Plans for the redevelopment of part of Magalluf by Meliá Hotels International were officially outlined yesterday by representatives of the hotel chain. Under the plans, two hotels will be converted into apartments, a pedestrianised boulevard will be created in helping to make the resort like Miami Beach, and the general level of tourism will be raised. The company rejected claims that the redevelopment will result in more all-inclusive.
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Showing posts with label Magalluf redevelopment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Magalluf redevelopment. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Making Waves: Resort re-imagination
The excitement down Magalluf way has, as you might have expected, been exciting the media. For once, Maga isn't finding a dubious place in the media sun because of drunkenness, violence, balcony-diving, PR "tiqueteros" and prostitution (choose as applicable).
More is emerging of Meliá Hotels International's grand vision for Magalluf. There is, for instance, going to be a "wave house", artificial surf created by submersible pumps. "Flowing water is a symbol for wealth and prosperity in Feng Shui". So says the waveloch.com website; Wave Loch has, since 1991, "been on a mission to wave the world". There is a wave house in San Diego, in Durban, in Santiago (Chile) and in Singapore. Just as Magalluf coming at the end of a list of locations for a fashion house - London, Paris, New York, Rome - would sound daft, so it sounds out of place with the current Wave Houses. Still, think of all that wealth and prosperity, and how long will it be before Magalluf ceases to be Magalluf and is completely renamed after the Meliá concept - the Sol Calvià Resort? It sounds altogether more impressive.
The idea that Magalluf might be renamed isn't as ridiculous as it might seem. By going along with Meliá's plan, the regional government and Calvià town hall have all but ceded responsibility for the resort. Or at least this is the impression one gets. Some years ago, I suggested that sponsorship deals for individual resorts, and renaming them with the sponsor's name, might not be a bad idea. It was a suggestion made in jest. Little did I know.
The government, bending over backwards to take the private-sector shilling - as well it might, as the private sector is the only sector that has a shilling - is now making it clear what President Bauzá meant by his version of "small government". It isn't small so much as non-existent, where tourism is concerned at any rate. Tourism minister Carlos Delgado has done the talking for Bauzá. There won't be more public money for the Playa de Palma redevelopment, he appears to have decided; enough has already been spent on fat salaries for members of the consortium who have succeeded in achieving pretty much nothing.
Another of the plans for Magalluf involves the beach. Meliá will in effect end up running it. There is the slight matter, however, of the Costas authority, that wing of national government which issues decrees on matters of a beach nature. Does the regional government know something we don't? Almost certainly it does. The Costas may well get its wings clipped. It might even be stripped of its wings completely along with its feathers and beak. Delgado has had less than good words for the Costas. Incompetent and slothful was how he described the authority back in July. Whatever the Costas' thoughts regarding the Magalluf plan might currently be, you can be reasonably sure that they will change once Delgado's friends in the Partido Popular return to power in November.
Calviá town hall, another party with an interest in the beach, presumably poses little problem. Delgado, former Calvià mayor, will surely have had words with his PP successor. There seems, therefore, little to prevent Meliá operating the beach and doing all the rest that it has in mind, except for the minor irritation of a need to change laws. We can safely assume, however, that this irritation will be dealt with in due course.
The Magalluf project, for all that is hugely praiseworthy, does raise questions as to how interventionist (or not) the government is likely to be in other matters to do with tourism. It is no bad thing if it takes a back seat and lets the private sector take the lead, but how realistic might it be for similar projects to be rolled out in other resorts? As I pointed out previously, Magalluf is ideal for Meliá because of the number of hotels it has and their convenient concentration near to each other. Not all resorts are like Magalluf though; far from it.
There is more to tourism, however, than just the resorts and the hotels. And more to what falls under the tourism ministry's remit. Take, for example, its responsibilities for arts festivals. Delgado has stated that grants will be limited in the future, if available at all. The ministry left Pollensa town hall high and dry by not providing all the emergency assistance for this year's music festival, as it seemed to have promised. Pollensa's festival is not the only one to feel the cold blast of cuts. If the private sector doesn't come to its aid and to the aid of other festivals, their future has to be in doubt.
The Magalluf plan represents way more than just the re-imagination of a resort. It represents a total shift away from public provision, and it is a shift that will become apparent in other spheres of Mallorca's tourism. Magalluf is a re-imagination and also a re-invention, one in which it is the hoteliers and the private sector which rule the roost and not the regional government. The whole picture of the island's tourism is about to be redrawn. There is excitement certainly, but there is going to also be uncertainty.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
More is emerging of Meliá Hotels International's grand vision for Magalluf. There is, for instance, going to be a "wave house", artificial surf created by submersible pumps. "Flowing water is a symbol for wealth and prosperity in Feng Shui". So says the waveloch.com website; Wave Loch has, since 1991, "been on a mission to wave the world". There is a wave house in San Diego, in Durban, in Santiago (Chile) and in Singapore. Just as Magalluf coming at the end of a list of locations for a fashion house - London, Paris, New York, Rome - would sound daft, so it sounds out of place with the current Wave Houses. Still, think of all that wealth and prosperity, and how long will it be before Magalluf ceases to be Magalluf and is completely renamed after the Meliá concept - the Sol Calvià Resort? It sounds altogether more impressive.
The idea that Magalluf might be renamed isn't as ridiculous as it might seem. By going along with Meliá's plan, the regional government and Calvià town hall have all but ceded responsibility for the resort. Or at least this is the impression one gets. Some years ago, I suggested that sponsorship deals for individual resorts, and renaming them with the sponsor's name, might not be a bad idea. It was a suggestion made in jest. Little did I know.
The government, bending over backwards to take the private-sector shilling - as well it might, as the private sector is the only sector that has a shilling - is now making it clear what President Bauzá meant by his version of "small government". It isn't small so much as non-existent, where tourism is concerned at any rate. Tourism minister Carlos Delgado has done the talking for Bauzá. There won't be more public money for the Playa de Palma redevelopment, he appears to have decided; enough has already been spent on fat salaries for members of the consortium who have succeeded in achieving pretty much nothing.
Another of the plans for Magalluf involves the beach. Meliá will in effect end up running it. There is the slight matter, however, of the Costas authority, that wing of national government which issues decrees on matters of a beach nature. Does the regional government know something we don't? Almost certainly it does. The Costas may well get its wings clipped. It might even be stripped of its wings completely along with its feathers and beak. Delgado has had less than good words for the Costas. Incompetent and slothful was how he described the authority back in July. Whatever the Costas' thoughts regarding the Magalluf plan might currently be, you can be reasonably sure that they will change once Delgado's friends in the Partido Popular return to power in November.
Calviá town hall, another party with an interest in the beach, presumably poses little problem. Delgado, former Calvià mayor, will surely have had words with his PP successor. There seems, therefore, little to prevent Meliá operating the beach and doing all the rest that it has in mind, except for the minor irritation of a need to change laws. We can safely assume, however, that this irritation will be dealt with in due course.
The Magalluf project, for all that is hugely praiseworthy, does raise questions as to how interventionist (or not) the government is likely to be in other matters to do with tourism. It is no bad thing if it takes a back seat and lets the private sector take the lead, but how realistic might it be for similar projects to be rolled out in other resorts? As I pointed out previously, Magalluf is ideal for Meliá because of the number of hotels it has and their convenient concentration near to each other. Not all resorts are like Magalluf though; far from it.
There is more to tourism, however, than just the resorts and the hotels. And more to what falls under the tourism ministry's remit. Take, for example, its responsibilities for arts festivals. Delgado has stated that grants will be limited in the future, if available at all. The ministry left Pollensa town hall high and dry by not providing all the emergency assistance for this year's music festival, as it seemed to have promised. Pollensa's festival is not the only one to feel the cold blast of cuts. If the private sector doesn't come to its aid and to the aid of other festivals, their future has to be in doubt.
The Magalluf plan represents way more than just the re-imagination of a resort. It represents a total shift away from public provision, and it is a shift that will become apparent in other spheres of Mallorca's tourism. Magalluf is a re-imagination and also a re-invention, one in which it is the hoteliers and the private sector which rule the roost and not the regional government. The whole picture of the island's tourism is about to be redrawn. There is excitement certainly, but there is going to also be uncertainty.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, October 01, 2011
The Coincidental Revolution: Magalluf
The sudden burst of good news coming out of the tourism sector seems a bit fishy. You wait for months, years even, for news of grand, new hotel projects and then three of them come along at once.
The convoy of hotel buses that has emerged in the media isn't an entirely new fleet. The five-star Port Sóller Hotel & Spa has been under construction for some time; the news surrounding it has to do with the announcement of its opening in March next year. The Hyatt International hotel-as-Mallorcan-village project in Capdepera was given an initial airing back in April 2009. The Meliá Hotels International scheme for Magalluf, already well flagged, has now suddenly expanded from three to seven hotels.
New or not so new, it is the timing of the various announcements that is important. There is surely no coincidence. Rather like a country occasionally requires a royal wedding or a war, the regional government has urgently needed the shiny new services to Sóller, Capdepera and Magalluf to simultaneously pull up at the bus stop for Burying Bad News, while the ABTA convention hitting town is presumably totally incidental to any of this.
Of the three schemes, the Magalluf one is the most important. Arab money sending Sóller and Capdepera into inter-five-stellar overdrive is not unimportant, but neither project represents a resort re-think. Meliá's does.
It helps if you happen to have a number of hotels in close proximity, which is the case with Meliá in Magalluf, because the scheme doesn't simply envisage hotel redevelopment; it will involve a remodelling of the resort. It is massively ambitious and massively important. If it comes off, and there's no reason to believe it won't, it, rather than the stuttering attempts in Playa de Palma, will be the first of the resort revolutions.
The planned changes to the tourism law are fundamental to what Meliá have in mind. The condohotel conversion will apply not only to the Royal Beach but also to the Sol Trinidad. The Sol Jamaica will be completely rebuilt as a hotel that will also be for residential use. In addition to what happens to the seven hotels, there will be a beach club, a new boulevard, a conference centre and facilities for cycling.
More than just redevelopment, the plan cannot be underestimated in terms of its vote of confidence in Mallorca. For one of Mallorca's major (international) hotel chains to be willing to pump an initial 100 million plus euros worth of investment into Magalluf proves that a mature holiday destination and resort can still be attractive.
And what it will mean for Magalluf? One would guess that its current tourism profile would not be unaffected. It would all rather depend. The Mallorca Beach and Antillas Barbados hotels, for example, will be joined together to create a gardened complex for a "client of greater quality". It doesn't sound as though Meliá have the Shagalluf image uppermost in their thoughts.
A further reason for the government to be happy to have the good news seep out is that it is only too aware of the naysayers who would wish a plague on its new tourism law house and on the houses of the hotel industry. The unions don't like the new law because condohotels will mean fewer jobs; the restaurants and club owners don't like it because it smacks of creating unfair competition, or so they claim.
The restaurant and club owners are, like the unions, staking out the battleground. They are suggesting that the new law will result in a price war and in the attraction of a tourism client of "low quality", without actually explaining why this would be the case. The club owners we know all about. It's not client quality they're worried about; it's the potential for other Mallorca Rocks to spring up, thanks to the law permitting concerts in hotels. They don't like the competition full stop.
But what they are really driving at is the fact that the government is putting its weight behind the hotels and only the hotels. They have a point, but then the government knows, as should the restaurant owners, that there is only one game in town when it comes to redevelopment. It isn't the government, and it certainly isn't the restaurants. The hotels are the only hope. If it means, as in Sóller and Capdepera, the attraction of foreign investment, then so much the better.
The good news might seem convenient, but as we have waited so long for any, the fact that it all comes along in one fortuitous news-massaging go should not make it any less welcome.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The convoy of hotel buses that has emerged in the media isn't an entirely new fleet. The five-star Port Sóller Hotel & Spa has been under construction for some time; the news surrounding it has to do with the announcement of its opening in March next year. The Hyatt International hotel-as-Mallorcan-village project in Capdepera was given an initial airing back in April 2009. The Meliá Hotels International scheme for Magalluf, already well flagged, has now suddenly expanded from three to seven hotels.
New or not so new, it is the timing of the various announcements that is important. There is surely no coincidence. Rather like a country occasionally requires a royal wedding or a war, the regional government has urgently needed the shiny new services to Sóller, Capdepera and Magalluf to simultaneously pull up at the bus stop for Burying Bad News, while the ABTA convention hitting town is presumably totally incidental to any of this.
Of the three schemes, the Magalluf one is the most important. Arab money sending Sóller and Capdepera into inter-five-stellar overdrive is not unimportant, but neither project represents a resort re-think. Meliá's does.
It helps if you happen to have a number of hotels in close proximity, which is the case with Meliá in Magalluf, because the scheme doesn't simply envisage hotel redevelopment; it will involve a remodelling of the resort. It is massively ambitious and massively important. If it comes off, and there's no reason to believe it won't, it, rather than the stuttering attempts in Playa de Palma, will be the first of the resort revolutions.
The planned changes to the tourism law are fundamental to what Meliá have in mind. The condohotel conversion will apply not only to the Royal Beach but also to the Sol Trinidad. The Sol Jamaica will be completely rebuilt as a hotel that will also be for residential use. In addition to what happens to the seven hotels, there will be a beach club, a new boulevard, a conference centre and facilities for cycling.
More than just redevelopment, the plan cannot be underestimated in terms of its vote of confidence in Mallorca. For one of Mallorca's major (international) hotel chains to be willing to pump an initial 100 million plus euros worth of investment into Magalluf proves that a mature holiday destination and resort can still be attractive.
And what it will mean for Magalluf? One would guess that its current tourism profile would not be unaffected. It would all rather depend. The Mallorca Beach and Antillas Barbados hotels, for example, will be joined together to create a gardened complex for a "client of greater quality". It doesn't sound as though Meliá have the Shagalluf image uppermost in their thoughts.
A further reason for the government to be happy to have the good news seep out is that it is only too aware of the naysayers who would wish a plague on its new tourism law house and on the houses of the hotel industry. The unions don't like the new law because condohotels will mean fewer jobs; the restaurants and club owners don't like it because it smacks of creating unfair competition, or so they claim.
The restaurant and club owners are, like the unions, staking out the battleground. They are suggesting that the new law will result in a price war and in the attraction of a tourism client of "low quality", without actually explaining why this would be the case. The club owners we know all about. It's not client quality they're worried about; it's the potential for other Mallorca Rocks to spring up, thanks to the law permitting concerts in hotels. They don't like the competition full stop.
But what they are really driving at is the fact that the government is putting its weight behind the hotels and only the hotels. They have a point, but then the government knows, as should the restaurant owners, that there is only one game in town when it comes to redevelopment. It isn't the government, and it certainly isn't the restaurants. The hotels are the only hope. If it means, as in Sóller and Capdepera, the attraction of foreign investment, then so much the better.
The good news might seem convenient, but as we have waited so long for any, the fact that it all comes along in one fortuitous news-massaging go should not make it any less welcome.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, September 30, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Meliá plans a revolution for Magalluf
Meliá Hotels International have announced that their plans for redeveloping three hotels in Magalluf will go very much further. Seven hotels are included in a scheme that will see two or three converted for residential, condohotel use (one of them, the Sol Jamaica, will be demolished and rebuilt) as well as a new boulevard, a beach club and installations for cycling tourism. The company envisages an initial investment of 135 million euros in what is a highly ambitious scheme to regenerate one of Mallorca's main resorts.
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