A Certain Cachet? Puerto Alcúdia

Puerto Alcúdia has lost some of its cachet. Discuss.

The loss of cachet suggestion is not mine. It is that of the president of the recently formed Alcúdia Bay restaurant association. Before we delve too far into the suggestion, we do need to ask ourselves what is meant by cachet. Prestige is a reasonable alternative. Well, the Oxford English Dictionary (Concise version) says so, and I'm not about to disagree.

If Puerto Alcúdia has lost cachet, then when did it ever actually have it? And as much as the definition of cachet can be rather loose, so also can be a definition of Puerto Alcúdia. It is not one place.

Cachet that attaches itself historically to Puerto Alcúdia might be said to date back to the 1930s, to the original Golf hotel (and golf course) and to the seaplanes that dropped French tourists into the bay. It was shortlived, thanks to a somewhat unpleasant member of the military who was wedded to notions of arch-Spanishness and arch-Catholicism.

Of tourism-age cachet, there has been relatively little. Puerto Alcúdia is and has long been a resort for the mass, and it created for itself the environment in which this mass could enjoy the prestige that the resort has always enjoyed: a fabulous beach most obviously.

Cachet might also, in tourism terms, imply chic. But has Puerto Alcúdia ever been chic? Not really. Its near neighbour, Puerto Pollensa, might well claim this; at least in its past, along with a somewhat Bohemian reputation. It was Puerto Pollensa that acquired the cachet of celebrity visitor and party-goer (in the seventies and into the eighties) that Puerto Alcúdia didn't.

Puerto Alcúdia's cachet applies not to its purpose-built, anti-cachet tourism centre, some three kilometres out of the port area, but to the port area itself and also to the fact that, as a whole, it is a leading tourism resort. The prestige has been earned over decades, not because the resort is phenomenally attractive, but because it is highly functional; it serves a purpose, and does this rather well.

However, attractiveness and a fellow-travelling concept of ambience can distort this prestige/cachet estimation. And it's one of cachet found rather than cachet lost: there is many a current-day visitor who would argue that Puerto Alcúdia's port area is greatly more attractive/vibrant than its haughty neighbour, i.e. Puerto Pollensa. Perhaps so, but the argument is irrelevant. Difference is what counts, and point-scoring for relative chicness, cachet, prestige is completely pointless.

The Alcúdia Bay restaurant association does, though, wish to win back this cachet, whatever it might once have been. It wishes to make more dynamic Puerto Alcúdia's frontline and to bring quality tourism. It wishes this without the slightest hint as to what it means by more dynamic, without the slightest embarrassment that it might actually be offending tourists who are, by implication, not "quality" and by alluding to a past that is all but illusory.

To be fair, the association might be said to be responding to the criticisms that have emanated from the hotels, and not just in Puerto Alcúdia, which have accused the "complementary offer" of restaurants etc. of doing nothing to promote tourism and of leaving it to others to do so.

To this end, what has the association come up with? A guide. It appeared late into the season this year and it was, as is all too often the case with such guides, an exercise in amorphous repetition in that restaurants, side-by-side, proclaim the same "typical Mallorcan cuisine" or "speciality in meat" that leave the punter none the wiser and in no way incentivised by any sense of differentiation, and an exercise also in self-regarding delusion as to the importance of gastronomy to the tourism punter who perceives restaurants not as the be all and end all but as a necessary sub-text to the tourism experience.

The association will be establishing a "junta", a board which will drive its cachet-creating initiatives. The heart sinks. Another talking-shop of vested interests, ultimately inward-looking, believing that gastronomy is the way to the tourism stomach, when it should be part of a greater whole that promotes the resort. As should be the case with all resorts.

The association is right in one regard: that promotion should be local, local to resorts. Too much has been generic, for Mallorca, when resorts do mean different things - as between Puerto Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa. But if it were serious about greater dynamism, it would not be ghettoising itself into a gastronomic corner, but engaging with, and promoting with, all other sectors of the local tourism economy.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.


Index for October 2011

ABTA Convention, Palma - 5 October 2011, 6 October 2011, 7 October 2011
Adults-only hotels - 10 October 2011
Beach exploitation by hotels and Costas Authority - 17 October 2011
Bingo in hotels - 16 October 2011
Bishop of Mallorca and gay marriage - 29 October 2011
Britishness and integration - 8 October 2011
Camí de Ternelles walk - 22 October 2011
Catalonian and Balearic presidents meet - 28 October 2011
Foreign and local trips by Balearics politicians - 15 October 2011
Hotels in Mallorca, the big four - 11 October 2011
Industrial tourism - 27 October 2011
Land use and luxury developments - 21 October 2011
Magalluf redevelopment: Meliá Hotels International - 1 October 2011, 2 October 2011
Pirates-themed hotel in Santa Ponsa - 9 October 2011
Pollensa auditorium - 13 October 2011
Posters, tourism - 26 October 2011
Poverty in the Balearics - 25 October 2011
Publicity award, Barceló hotels and - 30 October 2011
Puerto Alcúdia's cachet and restaurant association - 31 October 2011
Real Mallorca, more crisis at - 4 October 2011
Senior tourism - 24 October 2011
Subsidies and flights to Mallorca - 12 October 2011
Sun, temperature and winter tourism in Mallorca - 14 October 2011
Theme park between Campos and Llucmajor - 20 October 2011, 23 October 2011
TUI, Russian tourism and Alexei Mordashov - 3 October 2011
Voting rights, expatriates and national election - 19 October 2011
Welsh Rugby World Cup defeat - 18 October 2011