Does Anybody Really Know ... ?

What does one really know about the hotels? In the northern zone from Can Picafort to Pollensa, how many of them are there? 200 perhaps. The community lives alongside all this real estate, but for many they are a mystery. They are also the source of rumour, misinformation, untruths. Why? Because no one really knows about them. Sure, plenty of local people work in the hotels but even then what do they know. The huge hotels, such as Bellevue, are the stuff of Victorian novels - strange things go on, so one is led to believe, and they are shrouded in secrecy. Dare to enter a hotel in January and one could almost expect to find a mad Miss Havisham clad in shawls.

In my immediate area are Iberostars, a Viva, Alcúdia Pins and the luxury five-stars of the Palace de Muro and Parc Natural. Pleasure palaces all, occupying huge amounts of land, home to the transient tourist; impenetrable and aloof. The hotels are physically part of the community and communities but they are also not a part thereof. They themselves are transient, coming alive for a period and then lying still for the off-season, save for refurbishment. In winter the hotels have a brooding and almost sinister presence in a redundant landscape of imagined post-apocalyptic nothingness. They are part of the community but a community of summer strangers, and one of their choosing.

Were it not for the hotels, there would be no community or at least not as we know it, Jim. The communities have been built on hotels, none more so than Can Picafort and the tourism ghetto around The Mile. They are inescapable and omnipresent yet at the same time remote. They are local industry but they do not shape the sub-conscious of the community as would the factory of the factory town, as did the steelworks or the mine; they are in a permanent state of neutral indifference. They caused the communities but indulge them only insofar as the patronage of employment is extended.

When the BBC spoke with that director from Bellevue the other day, it was a rare example of a hotel being unveiled, if only very partially. Bellevue, perhaps more than any other single hotel in the area, holds an iconic position. I have said before that its status has long since gone beyond the confines of the complex; Bellevue is Alcúdia in the minds of many. It is for this reason that it has a responsibility to the wider community, yet it is not alone in holding such responsibility.

The hotels can well argue that they pay their contributions and create employment so why should they feel any need to engage more with their towns. It's a hard-nosed business position. The hotels' communication is with only a part of their constituency, with only some elements of their stakeholders if you like - customers and tour operators primarily. The immediate constituency, the community, save for its elected members at the town halls, is overlooked. What does only really know about them?

It isn't that one looks for some additional benevolence or philanthropy, gratifying though this might be. One looks for a community perspective. It is not as though the hotels are owned by distant multinational colossi; the hotel groups are Spanish, Mallorcan and even local to the towns. One might feel, therefore, that the hotels would see themselves as representatives of their communities, but to what extent do they? Just as the town halls seem ill-equipped to monitor what is said about the towns in various media, especially the internet, so - one suspects - are the hotels. Not in all cases; I know of instances where individuals at certain hotels do pay attention. But generally I would doubt it. The point though should not be lost; criticism of a hotel equates to criticism of the resort, certainly in the minds of many customers. It is this criticism that also informs the local community; informs and mis-informs as there is no mechanism to counter it.

When a group of traders in Can Picafort sought to bring an anti-competitive case against hotels operating on an all-inclusive basis, it was indicative of the degree to which the hotels and the community had split apart. When have the hotels ever sought to explain their policies or to adopt local public relations to at least try and mitigate the consequences of such policies? The communities have a right to know. If a hotel switches to all-inclusive, as happens, then of course it has an impact. But the local businesses are usually the last to know. By the same token, if a hotel reverts back to, say, half-board, this also has an impact. So much of this though is transmitted as rumour because the hotels do not engage with the communities. The hotels should be more transparent. They should be clear as to the scale of their various board offers, as to the real levels of occupancy. They should talk more to their communities. But they won't because they are a part of the community but also not a part.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Status Quo. No, sorry, you want a youtube, go look. Today's title - the rest of this title goes "what time is it"; which big American act (mainly the '70s) that dropped a public transport reference from its name?

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