It was Ibiza that was the making of New Order and all these years later, the band is back in Ibiza and in Mallorca this summer. They will be appearing at Magalluf's Mallorca Rocks on 11 September. The season of concerts starts with Ed Sheeran on 5 June. Other acts so far confirmed: Maverick Sabre and Labrinth (12 June); Kaiser Chiefs (26 June); Kasabian (10 July); Professor Green (17 July); Chase & Status (31 July); Tinie Tempah (14 August); Example (28 August); Bloc Party (4 September); Two Door Cinema Club (18 September).
For more information: Mallorca Rocks
Showing posts with label Concerts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Concerts. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Friday, March 02, 2012
Murder On The Dance Floor
"You better not steal the moves, DJ, gonna burn this God damn house right down." Well, let's not get carried away. There will be no murder and no burning of houses down, but stealing of moves, DJ? Sort of, yes.
Sophie Ellis Bextor would be rather passé now for the dance floors, streets or terraces of Magalluf, but Pitbull or Jessie J would not be. Indeed, they aren't. They are just two artists who could be on their way this coming summer to Magalluf, where dancing will be on terraces and streets as well as on floors.
There won't be stealing of moves so much as competitive moves, and these moves - dance and others - are going to come about largely as a result of Mallorca Rocks.
You may recall there having been a spot of bother surrounding Mallorca Rocks. The association representing tourist business, Acotur, was threatening various actions against the hotel and especially against Calvià town hall because of questions over whether the hotel was licensed to stage its music concerts. The threats went away when the regional government's tourism ministry discovered that it was able to grant the required licence when it had previously said that it was unable to.
Mallorca Rocks has been highly successful. The hotel itself has enjoyed pretty much full occupancy and the concerts have been well patronised. The success, due in no small part to a concert schedule replete with British dance acts, has not gone unnoticed. Other businesses were unhappy about this success, but they were ultimately unable to prevent it. So rather than try to beat it, they are going to join it, and then try and beat it.
Everyone knew which businesses were behind the opposition to Mallorca Rocks that was channelled through Acotur. If they didn't, they would now have a pretty good idea, as BCM plans staging up to nine concerts of its own in its "square", and Pitbull and Jessie J are a couple of the acts being talked about as possibles.
Objections to Mallorca Rocks were couched in technical terms, as with the correct licence and on health and safety grounds, but at the heart of the objections was the competition that the hotel brought. The director of Grupo Cursach, of which BCM is a part, has said that the concerts will be in response to hotels which have "changed the balance" in Magalluf.
Mallorca Rocks did change the balance, because it introduced new competition. There were certainly question marks over whether the hotel should have been staging what are "secondary activities", but these activities are going to be sanctioned once and for all in the government's new tourism law. There will be no more question marks, and their removal opens the way up to not just a more competitive market but also to the making of Magalluf as far, far more of a club and dance resort than it has been.
BCM isn't the only operation planning on or considering concerts or DJ events. Another hotel chain, Marina, has converted its Barracuda hotel into a themed party hotel, even going so far as to re-do its rooms in a "fun" style and with singles (young singles) in mind. DJ events are on the cards for this year. Meliá's rebranded Sol Wave House, which features two surf wave machines from Wave House, is also likely to stage concerts.
Mallorca Rocks may have upset some businesses, but by changing the balance it has created competition that is now fighting back, and in so doing the resort is going to catch a wave of a new explosion in popularity. It will be a popularity that doubtless some will scorn, as it is youthful popularity, but it is popularity nonetheless that other resorts would be only too delighted to share.
Magalluf, for all its at-times bad reputation, represents a changing face of Mallorca, one that is following more of an Ibiza line, which is ironic as Ibiza has sought to shed its party reputation. Murder on the dance floor there will not be. It's going to be altogether happier than this, but one thing is for sure, there is going to also be some intense competition. If this means more concerts and bigger names, it can only be positive. The God damn house is going to be burned down right enough.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sophie Ellis Bextor would be rather passé now for the dance floors, streets or terraces of Magalluf, but Pitbull or Jessie J would not be. Indeed, they aren't. They are just two artists who could be on their way this coming summer to Magalluf, where dancing will be on terraces and streets as well as on floors.
There won't be stealing of moves so much as competitive moves, and these moves - dance and others - are going to come about largely as a result of Mallorca Rocks.
You may recall there having been a spot of bother surrounding Mallorca Rocks. The association representing tourist business, Acotur, was threatening various actions against the hotel and especially against Calvià town hall because of questions over whether the hotel was licensed to stage its music concerts. The threats went away when the regional government's tourism ministry discovered that it was able to grant the required licence when it had previously said that it was unable to.
Mallorca Rocks has been highly successful. The hotel itself has enjoyed pretty much full occupancy and the concerts have been well patronised. The success, due in no small part to a concert schedule replete with British dance acts, has not gone unnoticed. Other businesses were unhappy about this success, but they were ultimately unable to prevent it. So rather than try to beat it, they are going to join it, and then try and beat it.
Everyone knew which businesses were behind the opposition to Mallorca Rocks that was channelled through Acotur. If they didn't, they would now have a pretty good idea, as BCM plans staging up to nine concerts of its own in its "square", and Pitbull and Jessie J are a couple of the acts being talked about as possibles.
Objections to Mallorca Rocks were couched in technical terms, as with the correct licence and on health and safety grounds, but at the heart of the objections was the competition that the hotel brought. The director of Grupo Cursach, of which BCM is a part, has said that the concerts will be in response to hotels which have "changed the balance" in Magalluf.
Mallorca Rocks did change the balance, because it introduced new competition. There were certainly question marks over whether the hotel should have been staging what are "secondary activities", but these activities are going to be sanctioned once and for all in the government's new tourism law. There will be no more question marks, and their removal opens the way up to not just a more competitive market but also to the making of Magalluf as far, far more of a club and dance resort than it has been.
BCM isn't the only operation planning on or considering concerts or DJ events. Another hotel chain, Marina, has converted its Barracuda hotel into a themed party hotel, even going so far as to re-do its rooms in a "fun" style and with singles (young singles) in mind. DJ events are on the cards for this year. Meliá's rebranded Sol Wave House, which features two surf wave machines from Wave House, is also likely to stage concerts.
Mallorca Rocks may have upset some businesses, but by changing the balance it has created competition that is now fighting back, and in so doing the resort is going to catch a wave of a new explosion in popularity. It will be a popularity that doubtless some will scorn, as it is youthful popularity, but it is popularity nonetheless that other resorts would be only too delighted to share.
Magalluf, for all its at-times bad reputation, represents a changing face of Mallorca, one that is following more of an Ibiza line, which is ironic as Ibiza has sought to shed its party reputation. Murder on the dance floor there will not be. It's going to be altogether happier than this, but one thing is for sure, there is going to also be some intense competition. If this means more concerts and bigger names, it can only be positive. The God damn house is going to be burned down right enough.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Necessity For Change: Tourism
Remarkable. Firstly, that I've got a good word for the Partido Popular; secondly, that it is displaying some uncommonly common sense. Where tourism is concerned, the PP have it over the other parties. They try not to obstruct where others do try. They make enemies along the way, and they are nowhere nearer striking a sensible balance between the needs of the established tourism industry (primarily the hotels) and those of the non-established, such as the holiday let business. But praise where praise is due.
A caveat. It was the hoteliers, in the form of the Mallorca hoteliers federation, that staged a conference entitled "Tourism, The Necessity For Change". Change, where the hotels are concerned, is change that's good for the hotels. Nevertheless, the outcomes of this conference are generally positive.
Amongst them is the likelihood that Meliá Hotels International will create a new "megacomplex" of four-star accommodation out of existing hotels (the Royal Beach, the Antillas Barbados and Mallorca Beach) and that this complex will be themed. The exact nature of this theming is not yet clear, but the wish to do so is one to be welcomed.
One hopes that the themes won't be of the Flintstones variety; please God, anything but this. What one does hope is that it might be of a "theme" that Mallorca is crying out for, an all-year, all-weather complex; the theme would be akin to the Center Parcs concept. One fears that it might not be, in which case it would be a huge missed opportunity, but we will see.
Another outcome is that the tourism minister Carlos Delgado is minded to go ahead in permitting hotels to stage concerts. He could hardly say that he wouldn't, having more or less single-handedly granted Mallorca Rocks its licences both as mayor of Calvia and now as tourism minister. He's made his concert hotel bed, and now he has to lie in it; in different hotels. But good for him.
A further move, and one well heralded, is that the time when the tourism law is changed to enable condohotels seems to be drawing ever nearer. But one detects the first rumblings of division and self-interest amongst different hoteliers. There needs to a minimum size for apartments that can be converted to residential use (90 square metres), or there needs to be a stipulation that they are from existing three to four-star stock, or there needs to be provision to make sure that condos aren't simply a "refuge for the obsolete".
One would have thought that a refuge from the obsolete was a very good reason for allowing condos, always assuming investment were forthcoming to make them of sufficiently good standard. If the condo does go ahead, and it seems unlikely that it won't, then this could be good news; residential apartments in hotels means that they won't be all-inclusive.
The other side to this is that the condo idea, around for some years, is being exposed as blatantly self-serving when you take into account the fierce opposition of the hotels to the holiday-let sector. Forget all the other spin, this is the real reason for that opposition; one that allows the hotels to have the cake of conversion and of a lucrative residential tourism market and eat it, too, to the point of their gorging themselves.
And then there is something else. The PP government's finance and business minister José Aguiló is flagging up an idea that is so sensible that is one that even ordinary Joe Soaps, who are neither members of governments nor anything in particular to do with the tourism industry, have thought up; and this is the idea of social-security breaks for businesses which lengthen the season, i.e. the likes of hotels which would stay open over winter.
The idea is such a no-brainer, one wonders why it has not been introduced and not even really discussed. One reason why it hasn't is because of the debilitating culture endemic among many Spaniards and Mallorcans (and indeed other nationalities that have come to live in Mallorca) that you work for six months and then live off the state for the other six. It's time for a cultural change and for an incentive for hotels to keep open, even on reduced staffs.
There is much to be positive about what the government has been saying these past few days. There is a "necessity for change". The necessity has existed for years, but complacency, lack of will, lack of strategic thought have all prevented it. We might just have reached a stage when everyone finally understands the necessity and will actually do something about it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
A caveat. It was the hoteliers, in the form of the Mallorca hoteliers federation, that staged a conference entitled "Tourism, The Necessity For Change". Change, where the hotels are concerned, is change that's good for the hotels. Nevertheless, the outcomes of this conference are generally positive.
Amongst them is the likelihood that Meliá Hotels International will create a new "megacomplex" of four-star accommodation out of existing hotels (the Royal Beach, the Antillas Barbados and Mallorca Beach) and that this complex will be themed. The exact nature of this theming is not yet clear, but the wish to do so is one to be welcomed.
One hopes that the themes won't be of the Flintstones variety; please God, anything but this. What one does hope is that it might be of a "theme" that Mallorca is crying out for, an all-year, all-weather complex; the theme would be akin to the Center Parcs concept. One fears that it might not be, in which case it would be a huge missed opportunity, but we will see.
Another outcome is that the tourism minister Carlos Delgado is minded to go ahead in permitting hotels to stage concerts. He could hardly say that he wouldn't, having more or less single-handedly granted Mallorca Rocks its licences both as mayor of Calvia and now as tourism minister. He's made his concert hotel bed, and now he has to lie in it; in different hotels. But good for him.
A further move, and one well heralded, is that the time when the tourism law is changed to enable condohotels seems to be drawing ever nearer. But one detects the first rumblings of division and self-interest amongst different hoteliers. There needs to a minimum size for apartments that can be converted to residential use (90 square metres), or there needs to be a stipulation that they are from existing three to four-star stock, or there needs to be provision to make sure that condos aren't simply a "refuge for the obsolete".
One would have thought that a refuge from the obsolete was a very good reason for allowing condos, always assuming investment were forthcoming to make them of sufficiently good standard. If the condo does go ahead, and it seems unlikely that it won't, then this could be good news; residential apartments in hotels means that they won't be all-inclusive.
The other side to this is that the condo idea, around for some years, is being exposed as blatantly self-serving when you take into account the fierce opposition of the hotels to the holiday-let sector. Forget all the other spin, this is the real reason for that opposition; one that allows the hotels to have the cake of conversion and of a lucrative residential tourism market and eat it, too, to the point of their gorging themselves.
And then there is something else. The PP government's finance and business minister José Aguiló is flagging up an idea that is so sensible that is one that even ordinary Joe Soaps, who are neither members of governments nor anything in particular to do with the tourism industry, have thought up; and this is the idea of social-security breaks for businesses which lengthen the season, i.e. the likes of hotels which would stay open over winter.
The idea is such a no-brainer, one wonders why it has not been introduced and not even really discussed. One reason why it hasn't is because of the debilitating culture endemic among many Spaniards and Mallorcans (and indeed other nationalities that have come to live in Mallorca) that you work for six months and then live off the state for the other six. It's time for a cultural change and for an incentive for hotels to keep open, even on reduced staffs.
There is much to be positive about what the government has been saying these past few days. There is a "necessity for change". The necessity has existed for years, but complacency, lack of will, lack of strategic thought have all prevented it. We might just have reached a stage when everyone finally understands the necessity and will actually do something about it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, June 06, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Calvia town hall to be denounced over Mallorca Rocks
As flagged up two days ago, Acotur, the tourist business association, has said that it will issue a "denuncia" against Calvia town hall for the granting of licences which permit the concerts at the Mallorca Rocks hotel. Acotur argues that the town hall has hidden information from authorities, i.e. the interior ministry and the Council of Mallorca, and that the concerts represent a health and safety risk.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Mallorca Rocks - not rocking?
The 17 concerts planned for the Mallorca Rocks hotel in Magalluf this summer appear to be in serious question now that the regional government's tourism ministry has stated that it is not legally competent to authorise the concerts. A report from the ministry appears to turn down the possibility of staging concerts open to the public in hotels. An application for a secondary licence for staging concerts seems to run counter to laws and regulations regarding what a hotel can or cannot do. These regulations permit entertainment of the type commonly staged in hotels, but not that envisaged by Mallorca Rocks.
The tourist business association Acotur, together with two other organisations, one being the association for discos, had challenged the staging of the concerts and the position of Calvia town hall which, so Acotur claims, had granted a new licence to the hotel with "scandalous speed".
The first of the concerts at Mallorca Rocks is meant to take place on 31 May.
The tourist business association Acotur, together with two other organisations, one being the association for discos, had challenged the staging of the concerts and the position of Calvia town hall which, so Acotur claims, had granted a new licence to the hotel with "scandalous speed".
The first of the concerts at Mallorca Rocks is meant to take place on 31 May.
Friday, September 03, 2010
Madman Crosses The Water
The things you find out.
Bite-sized sucking pig with pomegranate sauce; white flowers and Scandinavian air; red roses and roses without petals; Macià Batle wine from Santa Maria del Cami; 23 metres high and 50 metres wide; 25 lorries from the UK and mainland Spain.
Want to hazard a guess?
The answers - in order - are: part of the menu for the VIPs; the design of a VIP area; the star's choice of flowers (forgive me, but what are roses without petals?); the same star's supposed choice of plonk; the size of the stage; the number of lorries transporting kit.
Come on, you must know now.
Over the past weeks we have been able to read interviews with three stars (well, two stars and a starlet). During this week we have been able to see photos of a man with a mobile phone (the promoter), a lorry, some stage being built, some more stage being built, and, yes, even more stage being built.
What we have also found out, we think, is that there will be 34,000 people, or maybe 20,000, or perhaps 25,000, assuming all the seats are sold. As of yesterday afternoon, at least 3,000 were unsold out of whatever the total number actually is. No one seems to quite know, or they do, and the press is just offering a multiple choice.
We have also discovered that the two main stars will bring "synergy". Ah yes, a word beloved by management consultants and by managers brainwashed by the consultants into believing such a state can be achieved. At least the consultants would argue that there should be a certain similarity between entities in order to bring about synergetic benefits. When the two stars are from diverse fields, one does have to wonder. But let's not quibble. Synergy there surely will be. Just don't tell those who may be going only for one or the other and who might have paid less had there not been any synergy.
What we have yet to find out is whether it will be a success. But we can predict that it will be, even if it isn't. As we can predict that we will read gushing editorials, see photos of the occasion and, if we're lucky, yet more photos of stage, but this time being dismantled. The editorial will be along the lines of it just goes to prove that Mallorca can put on a "great", "spectacular", "amazing", "remarkable" (select as you will) concert.
When the media is so in lunatic thrall to the appearance of two stars, then what else can you expect, other than pages devoted, on a daily basis, to the minutiae and drivel surrounding that appearance. This manic fascination does, it must be said, appear to have something to do with sponsors' names. Go to the "Diario de Mallorca", for example, and you will find only the occasional, discreet mention. No prizes for guessing where the pages are being filled.
I've got a lot of time for Elton John. He may have been through his own drug-induced nuclear winter, but he has come out of it articulate and sane: unlike the barely intelligible half human Keefronnieryders from the Planet McGowan of the sort Kirk and Spock might have encountered. It's as well that before tomorrow's concert he will never have previously set foot or piano hands in Mallorca, and that afterwards he'll be swiftly away. Sane? He soon wouldn't be.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Bite-sized sucking pig with pomegranate sauce; white flowers and Scandinavian air; red roses and roses without petals; Macià Batle wine from Santa Maria del Cami; 23 metres high and 50 metres wide; 25 lorries from the UK and mainland Spain.
Want to hazard a guess?
The answers - in order - are: part of the menu for the VIPs; the design of a VIP area; the star's choice of flowers (forgive me, but what are roses without petals?); the same star's supposed choice of plonk; the size of the stage; the number of lorries transporting kit.
Come on, you must know now.
Over the past weeks we have been able to read interviews with three stars (well, two stars and a starlet). During this week we have been able to see photos of a man with a mobile phone (the promoter), a lorry, some stage being built, some more stage being built, and, yes, even more stage being built.
What we have also found out, we think, is that there will be 34,000 people, or maybe 20,000, or perhaps 25,000, assuming all the seats are sold. As of yesterday afternoon, at least 3,000 were unsold out of whatever the total number actually is. No one seems to quite know, or they do, and the press is just offering a multiple choice.
We have also discovered that the two main stars will bring "synergy". Ah yes, a word beloved by management consultants and by managers brainwashed by the consultants into believing such a state can be achieved. At least the consultants would argue that there should be a certain similarity between entities in order to bring about synergetic benefits. When the two stars are from diverse fields, one does have to wonder. But let's not quibble. Synergy there surely will be. Just don't tell those who may be going only for one or the other and who might have paid less had there not been any synergy.
What we have yet to find out is whether it will be a success. But we can predict that it will be, even if it isn't. As we can predict that we will read gushing editorials, see photos of the occasion and, if we're lucky, yet more photos of stage, but this time being dismantled. The editorial will be along the lines of it just goes to prove that Mallorca can put on a "great", "spectacular", "amazing", "remarkable" (select as you will) concert.
When the media is so in lunatic thrall to the appearance of two stars, then what else can you expect, other than pages devoted, on a daily basis, to the minutiae and drivel surrounding that appearance. This manic fascination does, it must be said, appear to have something to do with sponsors' names. Go to the "Diario de Mallorca", for example, and you will find only the occasional, discreet mention. No prizes for guessing where the pages are being filled.
I've got a lot of time for Elton John. He may have been through his own drug-induced nuclear winter, but he has come out of it articulate and sane: unlike the barely intelligible half human Keefronnieryders from the Planet McGowan of the sort Kirk and Spock might have encountered. It's as well that before tomorrow's concert he will never have previously set foot or piano hands in Mallorca, and that afterwards he'll be swiftly away. Sane? He soon wouldn't be.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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