The Island That Lost Control

I'm looking at a one-litre bottle of olive oil, the light variety, not the extra virgin type. I'm not sure if it would make a difference which sort it was for something I'm trying to figure out without going and trying it. How much oil do you suppose you need to make a hotel corridor (not carpeted) slippery enough in order to ensure that guests slip over? I'm guessing that a litre - of whatever type - wouldn't be adequate. You could do part of a corridor, but the whole corridor ...?

Now I'm looking at a chopping-board and at a ring on the cooker. How long would it take, I'm wondering, for the chopping-board to catch light on a full ring (electric)? Wooden, plastic: I reckon the plastic one would go up quicker. I'm not about to find out. To be honest, until only a short while before writing this, it had never occurred to me that one might put a chopping-board on a ring, go out and trust that it catches light - in a hotel apartment. Nor had it ever struck me that one might pour oil along a hotel corridor.

I've been looking, millions have been looking, at a video. Have you seen it? Fancy seeing someone being beaten and kicked senseless by security guards? A hotel's security guards? A hotel to the fore of a transformation. I don't need to tell you which one, do I. You already know. You'll have seen the video. As I say, millions have. The Mail has seen it too. As has The Star. The victim wasn't a guest as such. The hotel has explained this. What the hell difference does that make? You'll know the hotel. It invites the public in to enjoy its facilities. That makes the public guests. This is a hotel asked, by its relevant town hall, to assist in sending out positive messages for somewhere undergoing transformation. Here's the message: end up black and blue. What does the mayor say?

This is not the same hotel as the one with the items from the kitchen. Which one do you reckon that is? Do you suppose it's the same one that apparently only has one security guard at night for a complex of ... Of, ooh, quite a large size. It is.

Tourism is booming. But you know that. With or without booming tourism there is a need for control. Control of different types. Though when things are booming, you don't really want the absence of control or the wrong type of control to go and cock everything up. I know, I know, it's always been the case that where there has been tourism in Mallorca there has also been its less savoury side: its violence, its misbehaviour, its crime. It's just that I have an uneasy feeling. Far from there being greater and better control, there seems to be a deterioration. This uneasiness stems in part from a further sense of impotence - not mine but that of the rightful authorities, be they police or administrations.

Impunity. That's the word. The point is that efforts are made in one way, and the target of those efforts (the anti-social behaviour or whatever) move somewhere else. You can take the lads off the streets of Magalluf, but you can't take the lads out of Magalluf, except by party boat aka booze cruise. You'll have seen the videos of that as well, no doubt. And no one appears to know how or to be able to enforce control. Impunity. You take the lads off the streets of Magalluf, stick 'em in a hotel, and they (one at any rate) get their heads kicked in by security. Done with impunity, but captured on video. What in God's name were those security guards thinking? Do they think? Or are they incapable of thought? It would appear so.

You put lads and lasses in another hotel with all but non-existent security, and they run riot. Maximum control is to be exerted, says the town hall. Really? One security guard? There's your booming tourism for you. Kerching! Take the money, stick 'em in your crumbling hotel and don't bother to engage any security.

There's something else. It's quite extraordinary. The nightclubs association has been complaining about it. Private houses are being used as nightclubs. People are paying to get in and for drinks. All illegal, and to make matters worse for the association, whose members have to charge the top rate of IVA (VAT) for entrance and drinks, there is not one cent of tax paid. Well, of course there isn't. Impunity.

In this instance, there is also an absence of inspection, from whichever government department or other agency might be relevant: as with hotels, for which there is a total under-resourcing for inspection. So things just happen. Noses are thumbed. We don't care. There's your boom for you.

Perfect Propaganda: Holiday lets

The recent horror story in the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" of sisters Emily and Daisy Wolton and their nightmare with a holiday apartment in Palma would make perfect propaganda for the Mallorcan hoteliers and the Exceltur alliance. Prime opponents of the private accommodation sector, the story had it all: no control of standard of accommodation; misleading representation; no comeback. It would also make perfect propaganda for others, including Aptur, the association which represents owners of private accommodation for tourist rental, and Biel Barceló, the minister of tourism. If none of these organisations or individuals have seen the article, they should all be sent a copy.

For the hoteliers and for Exceltur, it was confirmation of all that they have said about the poor quality of accommodation that is on the market, about an unregulated sector that does not abide by any rules, about properties which give Mallorca a bad name. One example it may be, but one example can often be sufficient to deter other visitors, once the information enters the public domain either through established media channels or social media. The Wolton sisters made the point that they have previously had good experiences with renting accommodation, but one bad experience can be enough to make regular visitors wonder about returning.

For Aptur, the case only harms its own objective, which is to obtain a system of regulation which is more permissive in allowing the proper commercialisation of tourist accommodation. It is as against poor standard properties as the hoteliers, even if it is coming at the issue from a different angle. For Barceló, it would be likely to add to his concerns about tourist saturation, the consequence not only of Mallorca having been this summer's refuge for visitors put off by events elsewhere. The saturation is not a product of the hotels with their finite number of places, it is one of a market which, while also finite, gives an impression of growing infinitely. Mallorca and the Balearics are said to have the most private properties for tourist rental of Spain's regions, with Palma the most popular specific destination. And this despite the law. (42% of all visitors to Spain who book apartments do so in Mallorca, according to research by the Esade business school.)

The Wolton sisters wondered who they could complain to. The tourism ministry would be the first port of call. But how do they denounce what has happened? With regulated establishments there are complaints' books and information as to how complaints can be registered. Unregulated, and there is none. A review on Trip Advisor can be a response, but where on Trip Advisor? And who would take any real notice? Users look at hotel reviews, but some individual apartment in Palma? And a review doesn't, in any event, undo the damage.

We know that Barceló is looking at changing the law in order to facilitate proper commercialisation rather than there being merely the loophole (often itself abused) of the tenancy act. But he is as alarmed as anyone at the flood of accommodation being made available and at the poor quality of some of it and so the harm it does to Mallorca's image. He wants regulation in place for next year's summer season, in which case he will have to get his skates on. Even with regulation in place, though, there will still be the non-regulated supply. Catalonia, which has a system of property standards and of registration, has found that this doesn't prevent a flouting of the law. But Barceló needs to act. The supply of accommodation is out of control.

Rearranging The Deckchairs: All-inclusives

In Calvia they have been rearranging the deckchairs while taking care not to slip on the red herrings trawled on to the deck. Tourism minister Jaime Martínez met with representatives of the tourist business associations and promised control of all-inclusives. A promise to control all-inclusives? Shouldn't such a promise be being greeted with fanfares in the media and spontaneous flash mob dancing in the streets?

Martínez was pow-wowing with the CPTB, the Balearics confederation of tourist business associations, an organisation belatedly formed in the hope that the good ship Complementary Offer, years ago holed below the surface by the icebergs of all-inclusive, can now be hauled into dry dock, patched up and sent off again to navigate its way through party boats and the pool parties and lakes of cheap alcohol in the grounds of the Clubs Allinclusivana. It was a ship that never sank but ran aground, idling on the rocks of the tourism sector, languishing in the shallows of its complacency and incapable of unifying its many disparate components - all the different tourist business associations - as a powerful tug to drag it back onto the high seas of battle with the hoteliers. As much as blame can be assigned to lack of regulation, to tour operator designs, to hotelier compliance and to tourist demand, so the complementary offer has to accept blame for all-inclusives as well. Years ago, its numerous associations with their own agendas and their own justifications for existence failed spectacularly in establishing a lobby to confront the highly professional one of the hoteliers and an organisation with one or two interlocutors to communicate with the regional government.

Even now, this confederation appears to be less than the sum of its parts. Who actually does its talking? The contrast with the hoteliers is great. Vázquez and de Benito; they are the hoteliers' federation. The tourism ministry and any other stakeholder in the tourism industry knows who they are dealing with. The complementary offer? 

And so to the meeting in Calvia and to the presence of the usual complementary offer suspects angling to have their photos taken so as to show that they are doing something, which generally amounts to no more than a chinwag. But, they can point to success. The minister's promise. Ah yes, the promise of control. Which is precisely?

Martínez says that there will be a register of hotels with an all-inclusive offer. This, one presumes, is what he was talking about a couple of months ago when he referred to an "analysis of the incidence" of all-inclusive. I've got news for him. Go on the internet, and you can register those hotels with ease. You might not get all the on-arrival upgrades, you might not get exact numbers of all-inclusive places that are optional, but you can get a pretty decent idea of the incidence. This said, it shouldn't be necessary. A tourism minister should already know and have long known what the incidence is. The need for a register confirms the ministry's ineptitude. It should damn well have this information anyway.

But having got the register, then what? How does it amount to "rigorous" control as it has been styled? It sounds like an exercise in information gathering without specified objectives. Hence, the deckchair rearrangement, a move that suits both ministry and confederation. Both can appear to be being proactive when the truth is that they have taken two decades to react.

One of these rigorous controls will, where Calvia is concerned, stop all-inclusive guests from taking food and drink off hotel premises. And how is this news? When the 2012 tourism law was enacted, this prohibition was something highlighted by the tourism ministry as one of its measures to tackle all-inclusives. Why are they now talking about Calvia? It's in the law; it is meant to be applied across the Balearics. So why isn't it?

The 2012 law also contains provisions that require all hotels to submit quality plans. Again, the ministry suggested that these plans would act as a means of elevating standards and service and so be a further measure to tackle all-inclusives. But the law did not stipulate what was expected of these plans or indeed what the outcomes would be once they were submitted, whenever this might be.

There is colossal legislative procrastination in the Balearics, and the tourism law is a prime example. The tourism decree that was issued last December fleshed out aspects of a law that had been approved two and a half years previously, but it failed to say anything about all-inclusives or to add to the demand for quality plans or the provision for out-of-hotel food-and-drink prohibition. So, in the absence of clear objectives, clear requirements for plans, clear implementation of law, we are left with the deckchairs.

Drunk On The Job

Bar work and booze are inseparable. Booze is the stock in trade of the bar, but when the stocks of the trade start to disappear in directions that they shouldn't, the trade itself is damaged. This should be obvious, but laxity of controls suggests otherwise.

I first became aware of bar stock control, or the lack of it, when I was at university. You would think that a university would, because of its well-educated staff, have a grip on the basics of control, but not in my college they didn't, and the same went for other colleges on the campus. Of the eight campus bars, there was constant debate as to which one held the honour of having the drunkest bar manager (the word "manager" was only loosely applied).

The bar manager in my college had a face the colour of which fluctuated in its shades of purple. It wasn't the incident when he was hurled through a patio window that lost him his job - he survived - it was when the college's senior staff, who were meant to supervise the bar's operation, finally cottoned on to the level of "shrinkage". His parting gift was to urinate into the pipes.

As student president of the college, I was shown the books, such as they were. They made no sense. Nothing tallied, nothing balanced. There were apparent losses per unit (be it barrel or bottle), and the reason why was that there was no control.

It is pretty difficult to make a loss on a barrel of beer. A bar in Mallorca might pay around 50 euros for a 50-litre barrel of Saint Mick (the list price is higher, while the actual price can be lower than 50 euros). From this barrel, the bar can extract the equivalent of almost 90 pints. Even at a low price of two euros a pint, the direct contribution of beer sold should be edging up towards 130 euros. Yet a loss can be made. The reason? All the beer that isn't paid for.

A bar owner who is on the premises all or most of the time who chooses to give away free beer or free whatever and/or to drink him or herself into an early grave (and there have been the odd one or two) does at least exercise some control, even if it is control that is out of the control. He or she only has him or herself to blame if the return on a barrel, a bottle, a bag of sausages, whatever it might be, is not what it should be. Exercise firm control, on the other hand, and the return will be more or less as it should be, notwithstanding the inevitable, pretty much expected freebies that are extended to the likes of suppliers.

Where loss is more likely to occur is when control is lax or absent and the owner is also absent. Unless there are strict controls and strict rules as to what is or isn't permissible in terms of staff drinking (or eating) on duty, the losses accrue. I know they do, because I know examples, as I know examples of staff ostensibly in charge who are in a state of pretty much permanent inebriation; it is only the scale of the inebriation which tends to vary.

Apart from the loss, there are other factors when the hired hands are helping themselves to the beer pumps. It may all seem very convivial to join customers for a drink, but does every customer want to be greeted by someone who stinks of Saint Mick? And what about, for example, a chef who has too much juice? There may not be many who go so far as Kurt in "Fawlty Towers" who drank himself unconscious because Manuel wouldn't give him a kiss, but there are examples of those who can pack a fair amount away while in charge of equipment that could cause a serious accident, to say nothing of damage to customers' meals.

Time was when there were few controls. Things have changed. There is far less allowance to staff to drink while on duty. It's right that this should be restricted or totally barred. A bar is a business for all the reasons of control, profit, image and customer service outlined above. Bar owners who have made the rules tighter have sometimes met with resistance; if that's how it is to be, then stick the job. Fine. Why though should anyone drink alcohol while working? Bar it may be, but it doesn't mean drinking it.

If a return, and a pretty decent return at that, cannot be made from a barrel, then there is something seriously amiss. The bar owner is probably in the wrong business, and if drinking staff can't or won't be confronted because this might upset them, then he or she is definitely in the wrong business. Times are tough enough as it is without the profits being drunk. And ultimately, where the customer is concerned, does anyone really like a drunk?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.