The Last Days Of The Brochure

The hoteliers in the bay of Alcúdia clubbed together in order to produce a magazine for this summer season. Its name, unoriginally, is "Bahia". It's a nice enough publication, but why did they bother? Why, in this day and age, would you go to the trouble of introducing a new publication and printing it when all the information is or can be made available online?

The magazine forms part of a wider discussion of print versus digital for tourism and travel information, and with much of what is printed, it is a case of perpetuating what has existed for years. Longevity in printed form isn't in itself a strong reason for continuation, so there has to be another reason for still bothering with the printing presses, be the publication new or old. And that reason is a pretty simple one. Demand.

One of the more obvious types of tourism publication that would seem destined for being consigned to print history is the travel brochure. What's the point of it any longer? The information is readily available digitally and the holiday is readily bookable online. Moreover, the nature of the market is such that prices are flexible. Print is not flexible. Put a price on a holiday and no sooner is the brochure available than it is out of date.

The fact is, however, that, despite technological advances, the majority of holidaymakers still make bookings with the aid of a brochure. The majority may be dwindling to the point that it is becoming a minority, but roughly 50% of tourists (British ones, it should be pointed out) have yet to be convinced to abandon the brochure's traditional attractions.  

The demand is still there. But is it because half the population remain wedded to print and averse to the internet? That seems unlikely. More likely are the facts that brochures are of course free and that an armful of them make for a pleasant way to while away a wet winter's afternoon dreaming of summer sun. And there is the further fact that brochures, as with other publications, are physical and aesthetic comfort blankets in an age of constant media upheaval, change and innovation.

Not all old technology just fades away. Some of it, the more transient of technology, does. The Walkman is an example. It was usurped and no longer served any purpose. But print is not transient. It is so ingrained in the collective psyche and culture that it is most unlikely that it will ever fade away. There again, for all of those who remember the good old and much more straightforward days of brochure hunting and browsing, there are also those who have no such nostalgia: if it ain't digital, it ain't worth looking at.

Travel agencies are going to try their damnedest to ensure that the brochure doesn't go the way of all Walkmans. Without brochures, their businesses would be stripped of a large chunk of their reason for existing. But they may have to face up to realities. The brochure probably will fade away. And sooner rather than later.

With its passing would go years of travel tradition. And that tradition, where Mallorca is concerned, goes back to 1908, for it was in that year that the Mallorca Tourist Board produced its first brochure.

The decision to publish a brochure had been taken at the end of 1906. One reason why it took until July 1908 for it to appear was the cover. This required that someone did a painting. Faust Morell Bellet was the chosen painter, and he chose a scene of Palma as seen from El Jonquet. The brochure was printed in Switzerland, which may have been because the Swiss were well versed in the requirements of tourism; people used to go to Switzerland on their holidays back then.

It was printed in Castellano and French (an English version came out the next year), and the French version tells us what the prevailing notion of tourism was in 1908. Although Miquel Sants del Oliver had seen a future in summer tourism, the brochure proudly announced "Majorque, station d'hiver"; Mallorca, winter resort.

Other brochures followed, and they weren't all as lavish as the 1908 one. It had, after all, cost 2,816 Swiss Francs for 20,000 copies. The word "brochure" was in fact adopted to refer to a low-cost, reduced-quality publication. The first of these featured a grainy photo of the Caves of Drach on its cover. For its French audience, the brochure told them that the "ideal" winter resort of Mallorca was only 36 hours from Paris.

The future of the brochure hangs precariously from an ever shortening thread. When the thread finally snaps, all that will be left will be this nostalgia. One for the days when a photo meant a painter labouring long over one scene rather than the moments' effort of brightening, saturating and filtering with Photoshop.

Into The Blue: Brochure speak

"The bluest Mediterranean waters." "Enchanting coastal towns." "Roman ruins and incredible cuisine." Any guesses yet?

"Fiercely distinct (from the mainland) ... a language all its own ... sun-baked streets ... fine sandy beaches ... azure waters ... dream deeply on its white dunes." Where is this?

Well, it isn't Mallorca. It is in fact Sardinia. The version of Sardinia offered, that is, on the BBC's website by someone on behalf of "Lonely Planet". It could just as easily be Mallorca, were the description not for some specific peculiarities of Sardinia, because some of the features and more importantly the language used to describe them could apply to Mallorca equally as well. Indeed the language could be used to describe any number of places, and that's because the language is default brochure speak.

Shove a blue in as an adjective, consult a thesaurus for an alternative (namely azure), toss in a bit of sun baking, fine sand and dreaming, and bingo you have captured the imagination of the reader.

Is the reader really as unimaginative as this, though? And as unimaginative as the author? Possibly so. When it comes to descriptions of Mediterranean islands (as well as Caribbean islands, various other islands and Lord knows where else), all that's needed is a checklist of adjectives and features and a copy and paste command. The first rule of brochure speak is that thou must refer to blue waters (or turquoise waters, if you are feeling particularly creative).

It's understandable in a way. Assume, for a moment, that the reader lives in Barnsley (and this is not to pick on Barnsley). There is a general absence of much of the above, though possibly a language all its own might apply. It's a pretty simple procedure: depict somewhere that clearly isn't Barnsley, but make it as recognisable as possible, as the Barnsleyite will be familiar with the concept of blue, sandy and sun-baked (if only thanks to the telly), and he or she will be rushing to the nearest travel agent.

It makes not the slightest bit of difference, however, whether it is Sardinia or Mallorca. It could be anywhere. And this is the failure of brochure speak and of its some time fellow traveller, naff travel writing. The failure is a conformity of imagery, lexicographical laziness and a conspiracy of thesaurus, all of which assume the punter can think no further than blue, sandy and sun-baked.

But what purpose does it serve to describe waters as blue or bluest? This is the normal state for waters. It's why, for example, maps have great blobs of blue for sea. You grow up from a very early age aware that the sea is blue, or at least is denoted by blue, even if you have never seen it.

Maybe this is it, though. Brochure speak talks to the inner infant. It will be why much of it has never gone beyond the Janet and John level. It is the shared learning experience of the kindergarten and the primary school, and it is one that survives into adulthood and compels writers of all sorts, not just those producing brochures, to engage in a process of group identity. It is the comfort of a lack of descriptive strangeness.

This compulsion is so strong that it demands constant reinforcement even when the context doesn't demand it. You can barely move, in a textual sense, without being reminded that Mallorca is variously lovely, beautiful or paradise. Even if the context might demand it, the conformism of adjective and analogy is part of a fundamentalist movement that requires a liturgy to be repeated regularly.

The religiosity of the simple and repetitious brochure speak and descriptive groupthink brooks no argument. To suggest, for example, that Mallorca isn't paradise or to simply ignore its pretensions to being so by not even drawing the comparison is to run the risk of a figurative fatwa.

Not, however, that such speak has of necessity to be magniloquent. Not at all. There's simple and then there's simple. Fancy going to Sardinia (or Mallorca)?

"There's a load of sea, resorts with lots to see and do, bits of old ruin, some good nosh, they don't much like the Italians (Spanish) and they talk funny, it's bloomin' hot when you're out walking, the beaches are brill and you can fall asleep on the dunes." Actually you can't fall asleep on most of Mallorca's dunes, because they're off-limits now, but otherwise this says pretty much what you would get but in brochure speak. And there's no blue in sight.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Something's A Bit Fishy: Alcúdia and San Pedro

The San Pedro (Sant Pere / Saint Peter) fiestas kick off in Puerto Alcúdia tomorrow. The programme has a familiar feel to it - giants dancing, humans towering, demons running, San Pedro an-imaging and a-floating. The less familiar will be a "pirates" night party and Michael Jackson, or someone like him. It is, though, the very familiarity that makes one wonder as to the "brochure" that has been produced. Not for the first time, I have to question the expense of this promotion. I had questioned it B.C., but A.C. or D.C. if you prefer (after or during crisis), it should be questioned even more.

A fish. That's the brochure. Pages sprung together in the shape of a fish. Inevitably, it's only in Catalan. There may only be 15 pages of it, but the process of cutting it into the shape of a fish doesn't do a lot to limit costs. (I'm presuming it's been done with a custom die-cutter, and anything with the word "custom" when it comes to printing brings with it a premium.)

The result may well be different, but what's the point of it? If you are local, and especially local Mallorcan, who lives in Alcúdia or Puerto Alcúdia, you know full well when San Pedro occurs; you also know pretty much, with some exceptions, what the programme will comprise. Much of it is the same every year; same "events", same time, same day, same place. If you are local, but non-Catalan-speaking local, then the fish doesn't really address itself to you. If you are not local, but a visitor who hasn't a clue about Catalan, then you are deep-fried and battered into incomprehension. Always assuming you ever see a fish, which is unlikely.

At the tourist office in the port, they had a fish yesterday. One fish. Not several. Not a whole load. One. What they also had, and have had for about a week is a couple of A4 sheets in English, giving the programme. I should know because I did it for them. The tourist offices across Alcúdia and Pollensa and in Playa de Muro and Can Picafort also have these English sheets. The fish only appeared in the flesh, so to speak, yesterday.

I struggle to understand the impulse, especially during a period when belts are meant to be being tightened, to go to the trouble and expense of a fish. It's clever, of course it is. It's also well done. But this is not the point. And if you think that they haven't actually printed many, given that the tourist office had but one fish, then think again. A waiter at a nearby restaurant said there were a whole load of fish tossed into the entrance of his block of flats. Aimed at locals, but not visitors, one has to conclude. Perhaps if the tourist office had two fish, it could feed, via some miracle, the information appetite of a multitude of five thousand tourists. There again, I'm not sure if Saint Peter was involved in that particular gig.

Meanwhile in Muro, the bullfight on Sunday having been rained off, there is talk of hurriedly having to do a replacement poster for the re-arranged bull-off this coming Sunday. Bullfight posters, as much as the fight itself, have a symbolic power, but might they not just stick something over the existing one giving the new time. Not that they would need to, because anyone who plans on going will surely know anyway. Daft.

If you want to see the fish, you can download it here: http://www.ajalcudia.net/documents/santpere010.pdf. The English version is available on http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

You're Beautiful

Simon Jenkins, chairman of the National Trust as well as a former editor of "The Times", wrote about beauty in this week's Sunday version of the paper - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5907426.ece. Beauty as in scenic beauty, that is. Not a Renault style of beauty but that of the natural world. Beauty is something to be avoided; at least, the use of the word is avoided. That's his argument. You wouldn't know it: the adjective from the noun is not avoided hereabouts. It is positively over-used; in brochures especially. While Jenkins claims, rightly to a great extent, that the word beauty "borders on the politically incorrect", there is not the same sense of embarrassment among those who stuff local promotional material with the exaggeration of beauty and beautiful as there may indeed be among those responsible for the "catalogues of beauty" that Jenkins has "combed". Here a landscape, there a restaurant terrace: all is beauty and beautiful.

Though the word may have been proscribed in the UK, it is in the top ten of the thesaurus for the Mallorcan propagandist. So much is beautiful, that it can't all be. There again - in the eye of the beholder and all that. According to polls, states Simon Jenkins, 45% say that "natural surroundings" constitute beauty; 33% views. But there are natural surroundings and there are natural surroundings; there are views and there are views. The nature park of Albufera is natural - the map in "The Bulletin" even said so the other day ("the natural park"). Beautiful? I wouldn't have said so, and I live opposite. The point with Albufera is that it is flat and that there are whole loads of rushes; you can't actually see a great deal in order to determine whether it's beautiful or not. And if you look in the wrong direction, there's a dirty great power station coming into view. Some find beauty in industrial scenes, but industry is not what most would have in mind for Mallorca. The view across the bay of Alcúdia. Beautiful? In the distance, there's the other power station - the old one - that suggests otherwise, and then there is the occasional hulk anchored near to the port.

There's drama and then there is beauty, and I wonder if we don't confuse the two. Up in the mountains of the Tramuntana would be drama, but are the "natural surroundings" and the "views" beautiful? Ruggedness does not beget beauty. Or does it? Do beauty and beautiful always have to be refined, honed, shaped, richly-coloured? Can they be angular, chipped, grey? Jenkins observes that the National Trust opts for "chocolate box" shots for its photographs, and the reason it does is that they are "beautiful". The chocolate box top is saturated in the four-colour system, displays hues of vibrancy and regularity of scene: somewhere like Stourhead in autumn would qualify for the National Trust definition.

In official circles, beauty may be frowned upon, but it is still something that is easy to slip in. "Beautiful" is a default setting for those who peddle brochure talk. I'm wondering if it is possible, just conceivable that a brochure or a website could be written or constructed without beautiful or beauty, or also without pretty, awesome, lovely, wonderful, awe-inspiring, dramatic, perfect, splendid, extraordinary, exquisite ... .


Will the R-word cause the bottom to fall out of the Elvis market? It was once calculated that, at the then rate of growth, by 2019 one third of the world's population would be Elvis impersonators. What this, whatever it was, didn't establish was where most of them would be. I can. Most of them are in Mallorca. Just as well that the Elvii aren't in Las Vegas because it is there that the Elvis market is going arse-up.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - JoJo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FY8hl6b54A). Today's title - oh dear, how could I have done this?

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

There May Be Trouble Ahead

Is 2008 going to be such a good year? All the prognostications that were being offered towards the end of the old year suggested that it would be, but will the credit squeeze make those predictions look a little silly? The big two tour operators – TUI (Thomson and First Choice) and Neckermann (Thomas Cook and My Travel) – are now apparently cutting the number of beds for Mediterranean holidays this coming season to the tune of some 1.25 million. How this might impact upon Mallorca is not clear, but it is not unrealistic to believe that Spain as a whole may see a reduction by at least a fifth of that total.

Thomas Cook are maintaining a positive spin by saying that holidays are a “necessity”. Are they really? If money gets tight, then perhaps a fallow year is something families might well consider. But even if the actual holiday sales are not harmed significantly, that spend that everyone keeps on about could well be. The trend is for lower spend, and it is understandable. Fork out for the actual holiday and then skimp when in situ. Common sense suggests, I’m afraid, that the tills will not be ringing more loudly than they have been these past two or three years.

As ever, the all-inclusives will cop it if that spend goes down further. And if evidence were needed of the attraction and promotion of the all-inclusive, look no further than one of the tour operator’s brochures. I have a copy of Direct Holidays’ brochure. This offers – in Alcúdia* – six hotels (or hotel complexes): Bellevue, Lagomonte, Club Mac, Sol Alcúdia, Alcúdia Pins and Delfin Verde. Three of these (Lagomonte, Club Mac and Delfin Verde) are all-inclusive, and it is there in red letters in the brochure to highlight the fact. (* Actually not all in Alcúdia – see as follows.)

Brochures are not what they were many years ago. Consumerism, watchdogs, the media and the law have all helped to stop the flagrant misrepresentation that used to occur once upon a time. But there are still some, how can I put it, inconsistencies. Take Direct Holidays. Its brochure makes the “mistake” that is often made regarding Playa de Muro. Alcúdia Pins, it says, is in Alcúdia, or at least it says so initially. It then says that the hotel is on the “outskirts” of Alcúdia – depends how you define outskirts really – and adds that it is “just” 5.6 kilometres from the centre.

Nowhere in this description are the words Playa, de, Muro mentioned. I have spoken about this before (20 August 2007, “And I’m Pins And I’m Needles”). To sell Alcúdia Pins as being in Alcúdia is inaccurate. It is in Muro, it is a schlep to get to Alcúdia, and the “selection of restaurants and shop within easy walking distance” of the hotel is limited. If the hotel were to be defined as being in a town other than that in which it really is, it would be more accurate to say that it was in Can Picafort, which is fractionally closer than the Alcúdia boundary.

This 5.6 kilometres: checked it by driving it. The distances from Alcúdia Pins are a bit over 3 kilometres to the border of Alcúdia, a bit over 5 to Bellevue and a bit over 7 (getting on for four and a half miles) to the port. The 5.6 is, one presumes, to the Bellevue area or The Mile if you prefer. Fair enough, but it repeats the misnomer that is used in respect of the “centre” of Alcúdia. The real centre is either the old town or the port; Bellevue (The Mile) is a tourism adjunct, it is more towards the outskirts of Alcúdia than being the centre, but it does all of course depend on how you define outskirts, doesn’t it.

But coming back to all-inclusives and still courtesy of the Direct Holidays’ brochure, how do prices compare between an all-inclusive, self-catering and half-board (based on 3-star or 3-key accommodation)? The most expensive fortnight is the last two weeks of July. Club Mac (all-inclusive), one adult, £949 for 14 nights. Sol Alcúdia (self-catering), £692. Alcúdia Pins (half-board), £866. The Club Mac offer includes all meals, “locally produced” alcoholic drinks for a minimum of 12 hours a day plus snacks, entertainment and activities. 250 or so quid difference between all-inclusive and self-catering. Does the all-inclusive represent good value for money? For that one adult (self-catering), maybe it would cost a minimum 30 pounds a day for food and drink, or around 400 for the fortnight. You pays your money, you takes … Or perhaps you don't pays your money. Credit squeeze anyone?


QUIZ
Yesterday – Kirsty MacColl had the hit, Billy Bragg wrote it. Today’s title – who is most associated with this?

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