Keep The Customer Satisfied

More on the “Gran Escala” project near Zaragoza (25 November: Bond Themes). “The Times” confirms what its Sunday sister paper had spoken of before; indeed it fleshes out what this complex will comprise – 32 themed casinos, 70 hotels, five theme parks, pyramids, sphinxes and golf courses. 25 million visitors are anticipated each year by 2015. And for those 25 million, there will doubtless be innumerable bars and also shops that stay open when people want them to be open, unlike in Palma for example. 25 million is well over double Mallorca’s current annual tourism intake. 25 million people heading to a piece of reclaimed desert, modelled as the new Las Vegas, more or less on Mallorca’s doorstep and only the same flying-time from the UK.

But why is it that this news is coming from “The Times”? Where is the local reporting? This development is something of huge interest to Mallorca in different ways. Firstly, it poses a potential threat, especially to what there is of winter tourism. One waits to see what the theme parks will be, but they are sure to be of a variety that attracts family tourism as well as any short-breakers wanting to risk their money in a casino; they will not get 25 million visitors just for casinos and a round of golf.

Secondly, the Gran Escala highlights the muddled thinking regarding Mallorca’s tourism. To digress a little: In the late ’70s, Jan Carlsson, the boss of the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), transformed the airline’s culture and performance by creating a structure with the customer at the top of the organisational pyramid; everything else was subordinate to or supported the customer. SAS was one of the first organisations to have a recognisable customer-driven philosophy.

SAS was representative of a wholly different approach to management and organisations. Take this approach and place it in the context of tourism strategy, Mallorca’s tourism strategy, and where is the customer – the tourist – in the structure? Place it in the context of the whole economic model of Mallorca and where is the customer? It is the tourist, the customer, to whom the island is beholden. What fraction of Mallorca’s wealth would exist without that customer?

To continue the business analogy: Mallorca is at the mature stage of its life cycle. A business faced with the same situation has different choices – carrying on the same but with improvements, diversification, acquisition or sale of the business, progressive decline. Mallorca has three of these choices, unless those German businessmen who wanted to buy the island were really for real! To an extent, the first two of these choices are being pursued: hotel stock being upgraded, infrastructure improved, new products (and, yes, that includes all-inclusives). Otherwise, the diversification is clouded with ambiguity and irrelevance: the vagueness of “quality” tourism, the offer of tourism served with a gastronomy of culture and history – what culture, what history? These are minority niches of tiny portions for an island business grown fat on the mass market. As ever, where is the beef?

The thinking is too defined by an insular (inevitably perhaps) and romantic view of what tourists might want, as opposed to what tourists really want. The tourist, the customer, is not at the top of the pyramid. Much of the thinking is couched in terms of “sustainable tourism” with the environmental overtones this implies. This is the wrong adjective. Meaningful tourism is more accurate. Much as it may offend, for every one “cultural” tourist there are a hundred more who have mainly hedonistic pursuits at the top of their list of priorities. The tourist wants entertaining. This means attractions, this means fun. And this is where Gran Escala comes in.

A similar project was never going to be created in Mallorca and never will be. Land is too scarce and too expensive. The environmental lobby would not permit it. But more fundamentally, the building of some giant fun palace in Mallorca would conflict with the current group-think that can conceive of only culture and gastronomy. It is this group-think which denies the tourist, the customer, his or her place at the top of the pyramid.

Yesterday, I defended the Balearic Government. But I also said that things could be done differently. No, there would never be a Gran Escala in Mallorca, but the thinking behind it is precisely the sort of thinking that is required in Mallorca to shake the island out of its winter torpor and to sustain, yes sustain, meaningful tourism in the summer as well. The customer comes first – on a grand scale.


QUIZ
Yesterday – The Jackson Five. Today’s title – which duo?

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Bond Themes

“Me llamo Bond, Jaime Bond, zero-zero-siete.”

Bond looks into the mirror in the room of one of the 32 hotels, adjusts his bow-tie and white jacket, sips his Martini and then slips away, intending to make for the Casino Royale, one of five casinos that comprise “Gran Escala”, somewhere in northern Mallorca. As he makes his way around the vast complex, he is taken aback. Is that John Wayne - “truly he was the son of God”? And that shady KGB agent, he looks remarkably like Vladimir Putin. “What are they doing in these casinos?” thinks Bond. Wayne he could count on, but Putin? What threat could be lurking for the numbers of innocent people here at Gran Escala, a proportion of the 12 million that come each year? But then he realises that they are not real; they are just actors, one from the Roman casino, the other from “Spyland”.

12 million visitors a year, a site that will eclipse EuroDisney, a couple of hours flying from England, huge numbers of jobs, a new version of Las Vegas, a haven for gamblers from the UK and Spain alike, with five theme parks and those 32 hotels to boot.

In your dreams, Mallorca, in your dreams. Or maybe in your nightmares, Mallorca. The Gran Escala is the working name for a complex planned near Zaragoza on the mainland. The environmentalists don’t like the idea, but a number of politicians, attracted by the injection of money and the employment, do. The article in today’s “Sunday Times” makes it clear that it is not, as yet, a done deal, but were it to be then it could be a nightmare of another sort for Mallorca, certainly where the limited winter season is concerned.

This theme park idea. Where have I heard of this before? I know. Right here. On this blog. It has actually been mooted in the past. And it has of course been turned down. Why? The environment. The environment and an abstract retention of the past - a Mallorcan equivalent of John Major’s old maids, cricket and warm beer.

So the mainland maybe gets the gig, while meantime Mallorca struggles on in winter with its closed hotels, rejected golf-course applications, some brave attempts like the Aquarium in Palma, handfuls of walkers, and groups of cyclists who enrage many and mean precious little in terms of real business. And then there are the other ideas that only nibble at the edges of the winter-season biscuit. Here’s another one. In yesterday’s “Brisas” magazine, there was an interview with a German (Jörg Link) who has lived in Mallorca since 1975; his father had bought a house in Son Serra de Marina two years before. He is an enthusiast for the works and thoughts of Ramón Llull, one of Mallorca’s most prominent historical figures. He is planning a centre devoted to Llull. It is a fine idea. I would go. Llull deserves far more attention than he has. But it won’t bring in a load of people. Now a Llull theme park with a heavy techno element in recognition of his role as a founder of computing theory; a theme park combined with the history of King Jaime I, more or less Llull’s contemporary. Maybe we would be getting somewhere. Meantime, the projected complex on the mainland will both shake and stir.


QUIZ
Yesterday - Big Country, “In A Big Country”. Today - not related to the title as such; the question is which artist or artists, apart from John Barry, has/have performed more than one main Bond film song?

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