All-Inclusive: What Are They Going To Regulate?

I once said that I would never write about all-inclusives again. It had all been said. There was nothing more to say. Over a period of what is now some ten years, thousands upon thousands have been the words I have produced. They have been in consideration of law, of markets, of tour operators, of hotels, of government, of customers, of historical development, of the "complementary offer", of the wider economy, of morality and ethics, of service, of quality, of economic crisis, of the futuristic concept of the "super all-inclusive", of the research findings from the university in Palma and from studies in different parts of the globe that have examined the effects of all-inclusive. Nothing more to be said. How foolish I was to presume that.

Politicians, government ones and town hall ones, have suddenly discovered all-inclusive. Where have they been for the past generation? Observers of different types keep discovering all-inclusive and keep saying the same things that have been said year upon year upon year, stretching back to the last millennium. Round and round and round it goes, a carousel of opinion being regurgitated from mouths that were long ago expressing the now hackneyed insights offered.

In the Balearics, Benidorm and the Canaries, politicians and others are hard at it, discovering the political and moral high ground to be gained by alluding to "regulation". At last, it is said. Where were they in the past? Where were they in Mallorca when the then president of the hoteliers federation (circa 2004, I don't recall the exact date) was making it abundantly clear that all-inclusive was the "future"? By then it was already the past as well. The johnny-come-latelys of the all-inclusive intervention industry attribute much of the "blame" to economic crisis, when this merely strengthened the offer rather than created it. Recession of the early 1990s, it might be argued, was when - in European terms, including Mallorcan - the creation occurred (Club Med and all that notwithstanding).

What are they going to regulate? How are they going to regulate? Out of the mouths of politician babes newly and innocently installed in government and town halls comes the regulation word. Regulation with its own regurgitative homophonic quality; they are all-inclusive sick all down the newly acquired bibs of office. Regional government, Calvia, Manacor. What are they going to regulate?

In Alcudia a party which stood at the municipal elections was one that had been largely born out of a desire to regulate all-inclusives. It has support from local bars. Its mayoral candidate was a bar owner. I know him well. He has my sympathy in his aims, but I have never got a satisfactory answer to the question - how? Town halls cannot regulate the type of board that a hotel offers. They have no competence in the matter; only the regional government can. In Benidorm, they have at least had the good sense to say that findings from the study that is to be undertaken into all-inclusive will be forwarded to the Valencia administration.

But there is a world of difference between saying the government can and saying that it will. Such is the harsh reality of modal verbs and of the market. Yes, the market. Remember that?

While the arrival of leftist coalitions has been the springboard for the renewed attention being given to all-inclusives, my guess would be that there are any number of all-inclusive critics who are otherwise firm advocates of market liberalism, a distinctly non-left philosophy: the market economy, the free market, and the adherence to it enshrined in national and European law as well as, in Spain, the Constitution. Is there to now be a pick 'n' mix of statist and market economies? Perhaps there should be. Yet already we have witnessed how the reality intrudes into statism as applied to tourism. Syriza. They were going to do this and that to all-inclusive. They very quickly changed their minds.

There is an article on the Hosteltur website by Antonio Garzón*. He is a regular writer on tourism issues and he also has a strong background in the hotel industry in the Canaries. He might be considered not entirely independent, therefore, but his article is worthy of attention as is the heading to the original article from his blog: "All-Inclusive, Electoral Slogan".

The thrust of his article is that the market decides, which is a simple enough theory. He posits the question - Is regulation of all-inclusive compatible with a market economy? Let me leave it to you to answer this, but in so doing you might take into account legal and market reasons why bans on, limits to, standards for, prices (through the artificiality of tax) demanded of all-inclusives would be devilishly difficult to impose. What are they going to regulate?

* http://www.hosteltur.com/112204_todo-incluido-espana-cinco-dilemas-si-se-quiere-regular.html