Rearranging The Deckchairs: All-inclusives

In Calvia they have been rearranging the deckchairs while taking care not to slip on the red herrings trawled on to the deck. Tourism minister Jaime Martínez met with representatives of the tourist business associations and promised control of all-inclusives. A promise to control all-inclusives? Shouldn't such a promise be being greeted with fanfares in the media and spontaneous flash mob dancing in the streets?

Martínez was pow-wowing with the CPTB, the Balearics confederation of tourist business associations, an organisation belatedly formed in the hope that the good ship Complementary Offer, years ago holed below the surface by the icebergs of all-inclusive, can now be hauled into dry dock, patched up and sent off again to navigate its way through party boats and the pool parties and lakes of cheap alcohol in the grounds of the Clubs Allinclusivana. It was a ship that never sank but ran aground, idling on the rocks of the tourism sector, languishing in the shallows of its complacency and incapable of unifying its many disparate components - all the different tourist business associations - as a powerful tug to drag it back onto the high seas of battle with the hoteliers. As much as blame can be assigned to lack of regulation, to tour operator designs, to hotelier compliance and to tourist demand, so the complementary offer has to accept blame for all-inclusives as well. Years ago, its numerous associations with their own agendas and their own justifications for existence failed spectacularly in establishing a lobby to confront the highly professional one of the hoteliers and an organisation with one or two interlocutors to communicate with the regional government.

Even now, this confederation appears to be less than the sum of its parts. Who actually does its talking? The contrast with the hoteliers is great. Vázquez and de Benito; they are the hoteliers' federation. The tourism ministry and any other stakeholder in the tourism industry knows who they are dealing with. The complementary offer? 

And so to the meeting in Calvia and to the presence of the usual complementary offer suspects angling to have their photos taken so as to show that they are doing something, which generally amounts to no more than a chinwag. But, they can point to success. The minister's promise. Ah yes, the promise of control. Which is precisely?

Martínez says that there will be a register of hotels with an all-inclusive offer. This, one presumes, is what he was talking about a couple of months ago when he referred to an "analysis of the incidence" of all-inclusive. I've got news for him. Go on the internet, and you can register those hotels with ease. You might not get all the on-arrival upgrades, you might not get exact numbers of all-inclusive places that are optional, but you can get a pretty decent idea of the incidence. This said, it shouldn't be necessary. A tourism minister should already know and have long known what the incidence is. The need for a register confirms the ministry's ineptitude. It should damn well have this information anyway.

But having got the register, then what? How does it amount to "rigorous" control as it has been styled? It sounds like an exercise in information gathering without specified objectives. Hence, the deckchair rearrangement, a move that suits both ministry and confederation. Both can appear to be being proactive when the truth is that they have taken two decades to react.

One of these rigorous controls will, where Calvia is concerned, stop all-inclusive guests from taking food and drink off hotel premises. And how is this news? When the 2012 tourism law was enacted, this prohibition was something highlighted by the tourism ministry as one of its measures to tackle all-inclusives. Why are they now talking about Calvia? It's in the law; it is meant to be applied across the Balearics. So why isn't it?

The 2012 law also contains provisions that require all hotels to submit quality plans. Again, the ministry suggested that these plans would act as a means of elevating standards and service and so be a further measure to tackle all-inclusives. But the law did not stipulate what was expected of these plans or indeed what the outcomes would be once they were submitted, whenever this might be.

There is colossal legislative procrastination in the Balearics, and the tourism law is a prime example. The tourism decree that was issued last December fleshed out aspects of a law that had been approved two and a half years previously, but it failed to say anything about all-inclusives or to add to the demand for quality plans or the provision for out-of-hotel food-and-drink prohibition. So, in the absence of clear objectives, clear requirements for plans, clear implementation of law, we are left with the deckchairs.