I was lying on the beach and my thoughts turned, as no doubt yours turn as well, to the issue of major theme park projects. These thoughts centred on one project in particular; well, two actually, but the first thought was with desert near Zaragoza on the mainland and with Gran Scala.
I first became aware of Gran Scala almost five years ago and did so not because of any coverage in the media in Mallorca but because of the occasional article in "The Times". While this was a project for the mainland, it was nevertheless curious that it was totally ignored locally, except by myself. The scale of Gran Scala (and the name speaks for itself) was so grand, the proximity was that close that it had to pose some sort of threat to Mallorca. Moreover, it was just the sort of project, with its capacity for all-year tourism, that could only ever exist in the dreams of the Mallorcan tourism industry.
If you don't know about Gran Scala, let me tell you what had been envisaged: over 200 restaurants, 70 hotels, 32 themed casinos, six large theme parks and 12 smaller ones, golf courses, a racecourse, pyramids and sphinxes plus 25 million visitors by 2020, two and a half times the total number of visitors that Mallorca receives in a year. Its first phase was due to have opened this year. Things dragged on, arguments raged, and the option for the developers to acquire the land expired earlier this year.
The developers are International Leisure Development, registered as a PLC in London and a consortium comprising numerous companies from several countries. The authenticity of ILD and of the Gran Scala project were never really in doubt, though some would argue otherwise, but the project ran up against all manner of problems, not least of which has been financing in the economic climate of the past few years.
Gran Scala isn't totally dead in the water, though its future must be highly questionable. There is still talk of ILD finding new investment, but since Gran Scala was first presented (and the presentation was hugely impressive) another casino-based project has emerged, one that is as if not more controversial - Eurovegas in the Barcelona area. Just one of its controversies relates to an investigation for corruption.
As far as opponents of Gran Scala are concerned, the project is dead. Dead and good riddance to it. One has to accept that views of environmentalists, unionists, the Catholic charity Caritas would probably automatically be negative, but these views were gathered by one of the many blogs that has covered the whole Gran Scala story since it was first announced. And it is some of these views that demand being paid attention to in connection with projects in Mallorca, those that are far less grand or are of a different nature, and projects that might yet emerge.
Apart from the obvious resistance on environmental and ethical grounds to the development and to gambling, the analysis of the Gran Scala affair is striking for the way in which it condemns the whole project from the point of view of public policy (what the politicians do or don't do, in other words). "Gran Scala is a good example of what can happen when there is an absence of a coherent project for land and when support is for any proposal that generates (real or not) employment." This comes from the Granscaladebate blog, and it continues by observing that "much of the current (economic) pain is about the madness of walking in the wrong direction: the economics of real estate speculation".
Basically, what this is saying is that Gran Scala would have been a further, massive example of the type of project, with regional government political blessing (this one from Aragon), that has got Spain into the mess that it is. Lessons would have been completely overlooked therefore. More than this, the argument against Gran Scala was that the real estate speculation was one of speculation without genuine feasibility to support the numbers of visitors and the number of jobs and so the whole economic viability of the project.
It is when you consider projects in Mallorca, those both ongoing or planned, and when you consider the greater permissiveness to be allowed by the current regional government, that the arguments above do resonate. One ongoing project (now it's going, now it's stopped) is the Palacio de Congresos, a project about which I have asked numerous times where the business plan is. It is a purely speculative project. One that isn't ongoing is the plan for the theme park (that may or may not be located between Campos and Llucmajor). What has happened to it? Tourism minister Delgado was ambiguous when asked recently. But has it ever been more than speculative?
Gran Scala was a hugely ambitious project, but its sheer scale do not prevent it offering lessons and cautionary notes regarding other much smaller projects, be they hotel complexes, be they theme parks, be they convention centres, be they velodromes or sports centres. The real lesson of Gran Scala is that politicians need to demand that such projects are given a thorough, rigorous and independent analysis, because politicians in Mallorca and Spain are the last people who should be making the final decisions.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Showing posts with label Casinos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Casinos. Show all posts
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Keep The Customer Satisfied
More on the “Gran Escala” project near Zaragoza (25 November: Bond Themes). “The Times” confirms what its Sunday sister paper had spoken of before; indeed it fleshes out what this complex will comprise – 32 themed casinos, 70 hotels, five theme parks, pyramids, sphinxes and golf courses. 25 million visitors are anticipated each year by 2015. And for those 25 million, there will doubtless be innumerable bars and also shops that stay open when people want them to be open, unlike in Palma for example. 25 million is well over double Mallorca’s current annual tourism intake. 25 million people heading to a piece of reclaimed desert, modelled as the new Las Vegas, more or less on Mallorca’s doorstep and only the same flying-time from the UK.
But why is it that this news is coming from “The Times”? Where is the local reporting? This development is something of huge interest to Mallorca in different ways. Firstly, it poses a potential threat, especially to what there is of winter tourism. One waits to see what the theme parks will be, but they are sure to be of a variety that attracts family tourism as well as any short-breakers wanting to risk their money in a casino; they will not get 25 million visitors just for casinos and a round of golf.
Secondly, the Gran Escala highlights the muddled thinking regarding Mallorca’s tourism. To digress a little: In the late ’70s, Jan Carlsson, the boss of the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), transformed the airline’s culture and performance by creating a structure with the customer at the top of the organisational pyramid; everything else was subordinate to or supported the customer. SAS was one of the first organisations to have a recognisable customer-driven philosophy.
SAS was representative of a wholly different approach to management and organisations. Take this approach and place it in the context of tourism strategy, Mallorca’s tourism strategy, and where is the customer – the tourist – in the structure? Place it in the context of the whole economic model of Mallorca and where is the customer? It is the tourist, the customer, to whom the island is beholden. What fraction of Mallorca’s wealth would exist without that customer?
To continue the business analogy: Mallorca is at the mature stage of its life cycle. A business faced with the same situation has different choices – carrying on the same but with improvements, diversification, acquisition or sale of the business, progressive decline. Mallorca has three of these choices, unless those German businessmen who wanted to buy the island were really for real! To an extent, the first two of these choices are being pursued: hotel stock being upgraded, infrastructure improved, new products (and, yes, that includes all-inclusives). Otherwise, the diversification is clouded with ambiguity and irrelevance: the vagueness of “quality” tourism, the offer of tourism served with a gastronomy of culture and history – what culture, what history? These are minority niches of tiny portions for an island business grown fat on the mass market. As ever, where is the beef?
The thinking is too defined by an insular (inevitably perhaps) and romantic view of what tourists might want, as opposed to what tourists really want. The tourist, the customer, is not at the top of the pyramid. Much of the thinking is couched in terms of “sustainable tourism” with the environmental overtones this implies. This is the wrong adjective. Meaningful tourism is more accurate. Much as it may offend, for every one “cultural” tourist there are a hundred more who have mainly hedonistic pursuits at the top of their list of priorities. The tourist wants entertaining. This means attractions, this means fun. And this is where Gran Escala comes in.
A similar project was never going to be created in Mallorca and never will be. Land is too scarce and too expensive. The environmental lobby would not permit it. But more fundamentally, the building of some giant fun palace in Mallorca would conflict with the current group-think that can conceive of only culture and gastronomy. It is this group-think which denies the tourist, the customer, his or her place at the top of the pyramid.
Yesterday, I defended the Balearic Government. But I also said that things could be done differently. No, there would never be a Gran Escala in Mallorca, but the thinking behind it is precisely the sort of thinking that is required in Mallorca to shake the island out of its winter torpor and to sustain, yes sustain, meaningful tourism in the summer as well. The customer comes first – on a grand scale.
QUIZ
Yesterday – The Jackson Five. Today’s title – which duo?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
But why is it that this news is coming from “The Times”? Where is the local reporting? This development is something of huge interest to Mallorca in different ways. Firstly, it poses a potential threat, especially to what there is of winter tourism. One waits to see what the theme parks will be, but they are sure to be of a variety that attracts family tourism as well as any short-breakers wanting to risk their money in a casino; they will not get 25 million visitors just for casinos and a round of golf.
Secondly, the Gran Escala highlights the muddled thinking regarding Mallorca’s tourism. To digress a little: In the late ’70s, Jan Carlsson, the boss of the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), transformed the airline’s culture and performance by creating a structure with the customer at the top of the organisational pyramid; everything else was subordinate to or supported the customer. SAS was one of the first organisations to have a recognisable customer-driven philosophy.
SAS was representative of a wholly different approach to management and organisations. Take this approach and place it in the context of tourism strategy, Mallorca’s tourism strategy, and where is the customer – the tourist – in the structure? Place it in the context of the whole economic model of Mallorca and where is the customer? It is the tourist, the customer, to whom the island is beholden. What fraction of Mallorca’s wealth would exist without that customer?
To continue the business analogy: Mallorca is at the mature stage of its life cycle. A business faced with the same situation has different choices – carrying on the same but with improvements, diversification, acquisition or sale of the business, progressive decline. Mallorca has three of these choices, unless those German businessmen who wanted to buy the island were really for real! To an extent, the first two of these choices are being pursued: hotel stock being upgraded, infrastructure improved, new products (and, yes, that includes all-inclusives). Otherwise, the diversification is clouded with ambiguity and irrelevance: the vagueness of “quality” tourism, the offer of tourism served with a gastronomy of culture and history – what culture, what history? These are minority niches of tiny portions for an island business grown fat on the mass market. As ever, where is the beef?
The thinking is too defined by an insular (inevitably perhaps) and romantic view of what tourists might want, as opposed to what tourists really want. The tourist, the customer, is not at the top of the pyramid. Much of the thinking is couched in terms of “sustainable tourism” with the environmental overtones this implies. This is the wrong adjective. Meaningful tourism is more accurate. Much as it may offend, for every one “cultural” tourist there are a hundred more who have mainly hedonistic pursuits at the top of their list of priorities. The tourist wants entertaining. This means attractions, this means fun. And this is where Gran Escala comes in.
A similar project was never going to be created in Mallorca and never will be. Land is too scarce and too expensive. The environmental lobby would not permit it. But more fundamentally, the building of some giant fun palace in Mallorca would conflict with the current group-think that can conceive of only culture and gastronomy. It is this group-think which denies the tourist, the customer, his or her place at the top of the pyramid.
Yesterday, I defended the Balearic Government. But I also said that things could be done differently. No, there would never be a Gran Escala in Mallorca, but the thinking behind it is precisely the sort of thinking that is required in Mallorca to shake the island out of its winter torpor and to sustain, yes sustain, meaningful tourism in the summer as well. The customer comes first – on a grand scale.
QUIZ
Yesterday – The Jackson Five. Today’s title – which duo?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Bond Themes
“Me llamo Bond, Jaime Bond, zero-zero-siete.”
Bond looks into the mirror in the room of one of the 32 hotels, adjusts his bow-tie and white jacket, sips his Martini and then slips away, intending to make for the Casino Royale, one of five casinos that comprise “Gran Escala”, somewhere in northern Mallorca. As he makes his way around the vast complex, he is taken aback. Is that John Wayne - “truly he was the son of God”? And that shady KGB agent, he looks remarkably like Vladimir Putin. “What are they doing in these casinos?” thinks Bond. Wayne he could count on, but Putin? What threat could be lurking for the numbers of innocent people here at Gran Escala, a proportion of the 12 million that come each year? But then he realises that they are not real; they are just actors, one from the Roman casino, the other from “Spyland”.
12 million visitors a year, a site that will eclipse EuroDisney, a couple of hours flying from England, huge numbers of jobs, a new version of Las Vegas, a haven for gamblers from the UK and Spain alike, with five theme parks and those 32 hotels to boot.
In your dreams, Mallorca, in your dreams. Or maybe in your nightmares, Mallorca. The Gran Escala is the working name for a complex planned near Zaragoza on the mainland. The environmentalists don’t like the idea, but a number of politicians, attracted by the injection of money and the employment, do. The article in today’s “Sunday Times” makes it clear that it is not, as yet, a done deal, but were it to be then it could be a nightmare of another sort for Mallorca, certainly where the limited winter season is concerned.
This theme park idea. Where have I heard of this before? I know. Right here. On this blog. It has actually been mooted in the past. And it has of course been turned down. Why? The environment. The environment and an abstract retention of the past - a Mallorcan equivalent of John Major’s old maids, cricket and warm beer.
So the mainland maybe gets the gig, while meantime Mallorca struggles on in winter with its closed hotels, rejected golf-course applications, some brave attempts like the Aquarium in Palma, handfuls of walkers, and groups of cyclists who enrage many and mean precious little in terms of real business. And then there are the other ideas that only nibble at the edges of the winter-season biscuit. Here’s another one. In yesterday’s “Brisas” magazine, there was an interview with a German (Jörg Link) who has lived in Mallorca since 1975; his father had bought a house in Son Serra de Marina two years before. He is an enthusiast for the works and thoughts of Ramón Llull, one of Mallorca’s most prominent historical figures. He is planning a centre devoted to Llull. It is a fine idea. I would go. Llull deserves far more attention than he has. But it won’t bring in a load of people. Now a Llull theme park with a heavy techno element in recognition of his role as a founder of computing theory; a theme park combined with the history of King Jaime I, more or less Llull’s contemporary. Maybe we would be getting somewhere. Meantime, the projected complex on the mainland will both shake and stir.
QUIZ
Yesterday - Big Country, “In A Big Country”. Today - not related to the title as such; the question is which artist or artists, apart from John Barry, has/have performed more than one main Bond film song?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Bond looks into the mirror in the room of one of the 32 hotels, adjusts his bow-tie and white jacket, sips his Martini and then slips away, intending to make for the Casino Royale, one of five casinos that comprise “Gran Escala”, somewhere in northern Mallorca. As he makes his way around the vast complex, he is taken aback. Is that John Wayne - “truly he was the son of God”? And that shady KGB agent, he looks remarkably like Vladimir Putin. “What are they doing in these casinos?” thinks Bond. Wayne he could count on, but Putin? What threat could be lurking for the numbers of innocent people here at Gran Escala, a proportion of the 12 million that come each year? But then he realises that they are not real; they are just actors, one from the Roman casino, the other from “Spyland”.
12 million visitors a year, a site that will eclipse EuroDisney, a couple of hours flying from England, huge numbers of jobs, a new version of Las Vegas, a haven for gamblers from the UK and Spain alike, with five theme parks and those 32 hotels to boot.
In your dreams, Mallorca, in your dreams. Or maybe in your nightmares, Mallorca. The Gran Escala is the working name for a complex planned near Zaragoza on the mainland. The environmentalists don’t like the idea, but a number of politicians, attracted by the injection of money and the employment, do. The article in today’s “Sunday Times” makes it clear that it is not, as yet, a done deal, but were it to be then it could be a nightmare of another sort for Mallorca, certainly where the limited winter season is concerned.
This theme park idea. Where have I heard of this before? I know. Right here. On this blog. It has actually been mooted in the past. And it has of course been turned down. Why? The environment. The environment and an abstract retention of the past - a Mallorcan equivalent of John Major’s old maids, cricket and warm beer.
So the mainland maybe gets the gig, while meantime Mallorca struggles on in winter with its closed hotels, rejected golf-course applications, some brave attempts like the Aquarium in Palma, handfuls of walkers, and groups of cyclists who enrage many and mean precious little in terms of real business. And then there are the other ideas that only nibble at the edges of the winter-season biscuit. Here’s another one. In yesterday’s “Brisas” magazine, there was an interview with a German (Jörg Link) who has lived in Mallorca since 1975; his father had bought a house in Son Serra de Marina two years before. He is an enthusiast for the works and thoughts of Ramón Llull, one of Mallorca’s most prominent historical figures. He is planning a centre devoted to Llull. It is a fine idea. I would go. Llull deserves far more attention than he has. But it won’t bring in a load of people. Now a Llull theme park with a heavy techno element in recognition of his role as a founder of computing theory; a theme park combined with the history of King Jaime I, more or less Llull’s contemporary. Maybe we would be getting somewhere. Meantime, the projected complex on the mainland will both shake and stir.
QUIZ
Yesterday - Big Country, “In A Big Country”. Today - not related to the title as such; the question is which artist or artists, apart from John Barry, has/have performed more than one main Bond film song?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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