Lemon Tree

My first, for want of a better description, "business mentor" liked to describe things as a lemon. He was one of the mid-European Jews who fled the Nazis and ultimately created a thriving business in England - and no, he wasn't Robert Maxwell. He would say to me: "all you end up viz, Endy, is a lemon." He used it primarily in connection with market research and especially surveys and questionnaires, and the fact that their results added up to little or to mixed messages from which you could divine little - hence the lemon. A later sort-of mentor, one time the youngest professor of marketing in the UK, would have disagreed. Indeed he once sent me a stiff memo taking me to task for an editorial about the function of market surveys. He did, though, know a thing or two about market research and questionnaires; in fact, he wrote the book, or one of them at any rate.

Lemons and function of surveys came to mind as I looked at the questionnaire for tourists from Pollensa town hall. I suspect that one function, if not the function, is that of market research as PR; being seen to be attempting to engage with the tourist by, God forbid, asking for his or her opinion. Fair enough, but what do they do with the results, if anything. A clue may lie with the word "may". At the top of the questionnaire it says that "this may help us to improve our service". Not will, but may. The questionnaire, or a variant thereof, has been doing the rounds for a few years now. Have results ever been published or acted upon? Maybe they have, in which case it would be nice to know where and how. You know that highly publicised but highly useless tourism website for Pollensa - www.pollensa.com - that might be a good place. Don't hold your breath.

Setting aside the misspelling of accommodation (one "m") and the presence of the dubious "professionality", the questionnaire is not wholly weak. It uses the "grade from 1 to 10" style to ask about things that can, I guess, be graded, e.g. "quality of beaches", though which ones is another matter. But some of it ... . The visitor is, for example, asked to grade "food shopping facilities", "non-food shopping facilities" and then "staff professionality", presumably of these food and non-food shopping facilities. Why? And what is going to happen if that "professionality" is deemed to be low? Is someone going to issue a stern reprimand to the check-out girls at Eroski or a sales assistant in a souvenir shop? And how exactly is one supposed to respond to the request to grade the "price/quality ratio of installations in your accomodation" (sic)? What does it mean anyway?

What do they do with answers yes or no to "have you noticed any changes since your last stay". It would be hugely surprising if there hadn't been any changes; it's pointless. Or ... "did you know that the island has its own language and culture?" "Which one?" It may not be unreasonable to ask about the language, but culture? Cultures exist everywhere; it's a daft question. I could go on.

If the town hall was serious about finding out about tourists' views, they would regularly book rooms in hotels, invite tourists along with the incentive of buckets of free sangria and spend an hour doing some sort of focus group. But in truth, they don't need to. If they bothered to go to the internet sites, they would find much of what they need to know. And then still not do anything with the information.

Lemons? It's the whole tree.


Postcards from Mallorca
And so the article yet again did not appear in "The Bulletin" - the one about Alcúdia bar owners and all-inclusives. I give up, though I reiterate that I personally am not bothered if it is chosen to appear or not. But to add salt to the wound of the apparent indifference and the publicity given to Calvia bar owners, yesterday's paper had a page devoted - once more - to John bloody Bercow and one to something called the Deyá (aka Deià) postcard. How many British residents are registered in Deià? 74. How many in Alcúdia? 874.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Echo & The Bunnymen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLX_6WwXFUI. Today's title - well, go on take your pick as to this one.

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