Keep Helping Yourselves

So, to what should have been the surprise of no one, it has been discovered that the tourism ministry has no legal means by which it can ban self-service alcohol in the all-inclusive dens of iniquity in Magalluf. Why did anyone believe that it could be banned? What goes on inside hotels is a matter for hotels, unless there are specific proscriptions or regulations. Allowing the punters to help themselves to bottles of free vodka is one of them.

Still, you have to hand it to the town hall in Calvia for wishing to apply pressure in the movement towards tighter regulation of all-inclusives, something which is all but non-existent. Apropos the self-service alcohol, the ministry said that law regarding all-inclusives is "generic". It is generic to the extent that there is barely any mention of it in the tourism law.

What will Biel Barceló, the tourism minister, write into law regarding all-inclusive? Anything? Or is he too busy flying the flag of the eco-tax and encountering all those who wish to tear the flag down? To whom can now be added Thomas Cook. CEO Peter Frankhauser has gone further than Jet2's Steve Heapy in attacking the tax. He has left no room for doubt. "Tourists will stop coming to the Balearics if they have to pay one or two euros more a day."

Frankhauser and chairman of the Thomas Cook board, Frank Meysman, have been in Palma, explaining how the tour operator has invested 25 million euros into its "star destination" of Mallorca and praising the island for the qualities that make it the leading destination it is: safety, quality, taxation, variety of offer, sun and beach, and a positive price-to-quality ratio. Note the reference to taxation.

Tour operators lining up against the tax is nothing new. The minister who was responsible for the original eco-tax, Celesti Alomar, pointed out recently that there had been a concerted and co-ordinated effort that involved tour operators and hoteliers to undermine the old tax. It was as though he was surprised that there would have been anything other than an effort to stop it.

Someone else who has been speaking recently is the vice-president for real estate at Meliá Hotels International, Mark Hoddinott. In an extensive interview for "Hosteltur", a variety of topics were discussed, including all-inclusive and the nature of the non-hotel complementary offer in Magalluf. Hoddinott spoke of the urgent need to break a "vicious circle" by which bars don't invest in changing themselves or improving themselves because they don't believe there is the demand to do so, by which he was referring to the continuation of a customer profile that Hoddinott notes is changing, largely because Meliá is changing it.

It's chicken and egg of course. There has to be more of the up-market clientele, many of them not in all-inclusive, in order to convince bars to change. Or is that the bars have to first change in order to attract the clientele? Whichever way round it is, the Meliá vision does not include tables of all-inclusive self-service Rushkinoff. Or at least, you would imagine that it wouldn't.