It's All The Same

The association of hotel chains has been meeting with the tourism minister. A council of war rather than a convivial chinwag, one imagines. Reports are now filtering through as to hotels that are likely to close shortly in different parts of the island. The meeting though is about next year and also more generally about changes to tourism in times of crisis - that is part of the heading of the discussion theme.

One assumes, indeed one hopes that there is rather more substance to the talks than the blindingly obvious points that have been reported in the press: the need to maintain and revitalise the principal tourism markets of Spain, UK and Germany; to consolidate the secondary markets such as France; to capture emerging markets like Russia; to diversify the tourism offer especially for the low season (golf, marine, sport, businesses); to exploit further the internet and to create more professional promotion campaigns. I could have saved them a meeting. You could have saved them a meeting. We know all this. What we also know is that it is all meant to already be happening.

How many talking shops does an industry need? How many talking shops talking the same stuff? The Spanish Government's tourism ministry and promotional wing, the Balearic Government's tourism ministry and promotional wing, the tourism foundations on the islands, the hotel groups, the business associations. It all amounts to much of the same, repeated time and time again. We know all this. What we don't know is what actually anyone really does about it.

There is something deeply flawed about a meeting that has to address changes to tourism in times of crisis. Flawed because the meeting should have taken place before any crisis emerged. Much business and management theory is garbage, but there are elements of it which are common sense and important as a means of getting people to think, especially to think ahead. Take SWOT analysis. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. It is ancient in terms of management theory and practice, but it is extremely useful. Think threats, and what should the tourism industry have been preparing itself for? The financial meltdown may not have been predictable, but recession was, as were factors such as deleterious exchange rates, lower spend, competition, terrorism, health scares, changes in tourism requirements. Has there ever been any planning for such eventualities?

Following on from yesterday, it has occurred to me that the President of the Balearic Government could make some sweeping changes to how the government is organised. Not just by some rationalisation of departments, but along different lines. He makes himself minister of tourism for a kick-off. Why? For the simple reason that tourism is the island's strategic industry; it is the island. All these bodies doing all this talking, but there needs to be one lead voice, and that should be at the head of government. As for other ministries, they should serve that strategic importance. The whole lot of them should be in effect subservient and guided to the goal of maximising tourism potential.

It may not be a specifically Balearics issue, but a strong, tourism-focussed first minister should be telling Madrid to stop messing around with things that can only be seen as fundamentally harmful to tourism, such as the outrageous retrospective tax on foreign boat charters. (Harmful that is unless you believe in discrimination, protectionism and swingeing financial penalties - someone should take the Spanish Government to Brussels.) All this is doing is driving operators away to where there is no such tax, i.e. everywhere else. And this in an area seen as important for diversification - marine tourism.

There is an absence of, to use a cliché, joined-up government to support the vital strategic industry that is tourism. An absence of an overarching command and plan for that industry; it may be strategic but it lacks a compelling strategy, clearly set out and with a strong vision that might come from a leader with the guts to make things happen. President Antich should declare a sort of "pronunciamento", a benign coup of governmental change, aimed at bringing all those talking shops into a sharply focussed governmental structure in which he commands the tourism future while also establishing an office of the president with a brief for coming up with blue-sky non-tourism diversification.

There you are. My blueprint. Don't worry. It isn't about to be implemented. But maybe something like it should be. Rather than the regional government merely being a mini-me of central government, why should it not be organised around what is the vital interest of the island as opposed to simply apeing something else?


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Depeche Mode, "Useless", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3nQU4f92l8. Today's title - this is pretty obscure, but you never know. It comes from a late 60s album by one of the very best of the west-coast bands. Terrific riff and drum solo. Who?

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