If Mallorca Were Really Like Trinidad

Where would we be without Wikipedia? Forget the dangers of putting Google into Google and breaking the internet, if you were to type Wikipedia into Wikipedia, the world would come to an end.

Apropos of very little, I happened the other day to enquire about the Balearics in Wikipedia. The most interesting bit was to do with how organisations like the IMF spend their time. You might think the IMF would be dashing across the globe with suitcases of notes to help bail out basket-case economies, but no, it does something altogether more important. And it's not just the IMF. The Spanish national statistics office as well; it's at it. Not content with coming up with useless information on how much tourists spend (or don't), the statistics office, together with the IMF, so says Wikipedia, which cites them as sources, are figuring out where Mallorca and the Balearics are comparable with.

On the scale of pointless exercises, this is one that leans towards the "nul point", but nevertheless I feel it incumbent upon me to let you know that the Balearics are like Trinidad and Tobago and also the Bahamas, while not of course forgetting East Timor.

It's all a matter of size, where T&T are concerned: the same or similar land area to the Balearics. The economy equates to that of the Bahamas and population to that of East Timor (aka Timor Leste). Why the IMF and the stats people bother drawing up these comparisons is anyone's guess. Perhaps it's some sort of work experience task for geography, economics and demographics internees. You wouldn't imagine that the head of the IMF is spending much time calculating the relative land masses of individual island groups, or maybe Christine Lagarde is.

Up to a point, I feel slightly insulted, and that's because I have previously compared Mallorca to Essex in terms of size. Maybe I should go on to Wikipedia and add this information, as it seems more relevant than a comparison with Trinidad. I mean, it's not as though you get many tourists from Trinidad. Essex, on the other hand ... .

But if Trinidad it is, what would it mean if Mallorca were really like Trinidad? Well, for a kick-off there would be more of a Carnival than the half-hearted affairs you normally get and so a bit of a plus point for the off-season tourism. And tourism wouldn't be promoted by Nadal on a boat but by Brian Lara on a sun-kissed, palm-lined beach playing cricket while happy, smiling locals drink milk straight from the coconut. Hmm, sun-kissed, palm-lined; sounds a bit familiar, I suppose, though whether they have the red beetle palm plague in Trinidad I couldn't honestly say.

And thanks to Lara, the Sa Pobla Cricket Club wouldn't have a grass-less field but a stadium welcoming the Barmy Army (more tourism of the drinking class, but, boy, can they put it away) rather than playing host to the All Essex Secondhand Car Dealers Veterans XI.

Apart from Carnival, cricket, calypso and a lot more curry, if Mallorca were really like Trinidad and were genuinely blessed by having one very important natural resource, it would be in a lot better place than it currently is, because, and to continue a recent theme, what has Trinidad got that the Balearics don't and that many would hope it doesn't have? Yep, you guessed it. Oil. Oil and gas. Oil by the barrel load. Oil and gas equate to 40% of GDP. They haven't worried too much if there is the odd refinery on the landscape. Rather than Port of Spain, it's a bit like Port Talbot.

The comparisons that the IMF and the statistics office give out could as easily put the Balearics on a par with Trinidad and Tobago in terms of GDP; it's how the GDP is comprised that matters. But in an uncertain future, what should it rather be? Tourism or oil?

This is not the first time I have, pretty much by accident, stumbled across a Mallorca is like somewhere comparison. It happened back in June (22 June: "The Weaver's Tale") when I looked at Mauritius and its textile industry. And the point about Mauritius was that the government there set out a deliberate strategy to diversify the economy, with textiles forming an important part.

Trinidad got lucky. It had the oil. Tourism is more important to Tobago and both islands benefit from it, but the diversification underlines the fact that island economies, such as Mallorca's, cannot rely so heavily on one industry and one so geared to only a part of the year. If Mallorca were really like Trinidad, it would be Carnival all year.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Source Of Inspiration: On popular tourist destinations

I have a problem with journalists and writers who do not cite sources. It is a problem that has been exacerbated ever since the lazy writer or one desperate to knock off a few hundred words in order to meet a fast-approaching deadline took to using Wikipedia and other sites as get-out-of-jail cards, sometimes using verbatim what can be found on the internet with not a mention of or an acknowledgement as to the source.

Easy it may be to cobble something together with the aid of Google and the cut and paste commands, but it is short-changing not only the reader but also the writer him or herself. Some while ago, I drew attention to the apparent lifting of text from the home page of puertopollensa.com by a journalist writing in "The Sun". It was bad form and it was also a derogation of the journalistic art. For the journalist or other writers, words - his or her own - are the stock-in-trade. Even paraphrasing shows some attempt at originality, but what amounts to plagiarism is nothing of the sort and "in journalism, plagiarism is considered a breach of journalistic ethics". Where does this quote come from? Wikipedia of course.

One might argue that recourse to using chunks of text from websites is a way of working "smart". Really? I'm not sure that there's anything particularly smart about it. It's not smart, it's not big and it's not clever (and I think Steve Wright was the one who popularised the not big and not clever line, or rather popliarised, as he would have said - I can cite sources till the cows come home; and no, I don't know who came up with that saying. Look it up if you wish; on Wikipedia).

There is another type of non-acknowledgement, which is the unnamed or vague source. Sometimes this can be understandable, when someone prefers not to be named. Fair enough, and it happens all the time, as in, for example, "government sources said". But there are times when it is far less understandable, which brings me to where I really want to be today. In "The Bulletin" yesterday, the editorial referred to "an article in a top British newspaper over the weekend". Apparently this article revealed that Mallorca has slumped to the number eight spot of the "most popular destination(s) with British tourists". The editorial went on to use this as a means of beating the island's tourism. It may well indeed need a beating, but this is not the point. What is, is that because the source is not named, there is no way that the reader, myself in this instance, can check where the article came from or, as importantly, the context and rigour of the results. Well, I suppose one could by spending ages going through Google in the hope of unearthing it, which is in fact what I started to do, but to no avail.

Without being able to identify the source, the reader is left with an incomplete and potentially unreliable picture. There are, it may not have escaped your attention, any number of these "top ten" or "top one hundred"-style articles knocking around in the press. Some have a basis in research, e.g. that which is offered by the likes of ABTA, the tour operators and market research companies; others don't necessarily.

All I did manage to find when a-googling was an article from "The Daily Record", dated 14 July. This made the observation that western Mediterranean destinations are losing ground to those in the eastern Med and north Africa. But we know this anyway. What the article also revealed, seemingly based on what Co-operative Travel had to say and possibly contrary to the trend, was that the "predicted holiday destination hotspots" for 2011-2012 will be Turkey at number one and at number two ... The Balearic Islands. So much for a lack of popularity.

Maybe Mallorca is at number eight, and if so it is less than heartening news, but there can be all sorts of explanations as to why. If one doesn't know the source or the context, one cannot make a full judgement or at least be given the opportunity to make such a judgement. This is just one reason why sources should be acknowledged.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.