspective, Rinne is either one of those infuriating Americans who come along on a regular basis and appear to invent entire alternative universes of business and marketing replete with jargonese and gurudom or a crystal-clear visionary of a brave new future world. Whatever your perspective, these are universes or worlds remote from the man or woman booking holidays to Mallorca. They appear divorced from everyday realities but sometimes they can be important, and what April Rinne deals in is important.
The notion of the collaborative or sharing economy is simple enough. You have something to share - let's say it's an apartment that you own - and someone wants to take up your offer. This is an economy that has always been with us, but technology has vastly expanded its potential, so much so that - at its most extreme -what you might have to share can be shared with anyone from anywhere. Middlemen cease to exist. All that is needed is a facilitator, a third party which enables the sharer to be in touch with his or her potential market. This is the world of P2P, peer to peer or people to people. This is the world of Airbnb property sharing, Uber car sharing and many others.
Rinne has made an observation which sums up the rise of P2P. It has taken Airbnb, the world's leading internet portal for tourist property rental, just six years to reach a level of users (customers) that Hilton needed over 90 years to attain. It is a stark observation of the battle between hotels and private accommodation that is going on across the globe and so not just in Mallorca, and it is a battle which, despite moves to legislate, appears to be one that the hotels cannot win. Rinne believes that the onslaught from the likes of Airbnb has only just begun.
Confronted with this competition - typically decried by the hoteliers as "unfair" - how can hotels fight back? A clue as to how they can lies with understanding the appeal of P2P and the apparent shifts in consumer thinking and behaviour, in particular those of the so-called Millennial generation. Tourism, according to accepted P2P wisdom, is about personalisation, about "experiences", about contact with local people in destinations. It is the depersonalised nature of hotels which turns the traveller on to a P2P "experience" and which also deters those Millennials who supposedly are also interested principally in experiences.
Of course, much of this sounds and often is marketing gobbledegook, but there is nevertheless a good deal of truth about depersonalisation and especially that which comes with the package holiday. This said, hotels have woken up to the need for greater personalisation and also to the need for "experiences". Many can't help telling potential clients about the experiences that await them or shoehorning them in to brand sloganising. And it is this branding which holds the key for hotels and, more importantly, tour operators.
Experiences and personalisation have become the hotelier and tour operator zeitgeist as has the need for branding and so brand loyalty, but in emphasising the brand, tour operators and indeed some hotel chains shift the focus away from the destination. What is being sold, therefore, is the brand, and where it is located is secondary. A consequence is that loyalty to the destination, be it Mallorca, its individual resorts is potentially loosened. And experiences and personalisation for the P2P traveller can also undermine specific destinations. These travellers place a premium on the social-media aspect of sharing information and recommendations. If they are for somewhere other than Mallorca, then so be it.
The importance of these trends can be over-exaggerated. The traditional package holiday, for instance, and despite repeated reports of its death, is not about to disappear any time soon. But they are trends which cannot be ignored and so make it imperative that Mallorca acts to confirm and reinforce tourist loyalty to it.
There was a statement the other day that the "summer sells itself". Well yes, it does, but to believe, against the background of these trends, that "selling" is not required is wrongheaded. It is needed as never before, and so Mallorca needs its own assault, one it is currently failing to deliver, that of loyalty building through social media. And, moreover, it is an assault that needs to embrace, not deny, the P2P revolution.
Monday, April 28, 2014
The Political Reason For All-Inclusive
"All-inclusive is a desperate effort by tour operators to maintain their operational capacity in our country. It is a short-term strategy while they resize their strategy and prepare new products ... All-inclusive is not the future for our country."
These were the words of Celestí Alomar, who was Balearics tourism minister during the first PSOE-led government from 1999 to 2003. He wrote them the year after PSOE had lost the 2003 election. It is clear that Alomar felt that the all-inclusive would die out and that it had been a response to what had been a trend away from the traditional package holiday. It is also clear that he was wrong and that there were further errors in his analysis. He spoke of the Spanish hotel industry having been, up till that point, reluctant to embrace all-inclusive and that, in 2004, it was something of a novelty.
He may have been right to point to novelty where Spanish tourism in total was concerned, but where the Balearics were concerned, he had seemingly forgotten what he had said in 2001. Two years into his position as minister, he gave an interview to the German magazine "Focus". In this he referred to the eight million tourists who came to Mallorca each year, roughly a half of them German, and to the all-inclusive offers that German tourists were taking up.
That interview caused a considerable stir, not because of the reference to all-inclusive but because Alomar was signalling the intention to radically reduce "mass tourism". Together with colleagues in the former Unió Mallorquina, policy was drawn up which sent out a message that Mallorca and the Balearics were no longer interested in the regular German tourist. It provoked a great deal of anger. When the eco-tax was then introduced (Alomar was partly responsible for it), the German market slumped. It was taking its revenge for both the insult implicit to the message of the interview and for the tax (though it should also be pointed out that the German economy was in its own slump at that time).
It is true to say that the traditional package holiday was under threat. It is also true to say that all-inclusive was a response to this threat. But when, in 2004, Alomar spoke of "irreparable damage" that all-inclusive could cause, he neglected the damage that he, Joan Mesquida (finance minister in the PSOE government) and Maria Antonia Munar (with her infamous utterances about Mallorca only wanting "quality" tourists) had sought to inflict.
Though one can't talk of there having been a co-ordinated counterattack, tour operators and hoteliers went on the counterattack. They responded to governmental policy and messages and to the eco-tax with what was a weapon of last resort - the all-inclusive.
In 2005, two years into the Partido Popular administration of Jaume Matas, the then tourism minister, Joan Flaquer, attributed the increase in all-inclusive to the "weakness" of the Balearics as a holiday destination. Flaquer was alluding to something of a "crisis" in the local tourism industry, detectable from 2002. He stated that his government and its policies were not the reason for the rise in all-inclusive. He was placing the blame firmly on the previous administration.
Alomar's "novelty" factor was plainly wrong in the Balearics context. In 1998, the year before he became PSOE's minister, it was reckoned that there were twenty hotels in the Balearics which offered all-inclusive. By 2003, when PSOE lost the election, there were 129. In fact, this rise was almost totally observable in 2003.
Business strategies quite separate to any political issues in the Balearics have to be taken account of, but is it an exaggeration to suggest that there was an all-inclusive-led counterattack? Is it inappropriate to talk of there having been a direct link between attitudes and policies of the PSOE administration and its Unió Mallorquina allies and the massive increase in the all-inclusive offer?
Flaquer tried, in both 2005 and 2006, to allay fears regarding all-inclusive. In 2005, he stated that the number of establishments offering it was plateauing. He was to be proved wrong. The following year, he spoke about a campaign involving the tourism and health ministries which was part of a set of measures to regulate all-inclusive. There was to be specific quality certification; there were to also be intensive inspections of hotels. Regulation was not proscription (it couldn't have been without a massive legal backlash), but the limited regulation that was supposedly introduced proved to be toothless.
Because of strategic product changes by tour operators, it can be too convenient to attach political blame for the explosion in all-inclusive. But when PSOE in Calvia, in a barely disguised, self-serving, pre-election move, now demand action against all-inclusive, the party there should remember what happened between 1999 and 2003.
These were the words of Celestí Alomar, who was Balearics tourism minister during the first PSOE-led government from 1999 to 2003. He wrote them the year after PSOE had lost the 2003 election. It is clear that Alomar felt that the all-inclusive would die out and that it had been a response to what had been a trend away from the traditional package holiday. It is also clear that he was wrong and that there were further errors in his analysis. He spoke of the Spanish hotel industry having been, up till that point, reluctant to embrace all-inclusive and that, in 2004, it was something of a novelty.
He may have been right to point to novelty where Spanish tourism in total was concerned, but where the Balearics were concerned, he had seemingly forgotten what he had said in 2001. Two years into his position as minister, he gave an interview to the German magazine "Focus". In this he referred to the eight million tourists who came to Mallorca each year, roughly a half of them German, and to the all-inclusive offers that German tourists were taking up.
That interview caused a considerable stir, not because of the reference to all-inclusive but because Alomar was signalling the intention to radically reduce "mass tourism". Together with colleagues in the former Unió Mallorquina, policy was drawn up which sent out a message that Mallorca and the Balearics were no longer interested in the regular German tourist. It provoked a great deal of anger. When the eco-tax was then introduced (Alomar was partly responsible for it), the German market slumped. It was taking its revenge for both the insult implicit to the message of the interview and for the tax (though it should also be pointed out that the German economy was in its own slump at that time).
It is true to say that the traditional package holiday was under threat. It is also true to say that all-inclusive was a response to this threat. But when, in 2004, Alomar spoke of "irreparable damage" that all-inclusive could cause, he neglected the damage that he, Joan Mesquida (finance minister in the PSOE government) and Maria Antonia Munar (with her infamous utterances about Mallorca only wanting "quality" tourists) had sought to inflict.
Though one can't talk of there having been a co-ordinated counterattack, tour operators and hoteliers went on the counterattack. They responded to governmental policy and messages and to the eco-tax with what was a weapon of last resort - the all-inclusive.
In 2005, two years into the Partido Popular administration of Jaume Matas, the then tourism minister, Joan Flaquer, attributed the increase in all-inclusive to the "weakness" of the Balearics as a holiday destination. Flaquer was alluding to something of a "crisis" in the local tourism industry, detectable from 2002. He stated that his government and its policies were not the reason for the rise in all-inclusive. He was placing the blame firmly on the previous administration.
Alomar's "novelty" factor was plainly wrong in the Balearics context. In 1998, the year before he became PSOE's minister, it was reckoned that there were twenty hotels in the Balearics which offered all-inclusive. By 2003, when PSOE lost the election, there were 129. In fact, this rise was almost totally observable in 2003.
Business strategies quite separate to any political issues in the Balearics have to be taken account of, but is it an exaggeration to suggest that there was an all-inclusive-led counterattack? Is it inappropriate to talk of there having been a direct link between attitudes and policies of the PSOE administration and its Unió Mallorquina allies and the massive increase in the all-inclusive offer?
Flaquer tried, in both 2005 and 2006, to allay fears regarding all-inclusive. In 2005, he stated that the number of establishments offering it was plateauing. He was to be proved wrong. The following year, he spoke about a campaign involving the tourism and health ministries which was part of a set of measures to regulate all-inclusive. There was to be specific quality certification; there were to also be intensive inspections of hotels. Regulation was not proscription (it couldn't have been without a massive legal backlash), but the limited regulation that was supposedly introduced proved to be toothless.
Because of strategic product changes by tour operators, it can be too convenient to attach political blame for the explosion in all-inclusive. But when PSOE in Calvia, in a barely disguised, self-serving, pre-election move, now demand action against all-inclusive, the party there should remember what happened between 1999 and 2003.
Friday, March 07, 2014
The Certainty Of Mallorca
This is the week of the Berlin ITB travel fair, the biggest of the winter's fairs and the last one before the season commences. It was the scene of acute embarrassment for the Balearics last year when a stripped-down presence reduced to the stand to hiding itself away inside the grander pavilion for Turespaña, the budget having been slashed by over half a million euros. One critic, from the socialist opposition, denounced the "ridiculous size" of the "chiringuito", saying that it undermined any impression of international prestige at a time when the islands' tourism was not certain.
This year, the Balearics tourism agency is once more sharing with Turespaña. Indeed, it also has the Palma 365 Foundation, Manacor town hall and the Cala Millor hoteliers to keep it company. No doubt there will be more criticisms. But are they really valid?
Fairs such as Berlin's are an exercise in showing-off. The bigger, the better the stand, the greater the kudos. It doesn't automatically follow that bigger and better mean more business. Perhaps Mexico, the fair's official "partner" this year will secure a substantial rise in tourism. Or perhaps it won't. Putting on a show only amounts to so much.
The travel fair plays to different audiences. The public, only admitted for two days, is one, but it is less important than the tour operators and other decision-makers, and the fact is that these decision-makers do not make decisions based on the nature of an exhibition stand. The fairs are talking-shops and networking opportunities for the travel and tourism industry, but much talking and networking occur without the need to attend fairs. Size of a stand doesn't really matter, and one only has to consider some of the news coming out of Berlin to know that it doesn't. Far from the islands' tourism being uncertain, as was alleged last year, it couldn't be much more certain. Tour operators are on the prowl, buying up hotels in Mallorca in order to guarantee beds for the next few years. Mallorca's tourism is certain, because Mallorca's tourism is safe. This has been a key message over the past few years. While other destinations have experienced problems, such as unrest, Mallorca has kept going on its own sweet way, causing very little or no trouble.
Avoiding trouble is the key to tourism success. Tour operators need to minimise risk, just as tourists need to know there is minimum risk where their holidays are concerned, but one piece of trouble might yet loom, and that is the threat of strikes in the hotel sector. They are never far away from being a possibility, given the somewhat volatile nature of certain unions, but the current round of wage negotiations for the coming season are stalled; the unions are looking for at least a 3% rise, but the hoteliers aren't budging an inch.
The unions, though, can point to price rises by hoteliers and ask, perhaps legitimately, where are our rises. Some concern has been expressed by tour operators who believe that the quality of some of Mallorca's hotels does not match the prices being demanded by the hoteliers. These tour operators are not about to accept any additional prices because of higher wages, and it is this price-quality equation which goes to the heart of much discussion of Mallorca's tourism. A reason, only one, why hotels don't open in winter and why Mallorca is a less than attractive proposition is because prices and so therefore costs are that much lower in other parts of the world. The tour operators can extract far higher margins as a consequence.
And if the tour operators are buying up hotels - as also are foreign investors, such as those from China - they are likely to insist on a harder playing of the hardball with unions. There may be an at-times frosty relationship between unions and Mallorca's hoteliers, but add multinational, foreign ownership into the mix and the relationship could be destined to become tundra-like.
The prognosis from Berlin is very positive, but down the line might there be trouble? The current round of wage negotiations will say much, and they are being conducted against a background of the hoteliers asking the regional government for specific legislation to limit the possibility of strike action in the tourism sector, a demand that is naturally opposed by the unions. If there were to be strikes this summer then the certainty of Mallorca suddenly becomes less certain.
This year, the Balearics tourism agency is once more sharing with Turespaña. Indeed, it also has the Palma 365 Foundation, Manacor town hall and the Cala Millor hoteliers to keep it company. No doubt there will be more criticisms. But are they really valid?
Fairs such as Berlin's are an exercise in showing-off. The bigger, the better the stand, the greater the kudos. It doesn't automatically follow that bigger and better mean more business. Perhaps Mexico, the fair's official "partner" this year will secure a substantial rise in tourism. Or perhaps it won't. Putting on a show only amounts to so much.
The travel fair plays to different audiences. The public, only admitted for two days, is one, but it is less important than the tour operators and other decision-makers, and the fact is that these decision-makers do not make decisions based on the nature of an exhibition stand. The fairs are talking-shops and networking opportunities for the travel and tourism industry, but much talking and networking occur without the need to attend fairs. Size of a stand doesn't really matter, and one only has to consider some of the news coming out of Berlin to know that it doesn't. Far from the islands' tourism being uncertain, as was alleged last year, it couldn't be much more certain. Tour operators are on the prowl, buying up hotels in Mallorca in order to guarantee beds for the next few years. Mallorca's tourism is certain, because Mallorca's tourism is safe. This has been a key message over the past few years. While other destinations have experienced problems, such as unrest, Mallorca has kept going on its own sweet way, causing very little or no trouble.
Avoiding trouble is the key to tourism success. Tour operators need to minimise risk, just as tourists need to know there is minimum risk where their holidays are concerned, but one piece of trouble might yet loom, and that is the threat of strikes in the hotel sector. They are never far away from being a possibility, given the somewhat volatile nature of certain unions, but the current round of wage negotiations for the coming season are stalled; the unions are looking for at least a 3% rise, but the hoteliers aren't budging an inch.
The unions, though, can point to price rises by hoteliers and ask, perhaps legitimately, where are our rises. Some concern has been expressed by tour operators who believe that the quality of some of Mallorca's hotels does not match the prices being demanded by the hoteliers. These tour operators are not about to accept any additional prices because of higher wages, and it is this price-quality equation which goes to the heart of much discussion of Mallorca's tourism. A reason, only one, why hotels don't open in winter and why Mallorca is a less than attractive proposition is because prices and so therefore costs are that much lower in other parts of the world. The tour operators can extract far higher margins as a consequence.
And if the tour operators are buying up hotels - as also are foreign investors, such as those from China - they are likely to insist on a harder playing of the hardball with unions. There may be an at-times frosty relationship between unions and Mallorca's hoteliers, but add multinational, foreign ownership into the mix and the relationship could be destined to become tundra-like.
The prognosis from Berlin is very positive, but down the line might there be trouble? The current round of wage negotiations will say much, and they are being conducted against a background of the hoteliers asking the regional government for specific legislation to limit the possibility of strike action in the tourism sector, a demand that is naturally opposed by the unions. If there were to be strikes this summer then the certainty of Mallorca suddenly becomes less certain.
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Mallorca Missing Out On The Scene?
The 18-30 age group has a classification. It is the Millennial generation. It is also the 18-30 crowd, which means something rather different to the sophistication implied by a categorisation by social and market researchers. This crowd has, in tour operator branding terms, been renamed in different ways. Thomas Cook still clings to 18-30, but Thomson has 2wentys. It is the same however it is named, and it, as a crowd, follows the hordes down to Greece on holiday to Faliraki, to Kavos, to Malia, to Laganas. It allows descends on San Antonio in Ibiza and of course Magalluf in Mallorca.
18-30, 2wentys, call it as you will, this is a tourist segment known for one thing. Well, actually, it's known for several things. Sun, yes, but also sex, drinking, wild antics, full-on partying. 18-30 could just as easily be 24-hour party people. But not everyone aged between 18 and 30, or rather 25 and 30, is necessarily a 24-hour party person. The 25s to 30s align themselves with the 30s to 35s, or they do where Thomson is concerned. There is now a new tourist segment, the Thomson 25-35, and it is going to be called "Scene". Thomson Scene, a new branding concept to be launched this month.
According to Thomson, this segment still enjoys nightlife but would prefer to pursue it in quieter resorts. It wants to holiday in complexes which have relaxed and peaceful swimming-pool areas and free wifi but which are not far from bars, restaurants and shops and which will provide breakfasts until midday.
As such, therefore, the 25-35 segment seems to be exactly the same as the 18-30 segment. Would 18-30 not like free wifi, were it to be offered? I imagine it would. Does it not like staying in bed late and so having breakfast late? Almost certainly it does. Does it not want to be not far from bars and restaurants? The only discernible difference between the two segments, other than the slight age difference, is that one is happy to party in Magalluf and the other isn't. Or so reckons Thomson.
In this, the tour operator probably isn't wrong though. Strange it might seem, but not all young (or youngish) tourists want to go to Magalluf or to be associated with a similar resort, such as Laganas. From Thomson's point of view, the Scene crowd probably makes sense. There is an aspirational and esteem element which attaches itself to any market or social segment, and Magalluf, I'm sorry to have to tell Magalluf, does not fit with such aspiration.
But nor, or so it would appear, does San Antonio fit with such aspiration or anywhere else in Ibiza. Indeed, there is nowhere in the Balearics which fits. The destinations that the Scene crowd will be herded to will be Cancun and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, Corfu, Rhodes, Mykonos, Santorini, Cyrpus and Turkey.
Of these general destinations, there are resorts of a Magalluf style, so why has Thomson apparently excluded Mallorca and the Balearics from its Scene? It's a good question. Why has it? Maybe there is a clue in what the tour operator says about "sophisticated and stylish hotels in incredible locations". Are there none which fit the bill in Mallorca? Or is there some stigma attached to Mallorca, perhaps because of Magalluf, which means that it is excluded? I can't believe this, as Corfu has Kavos, Rhodes has Faliraki, Cyprus has Ayia Napa and Turkey has Bodrum and Gumbet, and one of the Scene's hotels is in Bodrum. In fact, one other is in Ayia Napa.
Maybe more hotels will be added and so maybe Mallorca will be added to the Scene. Does it matter if it isn't? Yes, it does. If the 25-35 segment that Thomson is seeking is a tad more sophisticated than the regular 18-30 crowd (and even this crowd should not be neglected for its future tourism potential) and as it partly forms the new Millennial generation of which so much is anticipated, then Mallorca needs it being brought to the island if only for it to become familiar with somewhere it might wish to return to in the future. It will also typically have a reasonable amount of cash at its disposal (no kids in all likelihood).
It would be interesting to know the rationale behind the selection of the Scene destinations as it would also be interesting to know if there were discussions held with potential hotels in Mallorca. The island needs to keep at the top of the destinations' list. Missing out on the Scene is something it doesn't need.
18-30, 2wentys, call it as you will, this is a tourist segment known for one thing. Well, actually, it's known for several things. Sun, yes, but also sex, drinking, wild antics, full-on partying. 18-30 could just as easily be 24-hour party people. But not everyone aged between 18 and 30, or rather 25 and 30, is necessarily a 24-hour party person. The 25s to 30s align themselves with the 30s to 35s, or they do where Thomson is concerned. There is now a new tourist segment, the Thomson 25-35, and it is going to be called "Scene". Thomson Scene, a new branding concept to be launched this month.
According to Thomson, this segment still enjoys nightlife but would prefer to pursue it in quieter resorts. It wants to holiday in complexes which have relaxed and peaceful swimming-pool areas and free wifi but which are not far from bars, restaurants and shops and which will provide breakfasts until midday.
As such, therefore, the 25-35 segment seems to be exactly the same as the 18-30 segment. Would 18-30 not like free wifi, were it to be offered? I imagine it would. Does it not like staying in bed late and so having breakfast late? Almost certainly it does. Does it not want to be not far from bars and restaurants? The only discernible difference between the two segments, other than the slight age difference, is that one is happy to party in Magalluf and the other isn't. Or so reckons Thomson.
In this, the tour operator probably isn't wrong though. Strange it might seem, but not all young (or youngish) tourists want to go to Magalluf or to be associated with a similar resort, such as Laganas. From Thomson's point of view, the Scene crowd probably makes sense. There is an aspirational and esteem element which attaches itself to any market or social segment, and Magalluf, I'm sorry to have to tell Magalluf, does not fit with such aspiration.
But nor, or so it would appear, does San Antonio fit with such aspiration or anywhere else in Ibiza. Indeed, there is nowhere in the Balearics which fits. The destinations that the Scene crowd will be herded to will be Cancun and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, Corfu, Rhodes, Mykonos, Santorini, Cyrpus and Turkey.
Of these general destinations, there are resorts of a Magalluf style, so why has Thomson apparently excluded Mallorca and the Balearics from its Scene? It's a good question. Why has it? Maybe there is a clue in what the tour operator says about "sophisticated and stylish hotels in incredible locations". Are there none which fit the bill in Mallorca? Or is there some stigma attached to Mallorca, perhaps because of Magalluf, which means that it is excluded? I can't believe this, as Corfu has Kavos, Rhodes has Faliraki, Cyprus has Ayia Napa and Turkey has Bodrum and Gumbet, and one of the Scene's hotels is in Bodrum. In fact, one other is in Ayia Napa.
Maybe more hotels will be added and so maybe Mallorca will be added to the Scene. Does it matter if it isn't? Yes, it does. If the 25-35 segment that Thomson is seeking is a tad more sophisticated than the regular 18-30 crowd (and even this crowd should not be neglected for its future tourism potential) and as it partly forms the new Millennial generation of which so much is anticipated, then Mallorca needs it being brought to the island if only for it to become familiar with somewhere it might wish to return to in the future. It will also typically have a reasonable amount of cash at its disposal (no kids in all likelihood).
It would be interesting to know the rationale behind the selection of the Scene destinations as it would also be interesting to know if there were discussions held with potential hotels in Mallorca. The island needs to keep at the top of the destinations' list. Missing out on the Scene is something it doesn't need.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Walking On Broken Glass: Mallorca's tourism
It all looks so good. Everything in the tourism garden is rosy. A very good summer, a record even, and September and October bookings are strong, much stronger than usual. Some hotels are thinking of staying open into November, eating into the savage deadness of the off-season. Next year is looking fab as well. The hotels have secured revenue increases of up to 5% from tour operators keen to secure beds for next summer. Even tour operators from markets which send fewer tourists than the market colossi of the UK and Germany, such as those in Russia and Norway, are doing business with the hotels early. Everyone wants a piece of Mallorca in 2014. Everything in the tourism garden is rosy.
Go back to political events of the 1990s, and which ones dominated European thinking? Well, there were plenty of course, but among them were events in what had been Yugoslavia. These weren't just political events, these were war. There is no war as such in Egypt at present, but events have a habit of having an impact on tourism. In the '90s it was Croatia which suffered along with other coastal parts of the former Yugoslavia. Now it is north Africa, and Lord alone knows what might erupt if things go really wrong in Syria.
Mallorca is reaping the benefits and has been doing so since the Arab spring; just as it did when Yugoslavia was consumed by war. Whatever some commentators have warned about Spain and a descent into civil unrest, whatever wilder claims have been made about intervention in Catalonia, whatever the ropy image that has come with corruption, whatever bad publicity (in truth, never actually that bad) which comes courtesy of sections of the media, Mallorca (and Spain) rise above such negatives. Mallorca is reliable and it is safe. The politicians and those in the tourist industry keep reminding everyone of this, and they are right to do so.
Such reliability and such safety explain why the current season will prove to have been highly successful and also explain why tour operators have acted swiftly to ensure places for next year even if this might mean paying some more. The hotels and the local economy generally should be happy. Greater hotel profitability (and the hotels have been complaining for ages that they have been losing profitability) can only benefit the wider economy. Or so the theory might go.
The practice is a different matter. Higher prices and so greater profitability from all-inclusives do not mean wider benefits. Nor do they mean longer and more stable employment contracts. Nor do they mean that seasonality is lessened. And nor do they mean that the improvements to hotel stock and to resorts will be effected in the ways that the regional government had hoped when it passed the 2012 tourism act.
Everything in the tourism garden is rosy, but the roses are emitting fragrances that obliterate only temporarily the smells of decay. The rosy rose bushes of the tourism industry cannot disguise the thorns that attack the vulnerable and exposed parts of the industry, and one of these, ironically, is what might be perceived as an industry strength - the almost 300,000 hotel places in Mallorca.
Safe and reliable, Mallorca's reliability is founded in part on its capacity. For all that Croatia is now a competitor and no longer undermined by strife, it can compete only partially; it doesn't have the capacity. So surely Mallorca's capacity must be a strength. It is, but only if one adheres to the notion of tourism that is sharply divided between the glass slipper and slipping over broken glass. Magalluf is managing to demonstrate this divide. It is intended as a benchmark for modernised, transformed and beautified four and five-starring, but how can it truly ever be when glass is shattered along the strip within screaming distance of a five-star palacete playing host to Cinderellas and Prince Charmings bejewelled with the ostentation acquired from a Gucci store on Moscow's Tverskaya?
The rose garden conceals the compost of resorts grown old and too many hotels in need of radical facelifts. The tourism act was meant to have tackled this, but will it? There is many an observer who would aver that Mallorca simply has too many hotels and too many hotel places. They can't all be transformed. To remodel the industry in the shape of a glass slipper demands taking broken glass to the capacity and slashing it, but then what? Loss of jobs, loss of further business in a complementary sector already battered by all-inclusive and the conspicuously low consumption that comes with excess capacity?
It all looks so good. And for now, let's be thankful that it is. But then thinking about now has long been a Mallorcan failure. There's a whole tourism future that too few people have seen. But what will come as a shock to the blind is that the future is already here. It all looks so good but only because there are parts of the world which are suffering from an absence of goodness.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Go back to political events of the 1990s, and which ones dominated European thinking? Well, there were plenty of course, but among them were events in what had been Yugoslavia. These weren't just political events, these were war. There is no war as such in Egypt at present, but events have a habit of having an impact on tourism. In the '90s it was Croatia which suffered along with other coastal parts of the former Yugoslavia. Now it is north Africa, and Lord alone knows what might erupt if things go really wrong in Syria.
Mallorca is reaping the benefits and has been doing so since the Arab spring; just as it did when Yugoslavia was consumed by war. Whatever some commentators have warned about Spain and a descent into civil unrest, whatever wilder claims have been made about intervention in Catalonia, whatever the ropy image that has come with corruption, whatever bad publicity (in truth, never actually that bad) which comes courtesy of sections of the media, Mallorca (and Spain) rise above such negatives. Mallorca is reliable and it is safe. The politicians and those in the tourist industry keep reminding everyone of this, and they are right to do so.
Such reliability and such safety explain why the current season will prove to have been highly successful and also explain why tour operators have acted swiftly to ensure places for next year even if this might mean paying some more. The hotels and the local economy generally should be happy. Greater hotel profitability (and the hotels have been complaining for ages that they have been losing profitability) can only benefit the wider economy. Or so the theory might go.
The practice is a different matter. Higher prices and so greater profitability from all-inclusives do not mean wider benefits. Nor do they mean longer and more stable employment contracts. Nor do they mean that seasonality is lessened. And nor do they mean that the improvements to hotel stock and to resorts will be effected in the ways that the regional government had hoped when it passed the 2012 tourism act.
Everything in the tourism garden is rosy, but the roses are emitting fragrances that obliterate only temporarily the smells of decay. The rosy rose bushes of the tourism industry cannot disguise the thorns that attack the vulnerable and exposed parts of the industry, and one of these, ironically, is what might be perceived as an industry strength - the almost 300,000 hotel places in Mallorca.
Safe and reliable, Mallorca's reliability is founded in part on its capacity. For all that Croatia is now a competitor and no longer undermined by strife, it can compete only partially; it doesn't have the capacity. So surely Mallorca's capacity must be a strength. It is, but only if one adheres to the notion of tourism that is sharply divided between the glass slipper and slipping over broken glass. Magalluf is managing to demonstrate this divide. It is intended as a benchmark for modernised, transformed and beautified four and five-starring, but how can it truly ever be when glass is shattered along the strip within screaming distance of a five-star palacete playing host to Cinderellas and Prince Charmings bejewelled with the ostentation acquired from a Gucci store on Moscow's Tverskaya?
The rose garden conceals the compost of resorts grown old and too many hotels in need of radical facelifts. The tourism act was meant to have tackled this, but will it? There is many an observer who would aver that Mallorca simply has too many hotels and too many hotel places. They can't all be transformed. To remodel the industry in the shape of a glass slipper demands taking broken glass to the capacity and slashing it, but then what? Loss of jobs, loss of further business in a complementary sector already battered by all-inclusive and the conspicuously low consumption that comes with excess capacity?
It all looks so good. And for now, let's be thankful that it is. But then thinking about now has long been a Mallorcan failure. There's a whole tourism future that too few people have seen. But what will come as a shock to the blind is that the future is already here. It all looks so good but only because there are parts of the world which are suffering from an absence of goodness.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
The Futility Of Banning: All-inclusives
There is a Facebook page entitled "BAN ALL Inclusive". It asks: "Why would anyone wish to spend there (sic) holiday in all inclusive holiday in Mallorca!!! It's beautiful here get out of the hotel and enjoy 'your' time on this beautiful island. This was the original destination for the package holiday for millions".
The page hasn't attracted a great deal of liking, which may be because it hasn't been that visible on Facebook. In terms of sentiment, however, there is little doubt that there would be a significant level of liking, but this is not the first type of all-inclusive protest page which has appeared on social media and it won't be the last.
Ban all-inclusive. Question. To whom does one address a demand for all-inclusive to be banned? Second question. Even if a Facebook page were to amass thousands of "likes", what would it achieve? The two questions tie in. A massive level of support for an all-inclusive ban would have to be demonstrated to decision-makers who matter. A talking-shop on the internet among mainly like-minded opponents of all-inclusive achieves nothing other than to reinforce these feelings of opposition.
There are other talking-shops, such as one that the Acotur business association sought to establish last year. They met (very few of them; bar owners, that is), talked for a time, realised that talk was all that would happen and did nothing more. As with talk of bans, protests, of whatever sort (and no one has ever come up with a good one) are pretty pointless.
Even with a massive amount of support for a Facebook page, a ban will never happen. It cannot happen. Just as the market drove the popularity of all-inclusive, so it would have to be the market which would drive a loss of popularity and the eventual demise of all-inclusive. One can argue that the market for all-inclusive wasn't created by customer demand, but that it is an historical argument. Today's tourism market has such demand and it shows no sign of going away or of lessening.
The only stakeholders who matter under a hypothetical all-inclusive banning scenario are those stakeholders without whom there would be no all-inclusive - holidaymakers and tour operators. Other stakeholders matter less and in ever-reducing importance - hotels, local government, town halls.
It is the tour operators who, above all, have the greatest interest. One of them, First Choice, was made into an all-inclusive brand. It was the decision to undertake this branding which inspired a BBC report into all-inclusive in Mallorca two years ago. This has had a recent mention on the Facebook page I have referred to. Its message would still apply, and it was one, as an advisor to the programme, to which I contributed.
In that programme, a First Choice executive had to respond to a question about an advertising slogan which ran - "leave your wallet at home". There was an acceptance that this might not have been the most diplomatic of slogans, but it did of course sum up how all-inclusive is often perceived. This perception is one that tour operators try to modify. They say they offer trips out to local markets and so on, they point to their environmental commitments, they highlight the ecological soundness of their establishments and of local sourcing, they refer to local employment opportunities, but none of this convinces.
Tour operators make a great deal of their social responsibility and of how this operates in destinations, but their arguments are thin. And, one would presume, because tour operators aren't stupid, they know that these arguments are thin. Social responsibility is a broad concept, and acting in a truly responsible fashion does not include transporting people hundreds or thousands of miles only for them to occupy a certain amount of real estate for a fortnight and to do little else. This is one-way parasitic tourism and not the formerly two-way symbiosis between hotel and local community and economy. Its ethics are highly questionable.
To whom are tour operators responsible? Ultimately, to themselves and to their shareholders. Yet, for all that tour operators might be seen as the devil of the piece, they are not alone. Mallorca as a tourist destination is equally at fault.
The Facebook page inadvertently alluded to why Mallorca is at fault. "The original destination for the package holiday for millions." Exactly. And it was the destination for masses because of its cheapness. The island's tourism model is and was, from the 1960s, predicated on mass, but once the real cheapness of early years started to be replaced by less cheapness, by a more questioning approach to spending by tourists, to monetary union and to simple economics, keeping hold of the mass required the introduction of a package which promised or at least hinted at cheapness. And that was the all-inclusive: "leave your wallet at home".
You can't ban all-inclusive because it is the logical outcome of the tourism model. You can't ban it unless that model changes, and that will not happen. Just as a ban will never happen.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The page hasn't attracted a great deal of liking, which may be because it hasn't been that visible on Facebook. In terms of sentiment, however, there is little doubt that there would be a significant level of liking, but this is not the first type of all-inclusive protest page which has appeared on social media and it won't be the last.
Ban all-inclusive. Question. To whom does one address a demand for all-inclusive to be banned? Second question. Even if a Facebook page were to amass thousands of "likes", what would it achieve? The two questions tie in. A massive level of support for an all-inclusive ban would have to be demonstrated to decision-makers who matter. A talking-shop on the internet among mainly like-minded opponents of all-inclusive achieves nothing other than to reinforce these feelings of opposition.
There are other talking-shops, such as one that the Acotur business association sought to establish last year. They met (very few of them; bar owners, that is), talked for a time, realised that talk was all that would happen and did nothing more. As with talk of bans, protests, of whatever sort (and no one has ever come up with a good one) are pretty pointless.
Even with a massive amount of support for a Facebook page, a ban will never happen. It cannot happen. Just as the market drove the popularity of all-inclusive, so it would have to be the market which would drive a loss of popularity and the eventual demise of all-inclusive. One can argue that the market for all-inclusive wasn't created by customer demand, but that it is an historical argument. Today's tourism market has such demand and it shows no sign of going away or of lessening.
The only stakeholders who matter under a hypothetical all-inclusive banning scenario are those stakeholders without whom there would be no all-inclusive - holidaymakers and tour operators. Other stakeholders matter less and in ever-reducing importance - hotels, local government, town halls.
It is the tour operators who, above all, have the greatest interest. One of them, First Choice, was made into an all-inclusive brand. It was the decision to undertake this branding which inspired a BBC report into all-inclusive in Mallorca two years ago. This has had a recent mention on the Facebook page I have referred to. Its message would still apply, and it was one, as an advisor to the programme, to which I contributed.
In that programme, a First Choice executive had to respond to a question about an advertising slogan which ran - "leave your wallet at home". There was an acceptance that this might not have been the most diplomatic of slogans, but it did of course sum up how all-inclusive is often perceived. This perception is one that tour operators try to modify. They say they offer trips out to local markets and so on, they point to their environmental commitments, they highlight the ecological soundness of their establishments and of local sourcing, they refer to local employment opportunities, but none of this convinces.
Tour operators make a great deal of their social responsibility and of how this operates in destinations, but their arguments are thin. And, one would presume, because tour operators aren't stupid, they know that these arguments are thin. Social responsibility is a broad concept, and acting in a truly responsible fashion does not include transporting people hundreds or thousands of miles only for them to occupy a certain amount of real estate for a fortnight and to do little else. This is one-way parasitic tourism and not the formerly two-way symbiosis between hotel and local community and economy. Its ethics are highly questionable.
To whom are tour operators responsible? Ultimately, to themselves and to their shareholders. Yet, for all that tour operators might be seen as the devil of the piece, they are not alone. Mallorca as a tourist destination is equally at fault.
The Facebook page inadvertently alluded to why Mallorca is at fault. "The original destination for the package holiday for millions." Exactly. And it was the destination for masses because of its cheapness. The island's tourism model is and was, from the 1960s, predicated on mass, but once the real cheapness of early years started to be replaced by less cheapness, by a more questioning approach to spending by tourists, to monetary union and to simple economics, keeping hold of the mass required the introduction of a package which promised or at least hinted at cheapness. And that was the all-inclusive: "leave your wallet at home".
You can't ban all-inclusive because it is the logical outcome of the tourism model. You can't ban it unless that model changes, and that will not happen. Just as a ban will never happen.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
From Malia To Magalluf
Over a fifteen-year period I was a regular visitor to Greece. Andros, Mykonos, Skiathos, Symi, Rhodes, Zakynthos, Crete, to name some islands. Over those fifteen years, little really changed. The islands remained mostly unspoiled. It never seemed as though there were masses of tourists. Even in 1986, a resort such as Laganas in Zakynthos was capable of being described as "quiet".
The last time I went was 1988, and something happened. It was at Heraklion airport in Crete. A fight broke out. There was total mayhem. It had been caused by a group of lads who were totally off their faces. They were British. Something happened because something had changed.
Twenty-five years on and a British teenager is in jail in Crete, accused of stabbing to death another teenager in Malia. It, along with Faliraki in Rhodes, Kavos in Corfu and Laganas, became the total antithesis of what a Greek island resort and holiday had once been, and now its reputation is well and truly sealed.
The stabbing in Malia occurred only a few days after the second anniversary of the stabbing to death of a British teenager in Laganas. That stabbing was the culmination of hostilities between locals and young British tourists. The circumstances behind the stabbing in Malia were different, but the two cases bear, in aspects of their reporting, some similarities.
I have two reports, both from "The Guardian" and by the same journalist, Helena Smith. The actual details of the two incidents are not what interest me so much as the background to them. In Malia, as well as in Laganas, local people have had enough and are taking matters into their own hands, which can mean even greater trouble. In both resorts, there is a recognition that they - the Greek people - have to assume some responsibility for the situations that have arisen. They have to accept some blame for tourism developments that have occurred, for tourism having become, in the words of the police chief in Laganas, "seriously toxic".
The similarity, though, which is the most striking is that which apportions blame beyond that which the tourists or the locals have to assume. This is Laganas in 2011: "Every night there's a fight, someone gets beaten up. Tour operators are to blame; all they are interested in is getting the kids drunk." This is Malia in 2013: "Locals have looked on aghast as holidaymakers, egged on by tour operators or commission-seeking reps, have encouraged the bad behaviour." "Tour operators put pressure on hoteliers to drop their prices because they say it is the only way of attracting more people, and the result is tourists get younger and younger."
A solution to the problems in Laganas is to improve infrastructure and focus on a better-quality tourism. Mention of this solution gives you an indication as to where I am heading, if you haven't already guessed. Improvements to infrastructure? Better-quality tourism? Sound familiar?
The solutions for Mallorca's "problem" resorts of Magalluf and Playa de Palma are identical to those proposed in Laganas. The circumstances of these problem resorts are not, however, quite the same. Both resorts are that much older than the Greek resorts. They are also resorts where, before even the days of Club 18-30, drunkenness among tourists was not exactly unknown. Whereas the Greeks may have been naïve when they allowed resorts to be changed as they were in the 1980s and may well have been unaware as to what they might be letting themselves in for, the Mallorcans should have been fully aware. Perhaps they were, but they still went along with the tour operators - yes, the tour operators, who should admit for once that they are a very major part of the problem - and so now reap what they sowed many years ago.
But the solutions will solve everything, won't they? Get rid of the low-grade tourist, the youthful binge-drinker, and everything will be fine. Except. In Faliraki, they did exactly what many would like to be seen done in Magalluf. There was a massive crackdown on bad behaviour ten years ago. The young tourists stopped going, but they weren't replaced. So now, businesses there want the youth back again.
Unfortunately for the likes of Palma town hall's Alvaro Gijon, who sees salvation in four or five-star hotels and a different class of tourist, there is simply no guarantee that Playa de Palma (as with Magalluf) will be able to replace what it wants to rid itself of. Will the tour operators be able to make this guarantee? Ask the locals in Malia and see what they think. Or Faliraki.
References:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/28/bar-stabbing-crete-british-tourist-tide
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/15/grief-and-anger-over-stabbing-of-british-teenager-robert-sebbage
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/decline-faliraki-after-10-year-clean-up-2103167
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Index for July 2013
All-inclusives - 9 July 2013, 15 July 2013, 29 July 2013
Andratx fire - 28 July 2013
Auryn and boy bands - 30 July 2013
Balearic Symphony Orchestra - 8 July 2013
Balearics new water resources plan - 6 July 2013
Bullfight protest in Muro - 3 July 2013
Disenchantment among expatriates and home owners - 27 July 2013
Eldorado - 7 July 2013
Es Trenc hotel project on hold - 18 July 2013
Expatriate Island - 13 July 2013
Expatriates and the royal baby - 24 July 2013
Franco and artist Eugenio Merino - 19 July 2013
Jaume Matas sentence reduction - 25 July 2013
José Ramón Bauzá: Spanish premier? - 23 July 2013
Mariano Rajoy and illegal payments - 10 July 2013, 11 July 2013, 16 July 2013
Moors and Christians elections in Pollensa - 22 July 2013
Opinion poll and the Partido Popular - 2 July 2013
Pollensa Festival - 17 July 2013
Problems in resorts - 1 July 2013, 31 July 2013
Record tourism season - 12 July 2013
Residential tourism and holiday lets - 20 July 2013
Sa Pobla history and saints - 14 July 2013
Son Serra de Marina - 21 July 2013
Tourist dress protocol - 26 July 2013
Tourist infrastructure investments - 4 July 2013
Town hall consortium - 5 July 2013
The last time I went was 1988, and something happened. It was at Heraklion airport in Crete. A fight broke out. There was total mayhem. It had been caused by a group of lads who were totally off their faces. They were British. Something happened because something had changed.
Twenty-five years on and a British teenager is in jail in Crete, accused of stabbing to death another teenager in Malia. It, along with Faliraki in Rhodes, Kavos in Corfu and Laganas, became the total antithesis of what a Greek island resort and holiday had once been, and now its reputation is well and truly sealed.
The stabbing in Malia occurred only a few days after the second anniversary of the stabbing to death of a British teenager in Laganas. That stabbing was the culmination of hostilities between locals and young British tourists. The circumstances behind the stabbing in Malia were different, but the two cases bear, in aspects of their reporting, some similarities.
I have two reports, both from "The Guardian" and by the same journalist, Helena Smith. The actual details of the two incidents are not what interest me so much as the background to them. In Malia, as well as in Laganas, local people have had enough and are taking matters into their own hands, which can mean even greater trouble. In both resorts, there is a recognition that they - the Greek people - have to assume some responsibility for the situations that have arisen. They have to accept some blame for tourism developments that have occurred, for tourism having become, in the words of the police chief in Laganas, "seriously toxic".
The similarity, though, which is the most striking is that which apportions blame beyond that which the tourists or the locals have to assume. This is Laganas in 2011: "Every night there's a fight, someone gets beaten up. Tour operators are to blame; all they are interested in is getting the kids drunk." This is Malia in 2013: "Locals have looked on aghast as holidaymakers, egged on by tour operators or commission-seeking reps, have encouraged the bad behaviour." "Tour operators put pressure on hoteliers to drop their prices because they say it is the only way of attracting more people, and the result is tourists get younger and younger."
A solution to the problems in Laganas is to improve infrastructure and focus on a better-quality tourism. Mention of this solution gives you an indication as to where I am heading, if you haven't already guessed. Improvements to infrastructure? Better-quality tourism? Sound familiar?
The solutions for Mallorca's "problem" resorts of Magalluf and Playa de Palma are identical to those proposed in Laganas. The circumstances of these problem resorts are not, however, quite the same. Both resorts are that much older than the Greek resorts. They are also resorts where, before even the days of Club 18-30, drunkenness among tourists was not exactly unknown. Whereas the Greeks may have been naïve when they allowed resorts to be changed as they were in the 1980s and may well have been unaware as to what they might be letting themselves in for, the Mallorcans should have been fully aware. Perhaps they were, but they still went along with the tour operators - yes, the tour operators, who should admit for once that they are a very major part of the problem - and so now reap what they sowed many years ago.
But the solutions will solve everything, won't they? Get rid of the low-grade tourist, the youthful binge-drinker, and everything will be fine. Except. In Faliraki, they did exactly what many would like to be seen done in Magalluf. There was a massive crackdown on bad behaviour ten years ago. The young tourists stopped going, but they weren't replaced. So now, businesses there want the youth back again.
Unfortunately for the likes of Palma town hall's Alvaro Gijon, who sees salvation in four or five-star hotels and a different class of tourist, there is simply no guarantee that Playa de Palma (as with Magalluf) will be able to replace what it wants to rid itself of. Will the tour operators be able to make this guarantee? Ask the locals in Malia and see what they think. Or Faliraki.
References:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/28/bar-stabbing-crete-british-tourist-tide
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/15/grief-and-anger-over-stabbing-of-british-teenager-robert-sebbage
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/decline-faliraki-after-10-year-clean-up-2103167
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Index for July 2013
All-inclusives - 9 July 2013, 15 July 2013, 29 July 2013
Andratx fire - 28 July 2013
Auryn and boy bands - 30 July 2013
Balearic Symphony Orchestra - 8 July 2013
Balearics new water resources plan - 6 July 2013
Bullfight protest in Muro - 3 July 2013
Disenchantment among expatriates and home owners - 27 July 2013
Eldorado - 7 July 2013
Es Trenc hotel project on hold - 18 July 2013
Expatriate Island - 13 July 2013
Expatriates and the royal baby - 24 July 2013
Franco and artist Eugenio Merino - 19 July 2013
Jaume Matas sentence reduction - 25 July 2013
José Ramón Bauzá: Spanish premier? - 23 July 2013
Mariano Rajoy and illegal payments - 10 July 2013, 11 July 2013, 16 July 2013
Moors and Christians elections in Pollensa - 22 July 2013
Opinion poll and the Partido Popular - 2 July 2013
Pollensa Festival - 17 July 2013
Problems in resorts - 1 July 2013, 31 July 2013
Record tourism season - 12 July 2013
Residential tourism and holiday lets - 20 July 2013
Sa Pobla history and saints - 14 July 2013
Son Serra de Marina - 21 July 2013
Tourist dress protocol - 26 July 2013
Tourist infrastructure investments - 4 July 2013
Town hall consortium - 5 July 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
The Return Of The Package Holiday
Arguments there are as to who was responsible for the invention of the package holiday and arguments there are also as to the package holiday's place in today's tourism sun, but it shows little sign of being unpackaged. Quite the contrary in fact.
Mr. Thomas Cook didn't really invent the package holiday. It was a package excursion to Loughborough on Mr. George Stephenson's new-fangled steam contraption that he first offered in 1841 to a group of temperance sorts; not quite the same thing as a package holiday, therefore. Horizon Holidays can probably lay claim to having pioneered the package over a hundred years later.
It was the package holiday and pretty much exclusively the package holiday that gave rise to Mallorca's tourism boom. Oh that tour operators could wind the clock back to those golden days when there was no such thing as direct booking, no such thing (or very little thing) as the independent traveller, and no such airline entrepreneur as Stelios or Mick O'Leary.
The tour operators have spent the past roughly twenty years fighting a good fight in the name of the package holiday, while at the same time doing their own pandering to the independently minded. They have maintained a defence of the package holiday, rejected the claims that it was a thing of the past and have recently argued that its day has returned; not that it ever went away.
Reports over the winter that the package holiday was firmly back in favour carried the message that the package was enjoying a renaissance, but in fact the same thing has been said for several years. This time, however, there is strong evidence to suggest that the renaissance is genuine; the package holiday is well and truly back in fashion.
There are various reasons why the package holiday is flavour of the tourism month and season once more: it is a safer option; it is more diverse and so more sophisticated; it is cheaper or at least gives the impression of being cheaper because of its fixed-price nature. There is a lot to be said for these reasons. To take one, the safer option, one only has to cast one's mind back to when that unpronounceable volcano in Iceland went off in 2010 to appreciate that the package does have advantages; the poor buggers who had travelled independently and who were stranded in Mallorca were left in a right old pickle trying to sort out accommodation.
There are other reasons. One is the all-inclusive. Its onward march has come about partly because the tour operators needed to be able to say there was something new about the package holiday. And what better was there than a package holiday that really was a package: the whole package and nothing but the whole package. With holidaymakers attracted to the convenience of the all-inclusive, why would they then bother piecing together their own holiday and so suffering inconvenience in order to enjoy convenience? It didn't make a great deal of sense, even if there are still those who insist on seeking cheaper arrangements by travelling independently.
The latest Eurobarometer of tourism attitudes, a survey conducted annually on behalf of the European Commission, confirms the revival of the package holiday and supports findings by Spanish surveys of this revival in key tourist destinations, such as Mallorca. But other than this confirmation, the Eurobarometer reveals other findings, one of them being the fact that the all-inclusive package actually lost ground last year. The fall was only slight and the trend towards all-inclusive varied between tourists from different countries, but among the Germans, as an example, is was down by two percentage points.
This finding does not represent a reason for those who detest all-inclusive to jump for joy. But then there is a further finding in respect of "other types of package travel", i.e. those that are not all-inclusive. The increases were really very significant, just as significant as the falls in the purchasing of separate parts of the tourism package (those by independent travellers). Among the French, for instance, the increase was over 30%.
So yes, the package holiday is very much back in favour but, and contrary to expectation, it isn't the all-inclusive that is bringing it back into favour. This may just reflect what is on offer to tourists from different countries or it may reflect something else, namely that the tour operators haven't got it completely right and that, while holidaymakers are turning to the package holiday again, they are turning to the traditional one.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Mr. Thomas Cook didn't really invent the package holiday. It was a package excursion to Loughborough on Mr. George Stephenson's new-fangled steam contraption that he first offered in 1841 to a group of temperance sorts; not quite the same thing as a package holiday, therefore. Horizon Holidays can probably lay claim to having pioneered the package over a hundred years later.
It was the package holiday and pretty much exclusively the package holiday that gave rise to Mallorca's tourism boom. Oh that tour operators could wind the clock back to those golden days when there was no such thing as direct booking, no such thing (or very little thing) as the independent traveller, and no such airline entrepreneur as Stelios or Mick O'Leary.
The tour operators have spent the past roughly twenty years fighting a good fight in the name of the package holiday, while at the same time doing their own pandering to the independently minded. They have maintained a defence of the package holiday, rejected the claims that it was a thing of the past and have recently argued that its day has returned; not that it ever went away.
Reports over the winter that the package holiday was firmly back in favour carried the message that the package was enjoying a renaissance, but in fact the same thing has been said for several years. This time, however, there is strong evidence to suggest that the renaissance is genuine; the package holiday is well and truly back in fashion.
There are various reasons why the package holiday is flavour of the tourism month and season once more: it is a safer option; it is more diverse and so more sophisticated; it is cheaper or at least gives the impression of being cheaper because of its fixed-price nature. There is a lot to be said for these reasons. To take one, the safer option, one only has to cast one's mind back to when that unpronounceable volcano in Iceland went off in 2010 to appreciate that the package does have advantages; the poor buggers who had travelled independently and who were stranded in Mallorca were left in a right old pickle trying to sort out accommodation.
There are other reasons. One is the all-inclusive. Its onward march has come about partly because the tour operators needed to be able to say there was something new about the package holiday. And what better was there than a package holiday that really was a package: the whole package and nothing but the whole package. With holidaymakers attracted to the convenience of the all-inclusive, why would they then bother piecing together their own holiday and so suffering inconvenience in order to enjoy convenience? It didn't make a great deal of sense, even if there are still those who insist on seeking cheaper arrangements by travelling independently.
The latest Eurobarometer of tourism attitudes, a survey conducted annually on behalf of the European Commission, confirms the revival of the package holiday and supports findings by Spanish surveys of this revival in key tourist destinations, such as Mallorca. But other than this confirmation, the Eurobarometer reveals other findings, one of them being the fact that the all-inclusive package actually lost ground last year. The fall was only slight and the trend towards all-inclusive varied between tourists from different countries, but among the Germans, as an example, is was down by two percentage points.
This finding does not represent a reason for those who detest all-inclusive to jump for joy. But then there is a further finding in respect of "other types of package travel", i.e. those that are not all-inclusive. The increases were really very significant, just as significant as the falls in the purchasing of separate parts of the tourism package (those by independent travellers). Among the French, for instance, the increase was over 30%.
So yes, the package holiday is very much back in favour but, and contrary to expectation, it isn't the all-inclusive that is bringing it back into favour. This may just reflect what is on offer to tourists from different countries or it may reflect something else, namely that the tour operators haven't got it completely right and that, while holidaymakers are turning to the package holiday again, they are turning to the traditional one.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
The Brave New World Of Tourism Products
Holidays have long ceased to be a simple matter of promoting a resort, a hotel and a flight. In fact, one could argue that none of these are that important any longer. Holidays are all about selling specific needs, aspirations and lifestyles. The selling is no longer directed at one homogeneous market, that of the typical family breadwinner who, in the past, would consult with his or her spouse as they pored over a brochure in which the choice was all but uniform. This selling can be directed at single people, adults-only, gay people, those people on limited or all but unlimited budgets, older or younger people, and at the very young; children never used to be heard when the decisions were made about holidays, now theirs is the loudest voice.
The days of merely heading off to sunny Spain and praying to God that the Clarkson Dan-Air Comet would deliver you in one piece are long, long gone. Were there any marketing sophistication applied by the pioneering tour operators, it was limited to conceiving an unsophisticated travelling consumer according to socioeconomics. The ABC classification could as easily have also been an Alpha to Epsilon system lifted from Aldous Huxley. Alphas would end up in a three-star palace with running water and a pool, the Epsilons would be herded into a starless hovel where, assuming there was any water, it would be doubly fortunate if water in a sink was actually capable of disappearing down the plug hole.
Nowadays, this simplistic classification has been superseded by innumerable segments. There is no one holidaymaker, other than the holidaymaker who conforms to whatever system of segmentation a tour operator wishes to adopt in selling a niched holiday. Ah but, is it not the tour operator selling on the basis of what the holidaymaker-consumer demands?
Unquestionably, holidaymakers are vastly more sophisticated and demanding than was once the case. Also unquestionably, tour operators engage in massive amounts of market research in determining how they might position their holidays. But is it really true that tour operators respond to demand?
The holiday offer is now a bewildering array of products. Branded in one way, branded in another, niched for this consumer group and for that. Holidays have become like technology, little of which over the past thirty years or so has actually met a stated need. Did anyone actually ever say that they needed a Sony Walkman or a PC? They got them not because of demand but because of wherewithal, that created through miniaturisation and the microprocessor. The product came first, not the demand.
The best example of tour operator product that highlights marketing dissembling on behalf of tour operators is the all-inclusive. It is in response to consumer demand, they insist. Yes, now it is. But it didn't used to be. Tour operators, and some hoteliers, looked on what Club Med was doing, nicked the concept and moulded it. The product came first. And product is what all-inclusive is. It is not a paragon of customer-driven virtuousness.
A consequence of all this alleged demand, trend-monitoring, segmentation etc. is that tour operators are creating multiple product lines to meet what they maintain are the specific needs of all those groups I identified above. But they are still products, and in the classic marketing mix, it is product that dominates at the top of the marketing pyramid. It is supported by the lavish promotion and to a lesser extent, depending on the target market, by price. At the bottom comes the place, and this is the crux of this development. The destination is no longer important. It is the product that matters, and the tour operators select the place - the island, the resort, the hotel - not the consumer, as he or she has already decided that he or she wants a particular product. And this can be seen no better than in TUI's marketing. Its Family Fly 4 segment, the typical, rather old-fashioned family holiday group, is now overwhelmingly offered in Turkey. The Balearics are way down. But then Fly 4 Friends, a newer group for those seeking fun and activities, are shepherded mainly to the Balearics - Mallorca and Ibiza.
What all this means is that, in a similar way to all-inclusives having made specific destinations immaterial, so will the new products of the tour operators. Resorts will become repositories for certain market segments. It is tourism engineering on a grand scale, one that will lead to resorts needing to conform to the demands of the product and, in the process, shed themselves of idiosyncrasy and individualism. It is the brave new world of tour operator product.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The days of merely heading off to sunny Spain and praying to God that the Clarkson Dan-Air Comet would deliver you in one piece are long, long gone. Were there any marketing sophistication applied by the pioneering tour operators, it was limited to conceiving an unsophisticated travelling consumer according to socioeconomics. The ABC classification could as easily have also been an Alpha to Epsilon system lifted from Aldous Huxley. Alphas would end up in a three-star palace with running water and a pool, the Epsilons would be herded into a starless hovel where, assuming there was any water, it would be doubly fortunate if water in a sink was actually capable of disappearing down the plug hole.
Nowadays, this simplistic classification has been superseded by innumerable segments. There is no one holidaymaker, other than the holidaymaker who conforms to whatever system of segmentation a tour operator wishes to adopt in selling a niched holiday. Ah but, is it not the tour operator selling on the basis of what the holidaymaker-consumer demands?
Unquestionably, holidaymakers are vastly more sophisticated and demanding than was once the case. Also unquestionably, tour operators engage in massive amounts of market research in determining how they might position their holidays. But is it really true that tour operators respond to demand?
The holiday offer is now a bewildering array of products. Branded in one way, branded in another, niched for this consumer group and for that. Holidays have become like technology, little of which over the past thirty years or so has actually met a stated need. Did anyone actually ever say that they needed a Sony Walkman or a PC? They got them not because of demand but because of wherewithal, that created through miniaturisation and the microprocessor. The product came first, not the demand.
The best example of tour operator product that highlights marketing dissembling on behalf of tour operators is the all-inclusive. It is in response to consumer demand, they insist. Yes, now it is. But it didn't used to be. Tour operators, and some hoteliers, looked on what Club Med was doing, nicked the concept and moulded it. The product came first. And product is what all-inclusive is. It is not a paragon of customer-driven virtuousness.
A consequence of all this alleged demand, trend-monitoring, segmentation etc. is that tour operators are creating multiple product lines to meet what they maintain are the specific needs of all those groups I identified above. But they are still products, and in the classic marketing mix, it is product that dominates at the top of the marketing pyramid. It is supported by the lavish promotion and to a lesser extent, depending on the target market, by price. At the bottom comes the place, and this is the crux of this development. The destination is no longer important. It is the product that matters, and the tour operators select the place - the island, the resort, the hotel - not the consumer, as he or she has already decided that he or she wants a particular product. And this can be seen no better than in TUI's marketing. Its Family Fly 4 segment, the typical, rather old-fashioned family holiday group, is now overwhelmingly offered in Turkey. The Balearics are way down. But then Fly 4 Friends, a newer group for those seeking fun and activities, are shepherded mainly to the Balearics - Mallorca and Ibiza.
What all this means is that, in a similar way to all-inclusives having made specific destinations immaterial, so will the new products of the tour operators. Resorts will become repositories for certain market segments. It is tourism engineering on a grand scale, one that will lead to resorts needing to conform to the demands of the product and, in the process, shed themselves of idiosyncrasy and individualism. It is the brave new world of tour operator product.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
The Stigmas Of Stacey: Magalluf
Zante's Lagana Beach, Crete's Malia, Mallorca's Magalluf. What do they have in common? They have all been, at different times, flavour of the month for a media desperate to wring whatever sensationalism it can from a drink-sodden youth passed out on a pavement.
They are only three. There are others. And like the British media despatches its packs of journalistic wolves in order to gorge on the bodies that have collapsed under the volume of industrial quantities of what can sometimes be industrial alcohol (as in Zante, for instance) or have taken to a night sky and plunged several floors onto rock-hard concrete, so the media in other countries scavenges for its own stories of sex, drink, drugs and very little rock 'n' roll. Which resort has the reputation for being the drunkest? Not Magalluf. It's Lloret de Mar, and Lloret is where French and Italian youth go to lay into each other. Do the Germans know anything about antics in Magalluf? Not really. They know about Arenal instead; Arenal, where German neo-Nazi skinheads set about black bar workers.
Welcome to the world of tourist post-modernism. Once upon a time, in pre-modern days, Cliff Michelmore introduced an ignorant audience to the attractions of Med resorts. Like Magalluf. They were new, exciting and innocent. Presenters and presentation styles changed along with the modern days of increased familiarity with the resorts. And now the post-modernist age has arrived, one in which the travelogue has been swapped for the reality-show appeal of a camera crew hastily racing to a scene of tourist Sodom and Gomorrah, observed by a girl from Luton who has displaced the Lorraine Chase of long ago (not that Lorraine actually came from Luton).
Poor, naïve Stacey Dooley. She has investigated the already investigated. She could as easily have gone off to Malia, though why would she have needed to bother? It is ten years since Sky put out "Sex On The Beach", a documentary which highlighted the drinking binges and sexual promiscuity of young British holidaymakers. Somewhere was needed for Stacey to go to, and as Magalluf has acquired current media flavour-of-the-month status, Magalluf it was.
Stacey's efforts have been a triumph of unearthing the already known. The lesser known she revealed was that the mayor of Calvià isn't a magician - he admitted to not being one - but then mayors rarely are magicians. The greatest problem she presented to a world already in possession of the facts was that of the mugging prostitutes and their organised-crime pimps. You don't actually need the aid of a shoulder-held video camera to observe their activities; just place yourself on a convenient terrace and you can do so live. Manu Onieva's apparent insouciance may reflect the fact that the professional criminal gangs are a Guardia matter, not one that the local police can handle.
The known knowns about Magalluf have been known for long enough. They may have become more exacerbated knowns, but then who helps to make them so? The Staceys of this media world. And will her investigation make any difference? Possibly it will in that it will increase Magalluf's popularity. Bad publicity? Free publicity. All publicity is etc., etc.
Magalluf is popular with the youth end of the tourism market precisely because of Stacey's stigmas (well, not the prostitutes or death by balcony fall perhaps). Magalluf, like Malia, Lagana, Arenal, Lloret and others, and for youth from different European countries (so please, no singling out of the British alone), is popular as it is represents a rite of passage. It is a location for National Disservice in the name of getting laid, getting drunk and getting admitted to hospital. It is an initiation that becomes habit until such time as youth realises it no longer is youth.
You reap what you sow. How did Magalluf become like Magalluf? Only partly because youthful tourists made it so. But they are mere agents of others' designs, included among whom are tour operators. Ever since Club 18-30 was first conceived (and so the history of such organised alcohol and sex-fuelled youth tourism is now heading towards middle age), tour operators have jumped onto the bandwagon, recognising a fruitful means of filling aircraft and hotel places. Magalluf has been a collective exercise in the exploitation of the easily and willingly exploitable - the youth. And the consequence is what you have, to which one pointless solution is to change its name. Sorry, you can take the dirty water out of the name of Magalluf, but - unless the resort's transformation involves the whole resort - you won't take the dirty dancing, drinking and sex out of the resort.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
They are only three. There are others. And like the British media despatches its packs of journalistic wolves in order to gorge on the bodies that have collapsed under the volume of industrial quantities of what can sometimes be industrial alcohol (as in Zante, for instance) or have taken to a night sky and plunged several floors onto rock-hard concrete, so the media in other countries scavenges for its own stories of sex, drink, drugs and very little rock 'n' roll. Which resort has the reputation for being the drunkest? Not Magalluf. It's Lloret de Mar, and Lloret is where French and Italian youth go to lay into each other. Do the Germans know anything about antics in Magalluf? Not really. They know about Arenal instead; Arenal, where German neo-Nazi skinheads set about black bar workers.
Welcome to the world of tourist post-modernism. Once upon a time, in pre-modern days, Cliff Michelmore introduced an ignorant audience to the attractions of Med resorts. Like Magalluf. They were new, exciting and innocent. Presenters and presentation styles changed along with the modern days of increased familiarity with the resorts. And now the post-modernist age has arrived, one in which the travelogue has been swapped for the reality-show appeal of a camera crew hastily racing to a scene of tourist Sodom and Gomorrah, observed by a girl from Luton who has displaced the Lorraine Chase of long ago (not that Lorraine actually came from Luton).
Poor, naïve Stacey Dooley. She has investigated the already investigated. She could as easily have gone off to Malia, though why would she have needed to bother? It is ten years since Sky put out "Sex On The Beach", a documentary which highlighted the drinking binges and sexual promiscuity of young British holidaymakers. Somewhere was needed for Stacey to go to, and as Magalluf has acquired current media flavour-of-the-month status, Magalluf it was.
Stacey's efforts have been a triumph of unearthing the already known. The lesser known she revealed was that the mayor of Calvià isn't a magician - he admitted to not being one - but then mayors rarely are magicians. The greatest problem she presented to a world already in possession of the facts was that of the mugging prostitutes and their organised-crime pimps. You don't actually need the aid of a shoulder-held video camera to observe their activities; just place yourself on a convenient terrace and you can do so live. Manu Onieva's apparent insouciance may reflect the fact that the professional criminal gangs are a Guardia matter, not one that the local police can handle.
The known knowns about Magalluf have been known for long enough. They may have become more exacerbated knowns, but then who helps to make them so? The Staceys of this media world. And will her investigation make any difference? Possibly it will in that it will increase Magalluf's popularity. Bad publicity? Free publicity. All publicity is etc., etc.
Magalluf is popular with the youth end of the tourism market precisely because of Stacey's stigmas (well, not the prostitutes or death by balcony fall perhaps). Magalluf, like Malia, Lagana, Arenal, Lloret and others, and for youth from different European countries (so please, no singling out of the British alone), is popular as it is represents a rite of passage. It is a location for National Disservice in the name of getting laid, getting drunk and getting admitted to hospital. It is an initiation that becomes habit until such time as youth realises it no longer is youth.
You reap what you sow. How did Magalluf become like Magalluf? Only partly because youthful tourists made it so. But they are mere agents of others' designs, included among whom are tour operators. Ever since Club 18-30 was first conceived (and so the history of such organised alcohol and sex-fuelled youth tourism is now heading towards middle age), tour operators have jumped onto the bandwagon, recognising a fruitful means of filling aircraft and hotel places. Magalluf has been a collective exercise in the exploitation of the easily and willingly exploitable - the youth. And the consequence is what you have, to which one pointless solution is to change its name. Sorry, you can take the dirty water out of the name of Magalluf, but - unless the resort's transformation involves the whole resort - you won't take the dirty dancing, drinking and sex out of the resort.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, November 19, 2012
When Tourism Promotion Becomes An Obligation
So, bookings are already well up for holidays in the Balearics next summer, an increase achieved with the help of little promotional effort by the Balearic Government's tourism ministry. There has to be a moral to this story, and the simplistic one is that the individual islands are strong and resilient enough brands not to require a great deal of promotional effort.
I say simplistic, but this doesn't mean that the conclusion is entirely wrong. While competition to the Balearics has grown, one should place oneself in the shoes of the ordinary holidaymaker (British) who has to decide on next year's holiday destination. Of European destinations, there are several to choose from. The holidaymaker knows about these other destinations, he will probably have seen promotions for them all, but he still decides on Mallorca or another Balearic island despite an absence of promotion. Why?
One reason is the strength of the brand and what it represents. There is much to be said for a brand that has attributes of reliability and security as well as sun and beach. Mallorca is like a Volvo. You know what you're going to get, you know it won't go wrong and you know it'll be safe. The choice may not be original, but originality long disappeared from the decision-making choice of the ordinary holidaymaker. Everywhere does sun, beach, bars, culture, sports. There is little that can be claimed as unique. Throw in, for the British holidaymaker, a stronger pound and relatively short travel times to Mallorca, and the decision isn't so difficult.
This rosy picture doesn't mean that promotion can be neglected, but one of the benefits of economic crisis has been a far greater appreciation as to how promotional euros should be spent. Tourism minister Delgado gets it in the neck for the paltry amounts that are on offer for promotion, but he has defended the ministry's budget by saying that there is greater imagination and less waste. It has taken time for the penny to drop, but three years ago when there was a general wailing and gnashing of teeth because of cuts to promotional funding, I said: "slash the budget even more and then make them think how they can make their money work harder".
There is more imagination that could be shown, especially when it comes to the use of social media, but I am willing to defend Delgado. He is not in thrall to a need to unearth celebrities and to pump funds into expensive advertising as former ministers (and presidents; well one certainly) were. If government coffers were stuffed with cash, he may well fall into the same trap, but he should be given credit for recognising that promotion does not have to mean a rubbish advert with Nadal on a boat.
Because of the high volume of tourism in 2011 and 2012 and the anticipation of a similar volume in 2013, the temptation exists to simply sit on laurels and expect tourists to turn up regardless. They may well do, but, and despite financial constraints, this is no reason to scale back promotion to the point where one day they may not; brand reliability or not. And one aspect of promotion that shouldn't be neglected is that of tour operator collaboration.
Joint promotional efforts with tour operators have been a staple of the tourism marketing mix for Mallorca and the Balearics. Their importance may be overstated as tour operators are not about to not invest in promotion when they have huge numbers of holidays to sell. The government can take the attitude that the promotion will be done anyway, but joint promotion is more than simply a marketing exercise; it is a recognition of the mutual benefits that tour operator-government relationships bring. In a sense, government financial support is like a subsidy to the tour operators, and though this sounds dodgy in a competition sense, it isn't. Indeed, there is more reason than ever for such joint promotions to be reinforced.
Mallorca and the tour operators face a similar issue in that the nature of tourism markets has changed to the extent that it has. Once upon a time, the market that Mallorca sold to was fairly homogeneous; it was primarily a northern European one that had one wish - sun. The message, though customised by language, was the same. This is no longer the case. There are now that many more markets, all of them more fragmented in terms of media and consumer sophistication or expectation, which provide competition to Mallorca and that many more markets which Mallorca has to promote to. For the tour operators, there are that many more markets to be promoted.
It may seem as if Mallorca is being held to ransom in having to chip in, but it isn't anything of the sort. The tour operators provide Mallorca's lifeblood, and the government shouldn't forget this. Peculiar though it will sound, there is a moral as much as an economic obligation to joint promotions.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
I say simplistic, but this doesn't mean that the conclusion is entirely wrong. While competition to the Balearics has grown, one should place oneself in the shoes of the ordinary holidaymaker (British) who has to decide on next year's holiday destination. Of European destinations, there are several to choose from. The holidaymaker knows about these other destinations, he will probably have seen promotions for them all, but he still decides on Mallorca or another Balearic island despite an absence of promotion. Why?
One reason is the strength of the brand and what it represents. There is much to be said for a brand that has attributes of reliability and security as well as sun and beach. Mallorca is like a Volvo. You know what you're going to get, you know it won't go wrong and you know it'll be safe. The choice may not be original, but originality long disappeared from the decision-making choice of the ordinary holidaymaker. Everywhere does sun, beach, bars, culture, sports. There is little that can be claimed as unique. Throw in, for the British holidaymaker, a stronger pound and relatively short travel times to Mallorca, and the decision isn't so difficult.
This rosy picture doesn't mean that promotion can be neglected, but one of the benefits of economic crisis has been a far greater appreciation as to how promotional euros should be spent. Tourism minister Delgado gets it in the neck for the paltry amounts that are on offer for promotion, but he has defended the ministry's budget by saying that there is greater imagination and less waste. It has taken time for the penny to drop, but three years ago when there was a general wailing and gnashing of teeth because of cuts to promotional funding, I said: "slash the budget even more and then make them think how they can make their money work harder".
There is more imagination that could be shown, especially when it comes to the use of social media, but I am willing to defend Delgado. He is not in thrall to a need to unearth celebrities and to pump funds into expensive advertising as former ministers (and presidents; well one certainly) were. If government coffers were stuffed with cash, he may well fall into the same trap, but he should be given credit for recognising that promotion does not have to mean a rubbish advert with Nadal on a boat.
Because of the high volume of tourism in 2011 and 2012 and the anticipation of a similar volume in 2013, the temptation exists to simply sit on laurels and expect tourists to turn up regardless. They may well do, but, and despite financial constraints, this is no reason to scale back promotion to the point where one day they may not; brand reliability or not. And one aspect of promotion that shouldn't be neglected is that of tour operator collaboration.
Joint promotional efforts with tour operators have been a staple of the tourism marketing mix for Mallorca and the Balearics. Their importance may be overstated as tour operators are not about to not invest in promotion when they have huge numbers of holidays to sell. The government can take the attitude that the promotion will be done anyway, but joint promotion is more than simply a marketing exercise; it is a recognition of the mutual benefits that tour operator-government relationships bring. In a sense, government financial support is like a subsidy to the tour operators, and though this sounds dodgy in a competition sense, it isn't. Indeed, there is more reason than ever for such joint promotions to be reinforced.
Mallorca and the tour operators face a similar issue in that the nature of tourism markets has changed to the extent that it has. Once upon a time, the market that Mallorca sold to was fairly homogeneous; it was primarily a northern European one that had one wish - sun. The message, though customised by language, was the same. This is no longer the case. There are now that many more markets, all of them more fragmented in terms of media and consumer sophistication or expectation, which provide competition to Mallorca and that many more markets which Mallorca has to promote to. For the tour operators, there are that many more markets to be promoted.
It may seem as if Mallorca is being held to ransom in having to chip in, but it isn't anything of the sort. The tour operators provide Mallorca's lifeblood, and the government shouldn't forget this. Peculiar though it will sound, there is a moral as much as an economic obligation to joint promotions.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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