Glittering Prizes: Tourism awards

It's that time of the year. Out of mothballs come the dicky bows and cummerbunds, the evening gowns and the tiaras (not I suppose that a tiara is ever in mothballs, but you get my drift). The awards ceremony season is upon us. The season for self-congratulation and honours. The glittering occasions for the great and good.

There are some awards you'd think they'd rather keep a bit quiet. Like Christmas bonuses being awarded to bankers, prizes for the local tourism industry might seem like bad PR. In fact, they did keep them rather quiet, as in, while the Fomento del Turismo awards event was reported, there was no mention as to who had actually been presented with the gongs. Even the Fomento's own website was silent on the matter.

The Fomento, aka the Mallorca Tourist Board, is a strange organization in that it is private, not a government body. Indeed it has at times suffered from less than marvellous relations with government, but this year there was tourism minister Joana Barceló together with the board's president and the winners. The photos proved that there were winners after all, but you would need to recognize them to know who they were.

Being unable to put names to them, there is no alternative. We're just going to have make our own up. The tourism awards to honour the outstanding year that 2010 has been. There are plenty of new categories this year, which demonstrate that 2010 has been a year of genuine innovation. So here goes ...

The Guinness Book Of Records Award to the shortest-serving tourism minister in history. And the winner was ... Yes, Miguel Ferrer. 58 days in office. Sufficient time for his having been able to announce how bold he was going to be during the 18 months he would have at tourism's helm, only to be told to take his pen and clear off when he and the rest of his Unió Mallorquina party were shown the governmental door.

The Saddest Former Tourism Minister of 2010. It went to ... Miguel Ferrer. He was seen walking his dog in the streets of Alcúdia not long after his dismissal. He wandered down the Calle Mayor, past the town hall building where only a short time before he had reigned supreme as the town's mayor. Now out of two jobs, it was symbolic that the doors of the town hall were firmly shut.

The Whistling In The Dark To Keep Up Spirits Award was handed, as every year, to the Spanish national statistics office for its tireless efforts in producing tourism spend information that made everyone realize that things were much better than they thought.

The Ant and Dec I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of This Promotion Award was graciously accepted by Rafael Nadal whose luxury boat in which he cruised around the islands of the Balearics ("these islands of joy" went the advert) ran aground when the tourism ministry ran out of dosh.

(Following the presentation to Nadal, there was a musical interlude when a Corrs tribute act performed the advert's song. If it wasn't they who had done the original, it didn't half sound like them.)

The David Attenborough Award for Natural Phenomena in a Tourism Context was handed to the country of Iceland, which served to prove how effective a small bit of God-forsaken ice and rock in the North Atlantic can be in bringing the entire tourism industry to a halt.

The FIFA Award for Moral Certitude went to the Balearics own tourism ministry for having made anti-corruption investigation the islands' one growth industry, thus providing a legacy of which the ministry can be proud.

And a special, last-minute presentation, the Throwing A Sicky 'Cos We Only Earn Some 400 Grand A Year Award, was sheepishly received by Spanish air-traffic controllers and was met with rapturous applause when they were swiftly also handed notice of disciplinary proceedings.

All in all, a year of great achievement, and after the awards event all those attending went back to their hotel. Booking one had been a little difficult as there were hardly any open, but one was found and suitably enough it was of course all-inclusive.

Here's to an even better 2011.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.