Strictly Themed: Hotels

P&O Cruises are to offer seven "Strictly Come Dancing"-themed voyages in 2013. One might just turn up in Palma. What an appalling prospect. It is bad enough that the local expatriate community appears to have forgotten that it isn't living in the UK and has turned Mallorca into Little Brucie Land, without Strictly groupies becoming orgasmic at the possibility of sighting Craig Revel Horwood on board a P&O, dickie round the neck, being terminally lovey while simultaneously spitting superficial venom.

Strictly has so consumed the every waking moment of expat lives that there is now no other topic of conversation, that there are now Strictly contests cropping up left, right and centre and that even a non-British-owned restaurant in Puerto Pollensa wishes to cash in on this obsession by staging its own Strictly evenings. Is there no end to this madness?

Sadly, I suspect that there isn't. P&O showing the way, how soon before a hotel or two on the island decides to become Strictly-themed?

Theming is likely to assume epidemic proportions. Hotels have realised that they can nick popular ideas or themes, dress themselves up to look the part, re-name themselves and, Brucie's your uncle, they've got themselves a themed hotel and a whole marketing opportunity. If it isn't Brucie, then it is Captain Jack or Long John Silver. The hotel that had been threatening to become pirates-themed is to carry out its threat. The Gran Santa Ponsa is now the Gran Santa Ponsa Pirates Village and will open its doors, or possibly its gangplanks, for the first time next year.

The saving grace with Pirates Village is that it is all-inclusive, which hopefully therefore means that its piratical inmates won't be taking themselves to the streets and so permit insufferable eight-year-olds to inflict on the rest of Mallorca an interminable stream of jokes that aren't jokes but which are lifted straight from a Robert Newton pirate pastiche that is now almost 60 years old. While children might be excused issuing a constant volley of "aaarhh" alleged gags, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, which excuses adults from doing the same. Any adult who does so should be forced to walk the plank, preferably in the deepest part of the Mediterranean where a commune of extremely hungry Great White Sharks has been gathered. That'll learn 'em.

The thing with theming, however, is that it has to be accurate. And Pirates Village isn't totally. For one thing, it will have a Mobby Dick section. Not Moby but Mobby. Someone should really tell them. They might also mention that Moby Dick doesn't really have an awful lot to do with pirates (though maybe Mobby Dick does; I really couldn't say). There is also the Francis Drake Palace. Some of you may know that Drake was a great English sea captain and vice-admiral who specialised in giving the Spanish regular thrashings. This is the English/British version of history. The Spanish, on the other hand, thought him to be a thoroughly disreputable sort; a pirate in fact. Pirates Village, from a Spanish perspective, may be accurate in affording Drake pirate status, but there may have to be some explaining going on to the British guests who consider him to have been anything but a pirate.

The Pirates Village does, nevertheless, represent some commitment in the form of hard cash for turning a previously unremarkable hotel into the stuff of the Caribbean. As such, there should be some congratulation. A Strictly theme is rather different. Yes, as far as P&O are concerned, there is an investment in Revel Horwood and whoever else they can haul on board, but the theme is very much self-liquidating; it is the punter who provides the theme.

From a business point of view, this isn't such a bad idea, and so other hotels might consider other themes: "X Factor", "Britain's Got Talent (in Mallorca)", for example. It would be no more than a massive karaoke, but if you get the paying customer to be the theme, then you win both ways; establish a theme and don't actually pay anything for it, save for a possible monetary prize or a cheap bottle of cava.

More exotic - if exotic is the right word, which it isn't - would be to borrow further from British telly. A "Coronation Street" or "Eastenders" themed hotel perhaps. As many British soap stars appear to spend most of their spare time in Mallorca, then they could be put to good use for once. And as Real Madrid have their own themed hotel in the Middle East and Barcelona appear to be going to get one of their own, why not a Man U or Chelsea themed hotel in Mallorca? All those replica kits need somewhere to go, so why not a hotel where all the wearers can compare shirts?

If none of these ideas are for you, then what about just going back to basics and having a Mallorca-themed hotel? A radical notion, I agree, but then Mallorca is Mallorca. The trouble would be knowing what a Mallorca-themed hotel would contain. Sadly, where most of Brit expat land is concerned, it would be Strictly.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.