Good Moaning: Accountability

There is a compilation of some of the best moments of Officer Crabtree on YouTube. "Allo Allo", it is fair to say, did have its detractors. Not me. Juvenile the show could be, and little was more juvenile than Officer Crabtree's attempts at speaking French (albeit in English). "Good moaning." Priceless.

Oddly enough, there is a line of etymological argument which suggests that "moaning minnie" is a reference to a one-time captain in the French army. A certain Claude Etienne Minié introduced a bullet which came to be known as the minnie ball. It almost certainly wasn't the origin, but the French connection seems in keeping with Officer Crabtree, as is what probably is the origin: to describe the sound of the German Nebelwerfer mortar of the Second World War.

As to when "moaning minnie" definitively slipped into general colloquial use is not really known, but its longevity is such that it proves that there was such a thing as moaning before they invented social media. That might seem hard to believe. However did people moan before Facebook came along and facilitated good moaning?

My own personal moaning on this global Moan-a-Gram system has, I like to believe, been moderate. I rarely use it anyway, but one moan I can recall had to do with being fined for parking on the pedestrian zone by Alcudia market. All of one minute. If that. Stopped to deliver to the tourist office (a town hall facility), to which I had been supplying (free) all sorts of things for several years. Along came plod (town hall employee) on a bike. Surely not? Surely yes. I never got round to sending an invoice to the town hall for all the unpaid translation work: I would have accepted the equivalent to the fine and even have been prepared to declare it for tax. They wouldn't have paid anyway. Bloody ingrates (if that doesn't sound like moaning).

I'm guessing that a key reason for not using Moanbook extensively has to do with my browser(s) no longer being supported. Oh, I've attempted to moan, but when it comes to hitting return, nothing happens. In fact, I can do virtually nothing on Moanbook any more, except to like people's moans. Should I moan that my now ancient Mac operating system is deprived of Firefox and Safari updates? Well I should, given how much the Mac cost in the first place, but I'm rather content with being unable to engage in some good moaning. And before you ask, I can't be bothered using my smartphone instead. (There's a moan I do need to get round to: why did I ever get one?)

Instead, I have to make do with everyone else's moaning, of which there is a seemingly unlimited supply. In the overall scheme of things, the fact that, inter alia, it has taken Pollensa town hall months to get its arse in gear and get some sun loungers out on the beach isn't life or death. Nor, now that the municipal posterior has been engaged and there are sun loungers for the resort's tourist class to place its collective buttocks on, is the fact that some people preferred the beach when it was lounger-less. No pleasing some folk. Moan, moan, moan.

But is this moaning such a bad thing? Good Heavens no. Moaning is good. Everyone repeat after Officer Crabtree: good moaning. And it is good for the simple reason that if it is justified, it might just have the desired effect. They take notice. Eventually.

Trivial though such issues as sun loungers can be (though God knows the principal environmental moaners in Mallorca, GOB, are elevating them to matters of state), there is a principle. Town halls are supposed to meet certain obligations. The commandment is written - thou shalt place sun loungers on thy beaches - unless thou is a municipality without beaches: life must be so much simpler for town halls like Ariany, unless the sheep are prone to moaning about the lack of pens.

The point is that there didn't used to be a culture of moaning, as in making town halls and other public administrations take note or, perish the thought, be accountable. Yes, the citizen was always prone (still is) to issuing the "denuncia" at the drop of a hat, if the hat in question offended the complainant for some obscure reason, but that was all rather personal: a bit of a hangover from the Inquisition, one's always felt. With public authorities on the other hand, all of them appointed by the state regime, you didn't moan or complain, unless you fancied a couple of years hard labour.

The culture has changed dramatically and very much for the better. Town halls seem to still struggle with accountability, but they are getting there. The more the moaning, the better. These are not the times of Officer Crabtree.

365 In A Croatian Style

You are about to read a promotional feature for Croatia. I have, therefore, to apologise in advance for any offence that this might cause, but as, for the purposes of research and appreciation of what the competition does, I am one of 1,323,186 people who - as of 6 October - like the "Love Croatia" Facebook page, I feel it is only right to share with you the promotion for what is a key competitor to Mallorca.

Since the start of October, this Facebook page has added a video for the island of Hvar and eight other posts replete with spectacular photography that has been supplied officially and by visitors both direct to the page and through a linked Instagram page. What does one get from these nine posts alone? Well, for example, if you are looking for what to do in October, you can link to the official website which will tell you about Croatia 365, all-year round Croatia. This tells you that the country is "rich in natural beauty and well-preserved cultural heritage, specifically by its diversity". It goes on to inform you that you can "take a ride by bike where, long ago, Roman legions walked". You can check out destinations for culture, biking, outdoor, health and wellness, meetings and incentives and wine and gastronomy.

With a different post, you could have supplied your own words to complete the following: "Visiting Croatia was ...". I gave up checking the hundreds of comments after the first loads of "magical", "dream", "heaven on earth" and what have you, some of them with further photos.

The first post for October was another one to remind you about the possibilities which exist all year, a link to "Croatia 365, Experience Croatia all year round". This project, "Croatia 365", was launched in the summer by the country's tourism ministry. The purpose of the project is, naturally enough, to bring tourists in "once the summer sun has gone". The focus of the project is the six elements I list above - culture, biking, etc. - and in addition to improving facilities and activities in order to meet the project's objectives, there will be (and now is) an intensive marketing campaign, as might be noted through the "Love Croatia" Facebook page. As part of this project, twenty-two destinations within the country have guaranteed that at least 50% of all tourism and restaurant facilities will stay open.

One can't directly compare Croatia with Mallorca for one obvious reason - Croatia is a country - yet in terms of tourism, it wasn't at one time so dissimilar in that it was a part of a larger country. Yugoslavia, though it never created or really craved mass tourism, was in the 1950s far more open than Spain was to foreign tourists. So there was a long history of tourism development for Croatia to draw on once it became independent and once the wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia ceased.

At one stage in the late 1980s, total tourist arrivals to Croatia were over ten million per annum. At their lowest, in 1992, they were a little over two million. There was a hell of a lot of recovery and catch-up to be done, and it took until 2006 for the ten million barrier to be broken again. Between 2011 and 2013, the growth was significant; three million more tourists within the space of three years. The annual total is now over 14 million (roughly what the Balearics as a whole receive).

Croatia is a vastly bigger place than Mallorca, so again a direct comparison between the two is questionable. However, the Mallorcan tourism industry recognises Croatia for what it is: a direct competitor. And if you look at what the Croatia 365 project wants to achieve, you will find that it is remarkably similar to what Mallorca covets by way of all-year tourism; culture, cycling, meetings, they're the same.

There is a very meaningful comparison between the two when it comes to promotion. Mallorca's direct competitor on the Adriatic has its official Facebook page, churning out daily posts with recommendations, photos, videos and visitor comments and feedback. This is linked to the official website where there is of course a great deal more information. And Croatia now has a 365 campaign. Launched only three months ago, it is taking off thanks to social media in a way that a 365 campaign in Mallorca is not and has not. Palma's.

The foundation that oversees Palma 365 is to pay 48,000 euros apiece to a UK and a German PR company. The main purpose is for these PR companies to get press coverage. Which is all well and good, but has it gone unnoticed that there are different media out there? 1,323,186 people. Croatia, where 365 means 365 or where at least there is "an intensive marketing campaign". Who's playing catch-up now?

The Futility Of Banning: All-inclusives

There is a Facebook page entitled "BAN ALL Inclusive". It asks: "Why would anyone wish to spend there (sic) holiday in all inclusive holiday in Mallorca!!! It's beautiful here get out of the hotel and enjoy 'your' time on this beautiful island. This was the original destination for the package holiday for millions".

The page hasn't attracted a great deal of liking, which may be because it hasn't been that visible on Facebook. In terms of sentiment, however, there is little doubt that there would be a significant level of liking, but this is not the first type of all-inclusive protest page which has appeared on social media and it won't be the last.

Ban all-inclusive. Question. To whom does one address a demand for all-inclusive to be banned? Second question. Even if a Facebook page were to amass thousands of "likes", what would it achieve? The two questions tie in. A massive level of support for an all-inclusive ban would have to be demonstrated to decision-makers who matter. A talking-shop on the internet among mainly like-minded opponents of all-inclusive achieves nothing other than to reinforce these feelings of opposition.

There are other talking-shops, such as one that the Acotur business association sought to establish last year. They met (very few of them; bar owners, that is), talked for a time, realised that talk was all that would happen and did nothing more. As with talk of bans, protests, of whatever sort (and no one has ever come up with a good one) are pretty pointless.

Even with a massive amount of support for a Facebook page, a ban will never happen. It cannot happen. Just as the market drove the popularity of all-inclusive, so it would have to be the market which would drive a loss of popularity and the eventual demise of all-inclusive. One can argue that the market for all-inclusive wasn't created by customer demand, but that it is an historical argument. Today's tourism market has such demand and it shows no sign of going away or of lessening.

The only stakeholders who matter under a hypothetical all-inclusive banning scenario are those stakeholders without whom there would be no all-inclusive - holidaymakers and tour operators. Other stakeholders matter less and in ever-reducing importance - hotels, local government, town halls.

It is the tour operators who, above all, have the greatest interest. One of them, First Choice, was made into an all-inclusive brand. It was the decision to undertake this branding which inspired a BBC report into all-inclusive in Mallorca two years ago. This has had a recent mention on the Facebook page I have referred to. Its message would still apply, and it was one, as an advisor to the programme, to which I contributed.

In that programme, a First Choice executive had to respond to a question about an advertising slogan which ran - "leave your wallet at home". There was an acceptance that this might not have been the most diplomatic of slogans, but it did of course sum up how all-inclusive is often perceived. This perception is one that tour operators try to modify. They say they offer trips out to local markets and so on, they point to their environmental commitments, they highlight the ecological soundness of their establishments and of local sourcing, they refer to local employment opportunities, but none of this convinces.

Tour operators make a great deal of their social responsibility and of how this operates in destinations, but their arguments are thin. And, one would presume, because tour operators aren't stupid, they know that these arguments are thin. Social responsibility is a broad concept, and acting in a truly responsible fashion does not include transporting people hundreds or thousands of miles only for them to occupy a certain amount of real estate for a fortnight and to do little else. This is one-way parasitic tourism and not the formerly two-way symbiosis between hotel and local community and economy. Its ethics are highly questionable.

To whom are tour operators responsible? Ultimately, to themselves and to their shareholders. Yet, for all that tour operators might be seen as the devil of the piece, they are not alone. Mallorca as a tourist destination is equally at fault.

The Facebook page inadvertently alluded to why Mallorca is at fault. "The original destination for the package holiday for millions." Exactly. And it was the destination for masses because of its cheapness. The island's tourism model is and was, from the 1960s, predicated on mass, but once the real cheapness of early years started to be replaced by less cheapness, by a more questioning approach to spending by tourists, to monetary union and to simple economics, keeping hold of the mass required the introduction of a package which promised or at least hinted at cheapness. And that was the all-inclusive: "leave your wallet at home".

You can't ban all-inclusive because it is the logical outcome of the tourism model. You can't ban it unless that model changes, and that will not happen. Just as a ban will never happen.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Love Croatia: More Mallorcan marketing failure

ABTA's decision to not stage its annual convention in Mallorca next year is surprising insofar as the intention to return two years after the emergency relocation to Mallorca in 2011 had been signalled at last year's convention. But, and lest anyone forgets this, there are plenty of other destinations that ABTA can choose from, just as there are plenty of other destinations that tourists can choose from.

From a personal point of view, the decision is disappointing. While there are plenty who look upon an ABTA gathering as one big photo opportunity, it is - for those who can be bothered - an occasion to learn about what is happening in the world of travel and specifically about what is at the cutting edge.

Tourism and travel are nothing without good marketing. While most within the travel industry would understand this, a perception persists that marketing equals something specific - the glossy approach, the magazine, the expensive advert, the hyperbole of a clichéd article or brochure description. This is the glamour part of a supposedly glamour industry. There is a place for glamour, unquestionably there is, but there is also marketing which is as important if not more so - it is the geeky, nerdish part: the systems, the operations, the technology.

Last year's convention was dominated by technology: by the use of social media, apps, voice recognition, search facilities, you name it. For the technology savvy or the gadget freak, it was convention heaven. For the technology indifferent or technology sceptic, it was hell on Mallorcan earth.

When it comes to technology, there are those who get it and those who don't. As a consequence, prejudices and assumptions are created depending upon which of the technology poles one is connected to: the positive or the negative. The result is that tourism marketing is either technology-driven and little else or it is technology passive, if that. The truth, of course, lies somewhere between the two poles.

One example of this is the use of mobile apps. At one extreme, there is a view which suggests that apps are the only game in tourism marketing town; at the other, there is no view - apps may as well be invisible. Neither view is correct. All the technologies that have sprung up in recent years have created a sub-category of one of the 4Ps of marketing; promotion has its own marketing mix of a multitude of media, none of which can be neglected.

But many of these media, if not neglected, are nevertheless treated less than well. Moreover, a lack of appreciation as to what these different media can do creates a marketing disadvantage, and it is not as if this appreciation needs to be marketing rocket science.

Take Facebook. ABTA is going to stage its convention in Croatia next year. It is one of the destinations that is a key competitor for Mallorca (some would say its biggest). As a simple experiment, I typed "Croatia Facebook" into Google and then typed in "Mallorca Facebook" and "Majorca Facebook". Try it yourselves if you want, but if not let me tell you that the first Google entry for Croatia led to a "Love Croatia" Facebook page; 788,634 likes for the "official" Facebook page of Croatia. The Mallorca ones? The results offer absolutely nothing similar; they are fragmented and inconsequential, and fragmented is unfortunately a synonym for Mallorcan tourism marketing.

Four Pillars, the UK hotel group, has just issued the results of a survey into the use of social media. This found, among other things, that 52% of Facebook users said that friends' photos had inspired their holiday choice. It also found, and so confirming previous research which has pointed to the diminishing importance of established media, that 92% "trusted" recommendations above all other forms of advertising (only 47% "trust" TV, magazine or newspaper ads). 

This survey emphasises the importance of Facebook and of review sites such as Trip Advisor. These social media have supplanted conventional websites and established print and broadcast media as the main means of travel and tourism communication. It's the reality. There can be no scepticism any longer. Yet in Mallorca, there is a lousy and outmoded web presence provided by tourism authorities (and others) who should know better by now. There is an absence of an official and coherent use of social media and an apparent absence of anyone directing tourism marketing who appears to appreciate them.

ABTA knows all about technology and all about the importance of media technologies for today's tourism. It has decided to give Mallorca a miss next year. But in preferring Croatia, there may be more to the decision than it simply being a case of Buggins's turn. 788,634 people can't be wrong.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Inca mayor closes Facebook page

Just going to prove that getting closer to the citizens via social media can have its drawbacks, Inca's mayor Rafel Torres has been forced to close his Facebook page because of the insults that have been posted.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

Conversations With Tourists: Social media

At the end of January last year in an article entitled "The Importance Of Being Erstwhile", I wrote about the resignation of Mar Guerrero, the then director of the Balearics Tourism Agency. Guerrero was greatly respected and her stock rose on account of her having done something most odd - resigning because, in her words (or at least an approximate translation thereof), she didn't wish to pull the wool over people's eyes. A point of principle. You don't get much of that in Mallorcan public life.

When suggestions are made that tourism ministers should be tourism professionals, they overlook the fact that those charged with truly implementing tourism strategies are professionals. Some of them are even quite good or very good. Guerrero was one of the latter. Her departure came as no great surprise, as the job wasn't quite as it said on the tin, but it was a departure that the former government and former tourism minister Joana Barceló could have ill-afforded.

There is no point in now dwelling on the past, but the present and immediate future are far less rosy in tourism promotion terms than they were when Guerrero felt it necessary to resign over how funds were being allocated. At least there were funds then. Now they have all but dried up.

It is against this background of promotional parsimony that what Guerrero had to say in a recent interview** should be considered carefully. Talking of the need for a reinvention of Mallorcan tourism, she was very clear as to one aspect of such a reinvention - the mode of marketing.

If one takes a quote from this interview, you will begin to appreciate where she is coming from. "Every day you could find ways of interacting with your target (market). A website is not now sufficient for being competitive." She was talking about the role of evolving technologies in tourism promotion. It was music to the ears. Mine at any rate. I have made similar points many times.

Social media have created the possibility to maintain a regular conversation with customers - tourists in this instance. This is a conversation in which the customer (and indeed others) are participants in the marketing process. Tourists are not marketed to so much as they are marketing with those who provide the social media. The thinking is totally different, but the thinking, promotionally and technologically in Mallorca, is largely stuck in the dark ages. Stuck in the past with websites stuck up that are essentially uninteresting, not interactive, passive and passé.

Sure, there is information to be derived, but that's not the point. Conversations through social media go way beyond the merely informative. They engage with tourists, they involve them, they show respect to them by making them a part of the promotional process. These conversations break down the "them-and-us" barriers of traditional marketing.

Not everyone is of course a Facebook, Twitter or other social media user. But neither is everyone surfing the internet or watching a telly ad. The reach may be lower, but it is a reach that is arguably far more valuable because of the bonding that occurs through social media. There is an inherently greater trust to the relationship, and it is one that can have a hard-edged commercial element to it; ways of up-selling and cross-selling, in addition to initial selling, are very much flavour of the moment among various actors in the tourism industry. And social media can be one of these ways.

The potential power of social media makes it even more inexplicable to understand why somewhere like Llucmajor, abandoning its tourism board, has also seemingly allowed its Facebook page to fall into abeyance. The point needs to be reiterated. It is not expensive to operate social media, even if it is necessary to engage those with a whole range of linguistic skills.

But an apparent inability to appreciate the role of new technologies in tourism promotion stems, one suspects, from the contrariness of social media's sexiness. They are sexy in that they are of the now, but they are not sexy in the same way as a telly ad with a celeb is. The dark-ages marketing mindset in Mallorca has been one founded on the egos of those in positions of authority who can sense some stardust being rubbed off by rubbing shoulders with a Nadal or a Schiffer and spending a fortune on advertising of questionable effectiveness.

The reinvention of Mallorca is not just a case of what is offered, it is how it is offered. To this end, all levels of the tourism industry should have social media strategies. And if they haven't, they should get them pretty damn quick.

** The full interview: Diario de Mallorca


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Aliens Attack Alcúdia: The end of news

Cavemen who took to carving or painting their cave walls with images of alien attacks were early forms of news broadcaster. Denied the possibility to pop out to the nearest B&Q, their efforts would have taken a fair old time, at the end of which the aliens had built their landing-strips, constructed the odd pyramid and then cleared off again.

Hierarchies being what they were and still are, it is quite possible that the carving and painting reporters acquired a degree of social status. They were the first social networkers in an epoch when news travelled slowly and when the bearer of the news could legitimately claim to have broken the news and so could rightly be honoured as its originator.

News continued to travel slowly until relatively recently. Though news agencies obscured the precise source of news, their pooling of information was a system of facilitation with only so much claim being made on origination. It was to news broadcasters and other media to make the greater claims through scoops, exclusives and so on.

The day of the scoop has not passed, but the day of news has. There is now no news because there is now no ownership. It exists in a constantly swirling vortex that grows ever larger, a vast, parameter-less black hole of increasing irrelevance that is moulded, reframed and regurgitated. News is disappearing because nothing much any longer is news; it is already known.

The best recent news that wasn't in fact news came from "WeeklyWorldNews". On 11 January, it reported that Facebook would shut down on 15 March. WWN has also reported that, following the landing in China and the Indonesia Sea of three alien craft from the Planet Gootan, there will be a full-scale alien attack this November.

Unfortunately, WWN is a spoof. There is rather more chance of an alien attack than Facebook being shut down, though if it were to be, how on earth would anyone be able to tell anyone else about the alien attack? They would have to go back to carving and painting.

The first person to do the carving would immediately receive the accolade of social networker of the millennium. He or she would stand out as a genuine passer-on of information, because at present, thanks to Facebook, all other social media, smartphones and indeed the entire internet, such an accolade cannot legitimately be claimed. Every one, every mad, last social media obsessive is at it.

News has ended, as it has been superseded by a global competition and seeking of affirmation through spreading what is already known or what is of little or absolutely no consequence. The competition is fuelled by the very nature of social networks. Sociability comes with a psychological need for affirmation, for peer-group reinforcement, recognition and identity, even if many of the peer group are unknown. The ease of the transmission of non-news or of the already known news is what keeps the finger constantly hovering over the post button on Facebook or the Twitter account.

How on earth has it come to this? To give just one example. It snowed for a brief time around Alcúdia and Pollensa yesterday. It has been snowing on Mallorca for a week or so. Snow is not actually that unusual, even at sea level. The snow didn't even settle. But this brief flurry caused Facebook to go into virtual meltdown.

The end of news, i.e. the fact that it is already known or is of minimal or no significance, has not though deterred the impulse to attempt to be cast as a driver of non-news. Quite the contrary. It is what makes that black hole so very voracious.

Media psychology has, in response to the explosion of social media, acquired a whole niche for itself in the study of human behaviour. Narcissism, group identity, establishment of positions in hierarchies, the need for affirmation; it is old psychology for a new age. And grabbing hold of news, whatever it might be, from wherever it might come, in however many forms it might already exist is an alliance between this established psychology and the maxim of information being power, the latter which is translated not so much into power as such but into an hierarchical status that the identity of the group feels compelled to affirm.

News may have ended, but there is no shortage of cavemen. If they got hold of an imminent alien attack in Alcúdia, now this would be something worth communicating.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Henry The Seventh: Social media success

Do you "like"? Do you "tweet"? Do you tube? Does your business do any or all of these things and, if so, does it really know what it is doing with them?

Social media. Social networks. Once upon a time, social networks were just networks of people, doing what people do, i.e. being social, being friends, being business acquaintances. Whatever the type of network, the purpose is the same: to make contact and connections.

And that's what it's about. "Making connections." The words of Seamus Cullen at No Frills Excursions when I told him I was going to be talking to his business partner, Toni Alenyar, about social media.

No Frills is a small business, but it is a successful one, and one reason why it is successful is that it goes about its business in a purposeful fashion. It plans. And among its plans is one for the use of social media. I have a copy: all fourteen pages of it.

Not every business can devote significant time and resources to social media, but most have come to appreciate that they are, as Toni says, "essential tools". Many businesses have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and the like, but do they really appreciate what they are doing with them?

No Frills is guided by a seven-step strategy. It is one that is partly specific to it as an excursions' operator, but most of the steps can be applied to or adapted by any business. How the company uses social media is geared to meeting one or more of these seven steps. Crucially, they are not the company's, they are the customer's.

From the customer's seeking of holiday inspiration and information to his planning and decision-making, to his taking action (making a booking and travelling) and to his sharing of his experiences, social media accompany each step along the way.

No Frills tests out any social media going. With some it is a case of learning what they offer and which may assume greater importance in the future. But with all its social media activity, there is a wish for the business to be visible, to enhance its reputation and to be seen as innovative.

Of the different networks, the most important to the company are Facebook, You Tube and Trip Advisor. The glowing reviews that No Frills attracts on Trip Advisor come quite obviously as a result of good experiences and good service, but the company actively encourages customers to review what it does, whether good or not so good, and spends time in responding to reviews which are posted.

The sharing of experiences by customers on Trip Advisor is the seventh step in the company's strategic approach, but it can just as easily be seen as the first step. As Toni points out, Trip Advisor is that significant now that a majority of travellers consult it as part of their initial planning.

The attention given to the traveller's information-gathering process is one that has led No Frills to be highly proactive and innovative. For example, it now makes short videos about hotels and posts them on You Tube. Why? Because someone interested in coming on holiday searches for information about specific hotels. No Frills videos give a short tour of the hotel and other relevant information about the resort, and relevance is a keyword in Toni's vocabulary.

But how does this benefit the business? It's not about selling as such. Of course, selling is the outcome that is sought, but it comes back to making connections. Someone sees a video about a hotel, it comes from No Frills, there will be some means of connecting to more No Frills information and the result ... There may be a sale either online or in-resort. Critically though, trust and credibility are being created.

Actually quantifying the benefits of the company's social media activity is nigh on impossible. Toni freely admits this. But then much promotional activity is hard or impossible to quantify. It is hard to place a value on the benefits derived from visibility, reputation and innovation, but social media, used well and planned well, will bring such benefits, and the importance attached to social media by No Frills is reflected by the fact that there is now a full-time member of staff who concentrates on the company's internet presence.

There is way more to the No Frills internet story. I've not mentioned how Google search enquiries have helped to create a whole separate website, I've not mentioned that each of the four No Frills offices (three in Puerto Alcúdia and one in Puerto Pollensa) has its own You Tube channel, and I've not mentioned Henry the elephant. You might guess though that Henry has his own Facebook page.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

People Of The Year: Spain and Mallorca

Mark Zuckerberg is "Time Man (Person) Of The Year". Good for him. He joins a distinguished list of those who "for better or worse" have most influenced events during the year. His name is now etched alongside previous winners such as Roosevelt, Churchill and The Computer. There was no person of the year in 1982, just a machine; neither Thatcher nor Galtieri could persuade the judges.

There has never been a Time Person Of The Year from Spain. There is arguably only one who might have been: Franco in 1936. Wallis Simpson won that year for some reason. He then faced some pretty tough opposition over the years of the Civil War; Chiang Kai-shek and his missus winning in 1937 and Hitler and Stalin in the next two.

If Spain has proved to be light when it comes to candidates for Person Of The Year, then Mallorca has been all but weightless. The island doesn't really do "greats". In seeking a person of the year, therefore, there is no alternative other than to forget global influence and to instead be inward-looking in considering Spain and Mallorca's persons (sic) of the year.

For Spain you probably have to look no further than Vicente del Bosque or Andres Iniesta for lifting the World Cup, but that puts them in Sports Personality of the Year territory. Influencing for better or worse? Well, does A.P. McCoy do this, other than influencing the betting habits of a nation? Discuss.

Does Zapatero qualify as person of the year? He has influenced relatively little other than his likely political downfall, but his real problem has been that he is influenced by other things. He has no real control of events, just as Mallorca's politicians have no control, except in one area. A whole dock-full of them have influenced events for the worse - Munar, Matas, (Miguel) Nadal and their shenanigans with public money. Allegedly. People of the year might well be the more anonymous faces of the anti-corruption police and judges.

But Zapatero does qualify in one respect. He responded to the Pope's accusations of secularism in Spain by saying that laws are not made "that the Pope wants". His great achievement, not just this year, has been his challenges to the Church. He may go down in history as having presided over the collapse of the boom times, but he also deserves a place in history for his social policies. He can't be made person of the year because of his economic failings, but he would still make the shortlist.

As in Spain, so Mallorca has its sporting aspirants. Rafael Nadal and Jorge Lorenzo. Great achievements by both, but what have they really influenced? The greater achievement was probably that of a non-Mallorcan, Real Mallorca's former coach Gregorio Manzano for influencing outstanding performances from a team that refused to be dragged down by a hopeless club. Even Manzano didn't influence events that much though, not to the extent of ridding the team of Sid Lowe's "no-fans" jibe.

Of Mallorca's politicians, the ones who have kept their hands clean, that is, can anything be said? Not a lot. President Antich was and is a victim of circumstances, but he did one thing for the good - booting the Unió Mallorquina party out of the coalition when the corruption charges became a daily occurrence. The weakness of his position and that of his government was, however, exposed when he had to concede the environment ministry to the Mallorcan socialists (PSM) who promptly bared their political teeth in bunkering the Son Bosc golf course. The new minister, Gabriel Vicens, has form in influencing events for better or worse, depending on your point of view; he had previously managed to hack Alcúdia town hall off so much that the planned rail extension from Sa Pobla was scrapped.

Antich said in January that he was going to make tourism his priority in 2010. Heading off to Moscow to press some flesh may have been evidence of this, but did he influence tourism events? Not so as you would have noticed. As with most things, he showed how impotent Mallorca's politicians are. They find it hard to influence anything that really matters, such as tourism. The real people of the year, as ever, are the bosses of Thomas Cook and TUI. It is they who influence events for better or worse, and so we can anticipate ever more all-inclusive in 2011.

No, there is no one person who merits the Of The Year accolade. Not a Mallorcan or a Spaniard anyway. The one who does is American. Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook influenced us, well many of us, for better or worse, and gave rise to subversiveness of the sort that saw Pollensa and its poorly maintained and littered streets being highlighted with shame and pro-duck campaigners in Can Picafort aiming to flout the law.

"Time" may have got it wrong with Wallis Simpson when it overlooked Franco, but it has got it right with Zuckerberg. Do you like or do you want to be a friend?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Kissing With Confidence: Embracing Facebook

The Pope is to be confronted by a kiss-in - a "queer kissing flashmob" - when he turns up in Barcelona on Sunday. A gay and lesbian demonstration will involve two minutes of slobbering. "Avert your eyes, Holy Father. They're using tongues and all."

This is part of what is an ongoing collapse of Catholicism in Spain. The rearguard, die-hard Catholics are said to be outraged. Which is presumably part of the reason for the kiss protest. What the Pope thinks about it, who knows. Not that keen, one would imagine. He probably won't be videoing it all on his mobile and then posting it on YouTube. Does the Pope do the internet in this way, do you suppose? Doubtful. It's unlikely that he tweets or has a Facebook page. If he did, then he might have been invited to the kiss-in or been asked whether he liked it or to have even been asked to become a "friend". The notion of the Pope being poked by some gay activists is really not something one should devote too much time thinking about.

The demo has been arranged through Facebook. Ah yes, Facebook. Where would we be without it? With a lot more time on our hands to do something more productive, like lying down or watching the telly. We would also be a whole lot less likely to be invited to demos or to partake in some action, gay, lesbian or otherwise.

In recent times, Facebook has been used locally to try and arrange an alternative to the Can Picafort night party during the summer fiesta (i.e. staging it on the beach where it used to be held); to call to arms supporters of live ducks being thrown into the sea (also in Can Picafort, and a movement which furthermore featured a YouTube video with, coincidentally, a "Pope" enticing some Donalds from the Son Bauló torrent); and to post pictures of rubbish, graffiti and general unpleasantness in Pollensa and its port. I daresay there have been many others. Were I to spend my life hooked up to Facebook, I might be able to tell you about them, but I don't. I am ambivalent towards it.

A touch of citizen participation agitprop seems a pretty good application of Facebook. I am all in favour. There are plenty of other benefits. What I don't like is the controlling nature of Facebook, the control on time and the sheer impulse to use it. This stems from an irrational further dislike, that of having been steered in its direction by some nerdy geek who wasn't much good at getting his leg over. I can at least take satisfaction in the knowledge that a time will come when we all hate Mark Zuckerberg as much as we now hate Bill Gates.

The rotten thing about Facebook is that it can be so useful. And not just to the summer-employed population of Mallorca, now with so much free time that they can to go into Facebook overdrive when not standing in the "paro" queues. No, it's more useful than this and more useful than appealing to the agitating duck-fanciers of Can Picafort.

It has occurred to me to wonder quite why so many resources, mainly money, are piled into the creation of governmental and local authority tourism websites, especially as most of them are completely useless or are embarrassing in their use of English. Facebook's free. And there are all manner of people knocking around who do pages which serve a similar sort of purpose. Like myself. At least I was doing so until I started to get bored with it all towards the end of the season.

But with the Facebooks and indeed websites that are privately operated, there is an enormous resource that basically does the job of the tourism authorities for them. Moreover, they often speak to the audience in a far more comprehensible and helpful fashion than the "official" sites.

Of course, these alternatives would never be sanctioned as being real mouthpieces because they might - and do - say things that the authorities do not care for. You are more likely to get information and opinion, warts and all. This doesn't square with the default mode of websites and their descriptions of everything as "beautiful" or "paradise", the sea as "turquoise" or the natives as "welcoming and friendly". And you might also get, because this is the nature of Facebook, pages that are friends with or who like gays kissing in front of the Pope or illegally live ducks quacking in the sea off Can Picafort. Tut, tut, that would never do.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

A Load Of Bull (Ducks And Parties): Fiesta peculiarities

The power of Facebook. Possibly.

Some weeks after one Facebook group in Can Picafort emerged, comes another. The first was concerned with what used to be the "Auba" party that took place on the beach, but which was moved to the sports centre three years ago. The second has to do with another tradition that used to occur during the Can Picafort summer fiesta - the tossing of live ducks into the sea. Both groups want a return to the traditions.

In the case of the second Facebook group, anyone joining it should be slightly wary. The miscreants who have released live ducks, in defiance of the ban these past three years, have never been identified. The police are likely to be taking an interest in this group. As for the first group, this might also attract some attention from the forces of the law; an unofficial party in the dunes is being talked about.

While the aims of the two groups are different, there might well be common cause: the night party and the live ducks were the soul of the fiestas in Can Picafort. The move to the sports centre has done much to strip the party of its atmosphere, while the rubber duck substitutes are just plain daft. There is another aspect to be taken account of where the party is concerned, and that is money. It is doubtful that the organisers could stretch to a Carl Cox again in the current circumstances. But this shouldn't necessarily be an obstacle to what once was the biggest and most anticipated of the fiesta parties. If Puerto Pollensa - Puerto Pollensa, for God's sake - can have a party on the beach, why shouldn't Can Picafort?

The Facebook group promoting the return of the live ducks makes precisely the point that I have - here and in HOT! - that by comparison with genuine acts of cruelty to animals, the release of ducks is not in the same league. It isn't really in a league at all. The ducks were a soft target; unlike bulls and all the passion that they arouse on both sides of the argument. Bull traditions, in particular the bullfight, are far more deep-rooted in Mallorcan and Spanish society than those involving ducks, and one might also argue that they are not without Francoist connotations. El Caudillo was greatly in favour of the bullfight, given its "Spanishness" and suggestions of nobility.

The annual bullfight during Muro's Sant Joan fiestas, due to be staged on 20 June, had looked as though it might not go ahead, owing to the need for certain improvements to be made to the bullring and its facilities. These have been made. The town hall, in addition to the nearly half a million euros it paid to acquire the bullring, has forked out a further 30 grand to effect the improvements, using, it says, money that was held over from last year. The equivalent of the RSPCA is none too impressed with the town hall. It has been denounced to the ministry of the interior on the grounds that it has, in effect, financially supported the bullfight, which seemingly is in contravention of a law that disbars it from doing so. The society has also made reference to the demonstration against the bullfight that occurred last year.

The bullfight will go ahead. Even before final sign-off, due to be given today by technicians, doctors and vets, the programme for the fiestas had been published, with the bullfight and the matadors listed. Meanwhile fiesta organisers in Can Picafort will be arranging the acquisition of rubber ducks.

Something isn't quite right.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

This Is My Four-Leaf Clover: Internet advertising

I find myself increasingly and variously intrigued and infuriated by internet advertising.

Let’s take the infuriation first, if we may: the invasive pop-ups or the things that somehow float across the screen or some video demanding to take me away from what it is I actually want to look at. I’ll give you a good example. The "Diario de Mallorca". Good paper and pretty good website. Better than its main Mallorca-based competitor, "Ultima Hora". It’s easier to navigate and is better laid-out. However, it has this regular tendency, once you’ve clicked on whatever it is you want to read, to take you to an advert - often for some Seat or Peugeot you have absolutely no interest in. This obliges you to either unclick it or wait till it goes away.

There does of course have to be advertising, which opens up the whole discussion about newspapers, their ad revenues from the web and whether they should be free online or not. But this is not something for here. There is advertising, which is a business necessity for a website to function, and there is advertising - of the intrusive variety. To what extent is this intrusive advertising counter-productive? Out of principle, I refuse to click on it, and only have done so by mistake. Out of principle, I would never buy a Seat, if it’s being forced onto me when I have something better to do, like reading about what shenanigans such-and-such a local politician has been up to. And when it takes an age to load a page because of the damn floating ads, or whatever they are, there is further counter-productivity. I go somewhere else. I may not like "Ultima Hora" as much, but it doesn’t hack me off.

You have to presume that this intrusion doesn’t come cheap and also to presume that it works, even if referrals may be a low percentage and actual conversion (assuming this can in fact be measured) far less. But the potential to alienate readers cannot be underestimated, and then there are those, like myself, who form a negative image of a brand because it’s getting my back up.

Web advertising is a curiosity because it is an experimental work-in-progress. Unlike TV advertising, the model of which has remained pretty much unaltered since the first days of commercial television (in the UK at any rate) in the mid-1950s, advertising on the net has been in a constant state of flux since it was first realised that here was the brave new world of promotional opportunity. The cost can be high, but it all depends what is being advertised and how. The "how" is arguably the most interesting aspect, especially since the inception of social networking. Facebook and the rest may not be for everyone, but its potential - cheap promotional potential - is significant.

In Alcudia there is a bar, Shamrock. Facebook has transformed not only the bar in terms of its income and profitability, it has transformed the bar completely - in terms of its market and product. Yes, there have been, and are, other promotional tactics, but it is Facebook that has driven the change. I’m not going into detail, this may be for another time or place, but if there is such a thing at Harvard Business School as case studies on the role of social networking in marketing, then Shamrock might well form one of them. To emphasise - not just greater success but also a change in the business itself, all stemming from Facebook. It’s fascinating stuff.

The essential ingredient with the Facebook approach is that it is a form of push marketing - or poke marketing if you prefer. It is proactive and can create a rapid response. But this proactivity isn’t aggressive, as with so much unwished-for promotion, because of the very nature of social networks and their built-in likemindedness. Moreover, Facebook is without pretension in its marketing style. Some advertisers, or so it has appeared to me, have a kudos mentality that demands they pay fairly substantial amounts to appear on a particularly grand site. This may be beneficial to them, or it may not be, but for many, a complementary approach using social networks would almost certainly be beneficial, if not more beneficial. It does rather depend on how broad the marketing scope needs to be and therefore how much the initial contact or interest via the internet needs to be made, which is where paid-for representation can be, and often is, important.

What we’re moving towards is businesses adopting a bundling approach, of different types of site, with different styles. The only fear with the likes of Facebook is that its success, and that of those who use it creatively, will result in the sort of intrusive advertising that can deter. I, for one, hope not.


QUIZ -
It doesn't have to have four leaves, but what the ... "This is my four-leaf clover." Where's it from? Great song. Great band - IMO.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.