Do you know what Agenda 2030 is? And no, this isn't Més and their ambitions for Balearic independence by 2030. They haven't monikered it agenda as such. Or not yet at any rate. Més are, however, and in a different sense, part of Agenda 2030. Are you getting warmer?
I'm guessing that you don't know what Agenda 2030 is. If my guess is correct, then it has failed - thus far - to make the impression its sponsors would wish, these sponsors being the United Nations. Ah yes, the UN, you're now surely getting warmer. If not, then let me give you a gentle reminder. You'll remember of course what 2017 is. Won't you? You don't remember? Shame on you. This soon-to-finish year has been the International Year of Sustainable Tourism. There, you must remember now.
Who knows about these things? Who cares about these things? The ordinary man, woman and child in the street, be they tourist or not-tourist, do they know or care? The International Year of Sustainable Tourism; it's as if it has never been. For the great majority, it may as well not have been. As tourists we just get on with being tourists, whether we are sustainable, whether destinations are sustainable, whether tourism is sustainable. Or not.
So, given the fact that this year will have passed mostly everyone by, Agenda 2030 - just over twelve years off - will have failed totally in having captured the public's imagination. But what might seem to be another initiative with lofty principles, littered with platitudes and supporting reports, diagrams and conferences is intended as the latest attempt to save us all from ourselves, whether tourists or not. Agenda 2030 is shorthand for Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Inherent to the agenda are sustainable development goals - seventeen of them with 169 targets. Blimey.
What are these goals to do with? Well, there are issues such as health and education, energy, the environment, water, social justice. The UN and its sustainable agendas can appear (and often are) to be directed at the so-called Third World, but they cross over into the previous worlds, ones such as the Balearics.
The problem is the lack of connection: one between them (the UN, governments, institutions) and us. Yes, they do of course attempt to make the connection, and in the Balearics they try and do little else. But as observed previously, the more the sustainable drum is beaten, the greater the likelihood that we all switch off, assuming we had switched on in the first place.
All of this stuff is meant to be global, by which I don't just mean the globe of the world. It is global in infiltrating the minds of every man jack (and woman jill) of us. It doesn't because you only have to appreciate the reactions to the Balearic take on the sustainable development year in order to realise why not. Armed with a sustainable tourism tax and a manual of platitudes (such as those to do with the environment, water and social justice), and there are the many who decry the tax before moving on to slam other tourism policy. Rentals? The government's devil's work. What is to become of the property market? What is to become of "my" business (not mine - I don't have one - but others)? Whither tourism, full stop?
Inherent to such reactions is self-interest. Yes, that stubborn human trait of looking after number one. Initiatives such as Agenda 2030 presuppose a subordinating of self-interest to a common good (however this might be defined). This is just one reason why they are difficult if not impossible to pull off.
In order to try and get them to work, at least in part, demands a reshaping of perceptions. God knows it's a mountainous task, but within the framework of a perceptual shift, tourism plays a very key role, whether this is tourism to obscure corners of the globe, to grand cities or to Mallorca. Sustainability, despite my frequently voiced scepticism, is actually pretty important.
Capturing the public's imagination. Herein lies a clue. Capturing the imagination and re-imagining. In Mallorca there is a highly resistant, in-built opposition to alternatives. This is because of the self-interest and of how things have always been (since the 1960s anyway). But is it impossible to re-imagine Mallorca's tourism? Why does it have to be as it has been? Where's the rulebook which insists that it must be.
This government strains every last drop from the sustainable well. Some of it, such as Better in Winter, is arrant or at least semantic nonsense, though you can't blame the government for trying. But other parts? Fundamentally, the concept of mass tourism in Mallorca needs re-imagining, and it will mean reduced mass. Agenda 2030? By then, things will be very different.
Showing posts with label Mass tourism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mass tourism. Show all posts
Friday, December 08, 2017
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Dying Of Success
The Cercle d'Economia de Mallorca is an entity linked to the Chamber of Commerce. As its title suggests, it concerns itself with economic affairs, but it looks at the economy in a broad way. The thinkers who contribute to its periodic statements consider social affairs and the environment as well as business and finance. It is not a number-crunching body; more a kind of think tank.
Like the Chamber of Commerce, when the "Circle" comes out with something, it merits attention. Here are two entities which are typified by talking common sense. In the case of the Chamber, it backs its views up with solid research. Unlike some other organisations, and especially political parties, they both give the impression of impartiality and of not operating according to a predefined agenda. They are worth listening to.
The Circle, it should be noted, has collaborating members that include banks and companies in the tourism sector - the Barceló hotel group is one. This may hint at a bias, but generally not. And its latest statements are representative of its independent thought. Mallorca, it concludes, is heading towards death because of the success of the island's mass tourism. "There are objective reasons to believe that Mallorca is dying of success due to the massive influx of tourists." There is "unsustainable growth leading to socioeconomic decline with low-skilled occupations and low wages".
The conclusions it makes are that quantitative growth needs to be limited. It has to give way to qualitative growth before the strengths which characterise Mallorca are lost: the environment, the general tranquility and security. The time has come, it says, for public authorities, business and the public to stop thinking exclusively about particular interests and focus more on a common benefit for a sustainable future.
There is of course a familiar ring to all this. A curious aspect of the current debate surrounding tourism is that the hoteliers and some left-wing politicians coincide in their views. They may come at the issue from different perspectives and draw different conclusions, but the quantitative versus qualitative argument is shared. But the debate fails to move on because it is mired in the particular interests that the Circle identifies as being obstructive.
The tourism minister, Biel Barceló, cops for a great deal of flak. Be it tourist tax, limits to tourist numbers or holiday rentals, he is the target for regular criticism. While I may disagree with him, especially with regard to the tourist tax, I will also defend him. His instincts are right. He may himself have contributed to a certain hysteria about "saturation", but he was not wrong to have elevated the issue to the heights that it has been. He should be applauded for having sparked off public debate and not be the constant recipient of brickbats.
The problem with Barceló, naturally enough, is that he is a product of his political views. And so one returns to the Circle's "particular interests", which apply just as equally to other political parties (with Podemos holding the most extreme), to the hoteliers and to Aptur, the holiday rentals' association. It is most unlikely that these interests can ever be broken down in pursuing a pact for the common benefit, but there should be such a coming-together. Otherwise, the dire outcome is one of Mallorca dying from its own success, an idea that has been gathering as much currency as saturation.
The simplistic argument goes that there will be a correction in the distribution of European tourists. Mallorca is undergoing short-term saturation because of the Mediterranean's geopolitics. But if this is true, then it is even more important for there to be a consensual understanding of the future.
I was asked by a correspondent recently if I thought mass tourism will have ceased thirty years from now. On balance, I agreed that it probably will. There again, one has to try and define what is meant by mass. This can only be done by placing a numerical value on it: a limit. Mass is at present growing like Topsy. Barceló and the government are attempting to turn back the tide, but they are doing so with the absence of a global vision for the future. And this embraces more than just tourism: a fundamental vision for the island's economic future and diversity.
Predicting how tourism will be thirty years from now is an impossibility. There are too many factors to take account of, just one of them being, I would suggest, climate change. But it is not impossible to shape the future. Barceló is right, the hoteliers are right, the environmentalists are right, Aptur is right. They are all right in their own particular ways. It's these particular ways, however, that need modifying. The common benefit demands this.
Like the Chamber of Commerce, when the "Circle" comes out with something, it merits attention. Here are two entities which are typified by talking common sense. In the case of the Chamber, it backs its views up with solid research. Unlike some other organisations, and especially political parties, they both give the impression of impartiality and of not operating according to a predefined agenda. They are worth listening to.
The Circle, it should be noted, has collaborating members that include banks and companies in the tourism sector - the Barceló hotel group is one. This may hint at a bias, but generally not. And its latest statements are representative of its independent thought. Mallorca, it concludes, is heading towards death because of the success of the island's mass tourism. "There are objective reasons to believe that Mallorca is dying of success due to the massive influx of tourists." There is "unsustainable growth leading to socioeconomic decline with low-skilled occupations and low wages".
The conclusions it makes are that quantitative growth needs to be limited. It has to give way to qualitative growth before the strengths which characterise Mallorca are lost: the environment, the general tranquility and security. The time has come, it says, for public authorities, business and the public to stop thinking exclusively about particular interests and focus more on a common benefit for a sustainable future.
There is of course a familiar ring to all this. A curious aspect of the current debate surrounding tourism is that the hoteliers and some left-wing politicians coincide in their views. They may come at the issue from different perspectives and draw different conclusions, but the quantitative versus qualitative argument is shared. But the debate fails to move on because it is mired in the particular interests that the Circle identifies as being obstructive.
The tourism minister, Biel Barceló, cops for a great deal of flak. Be it tourist tax, limits to tourist numbers or holiday rentals, he is the target for regular criticism. While I may disagree with him, especially with regard to the tourist tax, I will also defend him. His instincts are right. He may himself have contributed to a certain hysteria about "saturation", but he was not wrong to have elevated the issue to the heights that it has been. He should be applauded for having sparked off public debate and not be the constant recipient of brickbats.
The problem with Barceló, naturally enough, is that he is a product of his political views. And so one returns to the Circle's "particular interests", which apply just as equally to other political parties (with Podemos holding the most extreme), to the hoteliers and to Aptur, the holiday rentals' association. It is most unlikely that these interests can ever be broken down in pursuing a pact for the common benefit, but there should be such a coming-together. Otherwise, the dire outcome is one of Mallorca dying from its own success, an idea that has been gathering as much currency as saturation.
The simplistic argument goes that there will be a correction in the distribution of European tourists. Mallorca is undergoing short-term saturation because of the Mediterranean's geopolitics. But if this is true, then it is even more important for there to be a consensual understanding of the future.
I was asked by a correspondent recently if I thought mass tourism will have ceased thirty years from now. On balance, I agreed that it probably will. There again, one has to try and define what is meant by mass. This can only be done by placing a numerical value on it: a limit. Mass is at present growing like Topsy. Barceló and the government are attempting to turn back the tide, but they are doing so with the absence of a global vision for the future. And this embraces more than just tourism: a fundamental vision for the island's economic future and diversity.
Predicting how tourism will be thirty years from now is an impossibility. There are too many factors to take account of, just one of them being, I would suggest, climate change. But it is not impossible to shape the future. Barceló is right, the hoteliers are right, the environmentalists are right, Aptur is right. They are all right in their own particular ways. It's these particular ways, however, that need modifying. The common benefit demands this.
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Disharmony Of The Seas
On Monday, 13 June and on subsequent Mondays until late in October, Royal Caribbean's Harmony Of The Seas will form a colossal vision on early mornings in the bay of Palma before parking its massiveness in the port at eight o'clock. On board, at absolute capacity, can be 6,410 (or is it 6,780) passengers and 2,100 crew. The largest passenger ship in the world. Let the celebrations begin.
Impressive, that's the word. Impressive because of sheer size. Harmony Of The Seas is not alone in this regard. Watching these leviathans creep over the sea towards port, their movement imperceptible, their bulks do impress. There again, so do large aircraft when one sees them at relatively close hand. The instinct is to be impressed. Size matters.
Think about this for one moment. The largest single hotel complex in Mallorca in terms of total guest capacity is Alcudia's Bellevue. At a squeeze, and it would be, 6,000 people can be crammed into its 1,400 or so apartments of varying sizes. The upper limit might more typically be in the 5,000 range. Harmony Of The Seas plus crew dwarfs even Bellevue. Its human content exceeds even the most excessive of the island's land accommodation.
The ship, as with others in the contemporary fleet navigating the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the fjords and elsewhere, is representative of a new-age maritime Brutalist architecture. There is something almost Soviet about this design. Appropriate perhaps for the collectivist nature of its business. Pack 'em in, pack 'em high: fifteen decks in all on the Harmony.
Bellevue has a weirdly Soviet feel as well. Especially weird as it was built in the final years of the Franco regime. But its architecture is functional, utilitarian, Brutalist not so much because of the scale of the individual blocks but on account of the sense of "béton brut", the raw concrete Le Corbusier chose in bequeathing to the world the very term Brutalism.
Such land-based accommodation would not and could not be built now. Major new projects are of the Park Hyatt in Canyamel style. Its environmental ethics have been questioned, but at least the architecture has a reasonable (though by no means whole) sympathy for its wooded setting. Its human content might be only in the region of one tenth of Bellevue at full blast.
Despite adding more floors, if the local authorities don't object, the trend in hotels is away from massiveness. At its best this trend is giving us the fabulously and lovingly re-crafted urban hotels, the boutiques of Palma and elsewhere. In full harmony with their environments. Harmony, that's another word.
Tourism in its mass version has always been dependent on the virtues of economies of scale. Greater the size, greater the volume, the lower the cost per unit. Volume is thus a virtue for the bottom line. Such economies still persist in Mallorca's sun-and-beach resorts - of course they do - but they are not on a scale of the behemoths of the oceans: more people on one ship than in any single hotel complex on the island.
What type of tourism is this? Is it the ultimate in terms of mass, one for which size, and very large size, is all that matters? We are impressed by the scale. But are we also appalled? Why are there such celebrations of these colossal apparitions lumbering closer and closer to port?
The cruise industry will baffle you with figures. Billions here, billions there. The employment, the sourcing of products and services, the general economic welfare that is generated. We get all that. But what of the direct impact? Two hundred euros per passenger. That was a spend figure cited last week for a Palma disembarking passenger. Way above a figure (acknowledged as an estimate) of sixty euros that the Balearic government came up with a few years ago. Better economic times may be returning, but by 140 euros? Direct individual spend is hugely variable. It depends on time in port and on the type of passenger: TUI Cruises have recently indulged in their own celebrations of all-inclusive cruise ships heading Mallorca's way.
The quest for cruising justification is necessary, given the disquiet expressed about it in certain quarters. It is the source of disharmony, with graffiti only a minor manifestation of this. And this disharmony arises not from the boutique-style ships, the clippers and the like but from the ominous floating housing estates. They are overwhelming in scale, and their human content can overwhelm as well.
This is before one gets to the environmental issue: air, noise, light pollution and marine. If land-based accommodation has been subject to ever tighter regulation, this seems to apply less to the temporary and transitory tourist container vessels. They come, in their huge numbers, and they go, leaving behind ... celebrations or disharmonies of the seas?
Impressive, that's the word. Impressive because of sheer size. Harmony Of The Seas is not alone in this regard. Watching these leviathans creep over the sea towards port, their movement imperceptible, their bulks do impress. There again, so do large aircraft when one sees them at relatively close hand. The instinct is to be impressed. Size matters.
Think about this for one moment. The largest single hotel complex in Mallorca in terms of total guest capacity is Alcudia's Bellevue. At a squeeze, and it would be, 6,000 people can be crammed into its 1,400 or so apartments of varying sizes. The upper limit might more typically be in the 5,000 range. Harmony Of The Seas plus crew dwarfs even Bellevue. Its human content exceeds even the most excessive of the island's land accommodation.
The ship, as with others in the contemporary fleet navigating the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the fjords and elsewhere, is representative of a new-age maritime Brutalist architecture. There is something almost Soviet about this design. Appropriate perhaps for the collectivist nature of its business. Pack 'em in, pack 'em high: fifteen decks in all on the Harmony.
Bellevue has a weirdly Soviet feel as well. Especially weird as it was built in the final years of the Franco regime. But its architecture is functional, utilitarian, Brutalist not so much because of the scale of the individual blocks but on account of the sense of "béton brut", the raw concrete Le Corbusier chose in bequeathing to the world the very term Brutalism.
Such land-based accommodation would not and could not be built now. Major new projects are of the Park Hyatt in Canyamel style. Its environmental ethics have been questioned, but at least the architecture has a reasonable (though by no means whole) sympathy for its wooded setting. Its human content might be only in the region of one tenth of Bellevue at full blast.
Despite adding more floors, if the local authorities don't object, the trend in hotels is away from massiveness. At its best this trend is giving us the fabulously and lovingly re-crafted urban hotels, the boutiques of Palma and elsewhere. In full harmony with their environments. Harmony, that's another word.
Tourism in its mass version has always been dependent on the virtues of economies of scale. Greater the size, greater the volume, the lower the cost per unit. Volume is thus a virtue for the bottom line. Such economies still persist in Mallorca's sun-and-beach resorts - of course they do - but they are not on a scale of the behemoths of the oceans: more people on one ship than in any single hotel complex on the island.
What type of tourism is this? Is it the ultimate in terms of mass, one for which size, and very large size, is all that matters? We are impressed by the scale. But are we also appalled? Why are there such celebrations of these colossal apparitions lumbering closer and closer to port?
The cruise industry will baffle you with figures. Billions here, billions there. The employment, the sourcing of products and services, the general economic welfare that is generated. We get all that. But what of the direct impact? Two hundred euros per passenger. That was a spend figure cited last week for a Palma disembarking passenger. Way above a figure (acknowledged as an estimate) of sixty euros that the Balearic government came up with a few years ago. Better economic times may be returning, but by 140 euros? Direct individual spend is hugely variable. It depends on time in port and on the type of passenger: TUI Cruises have recently indulged in their own celebrations of all-inclusive cruise ships heading Mallorca's way.
The quest for cruising justification is necessary, given the disquiet expressed about it in certain quarters. It is the source of disharmony, with graffiti only a minor manifestation of this. And this disharmony arises not from the boutique-style ships, the clippers and the like but from the ominous floating housing estates. They are overwhelming in scale, and their human content can overwhelm as well.
This is before one gets to the environmental issue: air, noise, light pollution and marine. If land-based accommodation has been subject to ever tighter regulation, this seems to apply less to the temporary and transitory tourist container vessels. They come, in their huge numbers, and they go, leaving behind ... celebrations or disharmonies of the seas?
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Too Many Tourists On Tourist Island
When Monty Python discovered that there were too many Whickers on Whicker Island, the principal problem of this Whicker massification was that there were no longer enough people to interview. By contrast, Mallorca doesn't suffer from any shortage of tourists who might be interviewed, if only by the clipboard-wielding surveyors of the Egatur tourist spend statistical gathering, while there are masses of investigators and politicians eager to dissect the consequences of the abundance of human raw material that is processed by a voracious tourism industry.
Mallorca, it is reasonable to suggest, is tourist island: not the only such island but a fairly significant one in the league table of tourist islands in the sun. It lives by tourism. It would not die by tourism - or its absence - but it would be placed under constant attention in intensive care were tourism to flee its shores. Fortunately, for Mallorca and for politicians, there is and will be no need for saline and glucose drips to be attached to the veins of economic lifeblood. Which is why politicians can indulge themselves in experimentation. Too many tourists on tourist island? Let's get rid of some then.
The least one can say about the government of change in the Balearics is that it is willing to engage in debate. In this new era of dialogue, it really couldn't do anything else. But even with such a spirit of interlocution, are there political red lines in the sands of Mallorca over which ever more tourists must not cross? Is there, or should there be, a limit on tourist numbers?
In theory, limits should be self-defining. They are only as great as the ability to move human traffic and to accommodate it, but as airport privatisation demands ever increasing volume to satisfy the investment returns of shareholders and as the collaborative economy revolution makes available a glut of private properties (to say nothing also of new palaces of four star plus or five star variety), limits cease to be self-defining: the boundaries are constantly exceeded.
Tourism on tourist island is not, and we all know this, evenly distributed. Massification is a summer phenomenon and the smoothing of distribution in order to counteract the economically debilitating factor of seasonality is and will remain a pipe dream. Mallorca comes under massive attack, especially in high summer. As is now traditional, towards the end of this year the statistics gatherers will reveal the day on which - during August - Mallorca reached its maximum population level. You can expect that a new record will be set this summer.
Geographically, tourist island benefits from distribution. South, north, east and even parts of the west (in the mountains) accommodate this spread, albeit that Calvia, Palma and the bays of Alcúdia and Cala Millor are where the spread is at its most disproportionate. There has, though, been tourist island creep. Interior tourism and some additional coastal development have gobbled up land previously not registered according to the tourism accommodation quotas (the oddly acronymed POOT). Yes, quotas do exist. Limits are in fact defined, but they are limits which exist to be extended.
Tourism creep should be advantageous, but the "Benidorm Effect" has, counter-intuitively, established that environmental and resource-efficient righteousness comes from density and concentration: it is less expensive and less demanding of resources to have tourism massification in specific areas.
What is the thinking behind the debate sparked off by Biel Barceló, the new tourism minister, with its echoes in Barcelona and the moratorium on licences for hotel development? Is it purely the environment? No, it also has to do with the intangible of quality of life made tangible via a reduction in numbers but an elevation of often elusive and often disrespectful "quality". It has to do with, rightly however, an acknowledgement that there is a significant tourism base which contributes little but extracts much. It also has to do with the quest for the grail of a new economic model, one that will result in improved pay and conditions for those who remain in the tourism industry and from a diversification of the economy. Such a theory might, however, take an inordinately long time to become practice.
This is not new thinking, though. Celesti Alomar, the tourism minister who oversaw the introduction of the original eco-tax, once spoke about bringing an end to mass tourism, or at least reducing mass tourism. The tax was not the means to that end, however. And nor will it now be. Alomar appeared to be on some form of misguided crusade. Barceló isn't. In a strange way, he is a son of Carlos Delgado: the Partido Popular tourism minister also spoke of tourist reduction through a greater concentration on the higher end of the market.
Are there too many tourists? Possibly so. But if there are, you sure as hell need to know how you will replace them.
Mallorca, it is reasonable to suggest, is tourist island: not the only such island but a fairly significant one in the league table of tourist islands in the sun. It lives by tourism. It would not die by tourism - or its absence - but it would be placed under constant attention in intensive care were tourism to flee its shores. Fortunately, for Mallorca and for politicians, there is and will be no need for saline and glucose drips to be attached to the veins of economic lifeblood. Which is why politicians can indulge themselves in experimentation. Too many tourists on tourist island? Let's get rid of some then.
The least one can say about the government of change in the Balearics is that it is willing to engage in debate. In this new era of dialogue, it really couldn't do anything else. But even with such a spirit of interlocution, are there political red lines in the sands of Mallorca over which ever more tourists must not cross? Is there, or should there be, a limit on tourist numbers?
In theory, limits should be self-defining. They are only as great as the ability to move human traffic and to accommodate it, but as airport privatisation demands ever increasing volume to satisfy the investment returns of shareholders and as the collaborative economy revolution makes available a glut of private properties (to say nothing also of new palaces of four star plus or five star variety), limits cease to be self-defining: the boundaries are constantly exceeded.
Tourism on tourist island is not, and we all know this, evenly distributed. Massification is a summer phenomenon and the smoothing of distribution in order to counteract the economically debilitating factor of seasonality is and will remain a pipe dream. Mallorca comes under massive attack, especially in high summer. As is now traditional, towards the end of this year the statistics gatherers will reveal the day on which - during August - Mallorca reached its maximum population level. You can expect that a new record will be set this summer.
Geographically, tourist island benefits from distribution. South, north, east and even parts of the west (in the mountains) accommodate this spread, albeit that Calvia, Palma and the bays of Alcúdia and Cala Millor are where the spread is at its most disproportionate. There has, though, been tourist island creep. Interior tourism and some additional coastal development have gobbled up land previously not registered according to the tourism accommodation quotas (the oddly acronymed POOT). Yes, quotas do exist. Limits are in fact defined, but they are limits which exist to be extended.
Tourism creep should be advantageous, but the "Benidorm Effect" has, counter-intuitively, established that environmental and resource-efficient righteousness comes from density and concentration: it is less expensive and less demanding of resources to have tourism massification in specific areas.
What is the thinking behind the debate sparked off by Biel Barceló, the new tourism minister, with its echoes in Barcelona and the moratorium on licences for hotel development? Is it purely the environment? No, it also has to do with the intangible of quality of life made tangible via a reduction in numbers but an elevation of often elusive and often disrespectful "quality". It has to do with, rightly however, an acknowledgement that there is a significant tourism base which contributes little but extracts much. It also has to do with the quest for the grail of a new economic model, one that will result in improved pay and conditions for those who remain in the tourism industry and from a diversification of the economy. Such a theory might, however, take an inordinately long time to become practice.
This is not new thinking, though. Celesti Alomar, the tourism minister who oversaw the introduction of the original eco-tax, once spoke about bringing an end to mass tourism, or at least reducing mass tourism. The tax was not the means to that end, however. And nor will it now be. Alomar appeared to be on some form of misguided crusade. Barceló isn't. In a strange way, he is a son of Carlos Delgado: the Partido Popular tourism minister also spoke of tourist reduction through a greater concentration on the higher end of the market.
Are there too many tourists? Possibly so. But if there are, you sure as hell need to know how you will replace them.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Paradise Regained?: What tourism should have been
(In the previous two articles I have argued that it was war and what followed - economic autarky and then technocracy - which destroyed the original principle of Mallorca's tourism from pre-war times and led to the type of tourism which emerged in the 1960s.)
The technocracy was such that it hasn't ever really gone away. It may be more friendly, it may have a greater appreciation of individuals' needs, of the environment and of markets, but it survives in its current-day form. It is typified by a Balearics tourism minister whose background is as an architect and planner and by a Mallorcan national tourism secretary of state whose specialism is property and its planning. They are representative of the new technocracy, knowledgeable of things but not, one fears, people.
Despite all this, we are seeing signs, I believe, of how uninterrupted organic development might have shaped very different resorts. The current-day technocrats are not blind to the sins of the past, even if they can sin in human terms and in being undemocratic in their biases towards property (hotels versus private accommodation, as an example). They have established a framework for belated, very belated modernisation of mature resorts, those which were the result of Fordist mass tourism. This framework cannot bring back what was lost of the natural patrimony but it can, through a re-conception of resorts, bring back - to an extent - the lost philosophy of the greater harmony of the 1930s garden city resorts. And nowhere is this potentially more evident than in Magalluf.
To take again my thesis about how war shaped later tourism development, Magalluf was a prime example. Had there been more organic development, Magalluf would still have become a resort, but it would not have been as it was to become. In 1959, approval was given for its exploitation, and that exploitation was sudden and disastrous. The environment was just one victim of a model of authoritarian-state diktat combined with virtually non-existent planning regulations and with inadequate, easily swayed, corrupt officialdom. Magalluf was, if you like, the model fascistic tourist resort. It was Fordist mass tourism in extremis. From nothing in the late '50s emerged architectural barbarism. It was the technocrats' wet dream.
Palmanova and Santa Ponsa, though they were both to also fall victim to this barbarism, were, unlike Magalluf, products of pre-war planning. Had they developed organically, they too would have been very different. Santa Ponsa is a better example than Palmanova. You can discern from some of its layout the original garden city principle, and that original principle, similar to Alcúdia, would in all likelihood have spawned a golfing resort of a different style to today. It may be forgotten that there was actually a golf company in Santa Ponsa that pre-dated Alcúdia's 1934 golf course. It was to be decades before that golf vision was realised, and by then it had to vie with the technocratic undermining of the original principle.
Magalluf would in all likelihood have been developed before it was. Like its neighbours there was a similar need for land exploitation, but this exploitation would almost certainly have corresponded with the garden city principles in 1930s' Palmanova and Santa Ponsa. All three resorts would thus have taken on a very different appearance to that which they did in the 1950s and 1960s. The chances are that there would have been a form of mass tourism even with organic development, but the mass would have been smaller and it would have been of an alternative character. It would still have been foreign, but the offer would have been less dominated by foreign culture and concreted vandalism. It would simply have been more "Mallorcan". The transformation of Magalluf, as we are not witnessing because of Meliá's intervention, is, I would argue, along lines that would have emerged had Magalluf been left to develop organically and not been that model fascistic tourist resort. Even aspects of the new look owe something to the 1930s principles: boulevard, green areas, and thus a greater harmony between living space and natural patrimony.
One of the challenges that Mallorca faces is determining what mass should now mean. If it is to be smaller mass, and it may well mean this, then there are inevitable consequences, but this smaller mass would have been the norm had it not been for the mad dash to develop in the 1960s. One can argue that what occurred in the '60s was in fact an aberration. It was not how it was meant to have been and it was not how it would have been, had war not led to the desperate solutions of the technocrats and had the resorts been allowed to develop organically. It has taken fifty years to attempt to right the wrongs of fascistic mass tourism. These attempts should not be criticised. They should be applauded. They are what Mallorca should have been.
The technocracy was such that it hasn't ever really gone away. It may be more friendly, it may have a greater appreciation of individuals' needs, of the environment and of markets, but it survives in its current-day form. It is typified by a Balearics tourism minister whose background is as an architect and planner and by a Mallorcan national tourism secretary of state whose specialism is property and its planning. They are representative of the new technocracy, knowledgeable of things but not, one fears, people.
Despite all this, we are seeing signs, I believe, of how uninterrupted organic development might have shaped very different resorts. The current-day technocrats are not blind to the sins of the past, even if they can sin in human terms and in being undemocratic in their biases towards property (hotels versus private accommodation, as an example). They have established a framework for belated, very belated modernisation of mature resorts, those which were the result of Fordist mass tourism. This framework cannot bring back what was lost of the natural patrimony but it can, through a re-conception of resorts, bring back - to an extent - the lost philosophy of the greater harmony of the 1930s garden city resorts. And nowhere is this potentially more evident than in Magalluf.
To take again my thesis about how war shaped later tourism development, Magalluf was a prime example. Had there been more organic development, Magalluf would still have become a resort, but it would not have been as it was to become. In 1959, approval was given for its exploitation, and that exploitation was sudden and disastrous. The environment was just one victim of a model of authoritarian-state diktat combined with virtually non-existent planning regulations and with inadequate, easily swayed, corrupt officialdom. Magalluf was, if you like, the model fascistic tourist resort. It was Fordist mass tourism in extremis. From nothing in the late '50s emerged architectural barbarism. It was the technocrats' wet dream.
Palmanova and Santa Ponsa, though they were both to also fall victim to this barbarism, were, unlike Magalluf, products of pre-war planning. Had they developed organically, they too would have been very different. Santa Ponsa is a better example than Palmanova. You can discern from some of its layout the original garden city principle, and that original principle, similar to Alcúdia, would in all likelihood have spawned a golfing resort of a different style to today. It may be forgotten that there was actually a golf company in Santa Ponsa that pre-dated Alcúdia's 1934 golf course. It was to be decades before that golf vision was realised, and by then it had to vie with the technocratic undermining of the original principle.
Magalluf would in all likelihood have been developed before it was. Like its neighbours there was a similar need for land exploitation, but this exploitation would almost certainly have corresponded with the garden city principles in 1930s' Palmanova and Santa Ponsa. All three resorts would thus have taken on a very different appearance to that which they did in the 1950s and 1960s. The chances are that there would have been a form of mass tourism even with organic development, but the mass would have been smaller and it would have been of an alternative character. It would still have been foreign, but the offer would have been less dominated by foreign culture and concreted vandalism. It would simply have been more "Mallorcan". The transformation of Magalluf, as we are not witnessing because of Meliá's intervention, is, I would argue, along lines that would have emerged had Magalluf been left to develop organically and not been that model fascistic tourist resort. Even aspects of the new look owe something to the 1930s principles: boulevard, green areas, and thus a greater harmony between living space and natural patrimony.
One of the challenges that Mallorca faces is determining what mass should now mean. If it is to be smaller mass, and it may well mean this, then there are inevitable consequences, but this smaller mass would have been the norm had it not been for the mad dash to develop in the 1960s. One can argue that what occurred in the '60s was in fact an aberration. It was not how it was meant to have been and it was not how it would have been, had war not led to the desperate solutions of the technocrats and had the resorts been allowed to develop organically. It has taken fifty years to attempt to right the wrongs of fascistic mass tourism. These attempts should not be criticised. They should be applauded. They are what Mallorca should have been.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Mass Attack: It's tourism value that counts
When is mass not mass? As in, when is mass tourism not mass tourism? I ask the question because someone has said that the Balearics need a new strategy for tourism because a tourism industry based on mass tourism is not proving beneficial. On the basis that the Balearics receive over 10 million tourists per annum, then how many fewer tourists are needed in order that they don't constitute mass? I know the answer to the question is like guessing how long a piece of string is, but as the director for the Centre for Economic Research, Antoni Riera, has brought the subject up, then I think we should be given some guidance.
Unfortunately, and much though I respect Sr. Riera, I doubt if he has a good answer to the question. If he does, he will be unusual, as no obvious definition exists as to what mass tourism means. In the absence of a definition, it becomes impossible to identify by how much Balearics tourism would need to be reduced in order for it to stop being mass.
Even the greatest authorities don't know what mass is; an authority like the UN's World Tourism Organization for example. If it doesn't know, then how can anyone else be expected to?
One person who has had a go is Andreas Hauser, a tourism planning consultant. Herr Hauser has listed four criteria. If a destination fails to meet any of these criteria, then it is experiencing mass tourism. The four criteria are: 1) local culture remains intrinsic, i.e. is also displayed in the absence of tourism; 2) local environmental impacts can be mitigated, i.e. they cause no permanent damage; 3) local economies remain independent, i.e. they also function without tourism activity; 4) the majority of tourists show genuine interest in local surroundings, i.e. they have an intention to learn about history, culture and people.
On the basis of these criteria, Mallorca fails on every count except arguably the first. Environmental impacts as a consequence of tourism have been significant and are irreversible; without tourism, Mallorca wouldn't have an economy; the majority of tourists come because they are interested in local surroundings so long as they are a beach and a bar.
By way of comparison, and to show that sheer weight of numbers isn't necessarily a determinant of mass tourism, London receives more international tourism than any other city; the number of visitors is put at approaching 30 million a year, though certainly not all of these are tourists. But even allowing for other types of visitor, London does not fail any of the criteria. One can of course argue, for example, that without tourists the city would be hit hard, but essentially, and according to Hauser's criteria, London does not experience mass tourism.
While these criteria appear to be only qualitative, Hauser says that they can be quantified, even the fourth one: if over 50% of tourists show a disinclination to engage with local culture then a situation of mass tourism exists.
But the issue is really less to do with defining mass tourism and more to do with defining tourism in terms of its overall beneficial or adverse effects. An equation of tourism should therefore show the relationship of the criteria plus those that Hauser excludes, i.e. the economic ones. Because the term mass tourism implies a sort of pejorative or negative, it obscures the wider picture.
Arriving at a true understanding of Mallorca's tourism, taking these different criteria into consideration, would be far from easy, but to come back to Riera, what he is saying is what the CER have previously reported: that there are limits to what current levels of tourism can produce by way of returns and that there are, and have been for some time, diminishing returns even from increased levels of tourism.
The mass will not be taken out of Mallorca's tourism, so the term is partly irrelevant. The key question is what should the level be in order to maximize economic benefit while taking into account environmental and cultural factors. One can pluck numbers out of the air, but to come to some sensible level, tourists - each and every one of them - need to be evaluated in terms of their economic input, cultural investment and environmental effect. Putting things bluntly, those who score lowly or hardly at all on the first two scales should be denied entrance; this is the logical conclusion of what Riera is saying.
By highlighting the level of all-inclusive occupancy (one third), the CER hints at where a reduction in tourism numbers could be made. This, though, is unfair; not all AI guests can be branded in the same way. It is also impractical, unless Mallorca wants war with the tour operators.
Nevertheless, Riera is opening up what should be a grand and very serious debate. Whether it is something that politicians and others in Mallorca are truly capable of doing, or are allowed to engage in, is another question.
*Andreas Hauser's article: http://www.destinationworld.info/newsletter/feature45.html
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Unfortunately, and much though I respect Sr. Riera, I doubt if he has a good answer to the question. If he does, he will be unusual, as no obvious definition exists as to what mass tourism means. In the absence of a definition, it becomes impossible to identify by how much Balearics tourism would need to be reduced in order for it to stop being mass.
Even the greatest authorities don't know what mass is; an authority like the UN's World Tourism Organization for example. If it doesn't know, then how can anyone else be expected to?
One person who has had a go is Andreas Hauser, a tourism planning consultant. Herr Hauser has listed four criteria. If a destination fails to meet any of these criteria, then it is experiencing mass tourism. The four criteria are: 1) local culture remains intrinsic, i.e. is also displayed in the absence of tourism; 2) local environmental impacts can be mitigated, i.e. they cause no permanent damage; 3) local economies remain independent, i.e. they also function without tourism activity; 4) the majority of tourists show genuine interest in local surroundings, i.e. they have an intention to learn about history, culture and people.
On the basis of these criteria, Mallorca fails on every count except arguably the first. Environmental impacts as a consequence of tourism have been significant and are irreversible; without tourism, Mallorca wouldn't have an economy; the majority of tourists come because they are interested in local surroundings so long as they are a beach and a bar.
By way of comparison, and to show that sheer weight of numbers isn't necessarily a determinant of mass tourism, London receives more international tourism than any other city; the number of visitors is put at approaching 30 million a year, though certainly not all of these are tourists. But even allowing for other types of visitor, London does not fail any of the criteria. One can of course argue, for example, that without tourists the city would be hit hard, but essentially, and according to Hauser's criteria, London does not experience mass tourism.
While these criteria appear to be only qualitative, Hauser says that they can be quantified, even the fourth one: if over 50% of tourists show a disinclination to engage with local culture then a situation of mass tourism exists.
But the issue is really less to do with defining mass tourism and more to do with defining tourism in terms of its overall beneficial or adverse effects. An equation of tourism should therefore show the relationship of the criteria plus those that Hauser excludes, i.e. the economic ones. Because the term mass tourism implies a sort of pejorative or negative, it obscures the wider picture.
Arriving at a true understanding of Mallorca's tourism, taking these different criteria into consideration, would be far from easy, but to come back to Riera, what he is saying is what the CER have previously reported: that there are limits to what current levels of tourism can produce by way of returns and that there are, and have been for some time, diminishing returns even from increased levels of tourism.
The mass will not be taken out of Mallorca's tourism, so the term is partly irrelevant. The key question is what should the level be in order to maximize economic benefit while taking into account environmental and cultural factors. One can pluck numbers out of the air, but to come to some sensible level, tourists - each and every one of them - need to be evaluated in terms of their economic input, cultural investment and environmental effect. Putting things bluntly, those who score lowly or hardly at all on the first two scales should be denied entrance; this is the logical conclusion of what Riera is saying.
By highlighting the level of all-inclusive occupancy (one third), the CER hints at where a reduction in tourism numbers could be made. This, though, is unfair; not all AI guests can be branded in the same way. It is also impractical, unless Mallorca wants war with the tour operators.
Nevertheless, Riera is opening up what should be a grand and very serious debate. Whether it is something that politicians and others in Mallorca are truly capable of doing, or are allowed to engage in, is another question.
*Andreas Hauser's article: http://www.destinationworld.info/newsletter/feature45.html
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Welcome To Buggy Central
The ability to transport passengers en masse by air begat mass tourism. Transport of all types, not just air, has been fundamental to the movement of humanity in pursuit of holidays, but of these modes of transport, there is none so important, after the jet airplane, as that which makes the smallest members of the human race mobile. Ladies and gentlemen, I humbly submit my theory that mass tourism would not be as mass as it is, were it not for one thing - the baby buggy.
Air transport was indirectly responsible for the baby buggy. By the mid 1960s, cross-Atlantic travel was commonplace when one traveller arrived in the UK from the US with what was then the still awkward and cumbersome conventional pushchair. She was the daughter of Owen Maclaren, a former test pilot and designer of the Spitfire's undercarriage. Maclaren observed the clumsiness of the pushchair and set about revolutionising baby and toddler mobility. It was he who invented the collapsible baby buggy.
While the pushchair was an inconvenience of inflexible non-collapsibility, it was less cumbersome than the perambulator, aka the pram. If you could imagine the kerfuffle trying to get prams onto Ryanair, then you can understand the vital role played by the buggy; there might never have been a Michael O'Leary without it. Moreover, prams invariably came with a nanny attached. Apart from the additional cost of transporting the nanny, were the pram to be with us in any great number on the streets and terraces of Mallorca, we wouldn't have moved on in musical terms but would instead have to suffer karaoke in an oh, gor blimey, cockney Dick Van Dyke style - "it's a jolly 'oliday with Mary", when it would be anything but.
We should, I suppose, be grateful for not having to put up with brigades of Julie Andrews waving umbrellas around, but what we have instead are brigades, nay armies, nay entire Panzer divisions of Kylies blitzkrieging their baby buggies along Mallorcan streets broad or narrow. The summer season is devoted to infant transportation but in the late season it arrives in bulk containers, the streets becoming impassable, terraces inaccessible. The Septemberist tendency takes over and it comes armed to the teeth with baby mobility. Mallorca becomes Buggy Central.
It is my contention that had Maclaren stuck to Spitfires, there would now be far fewer tourists and certainly fewer Septemberists taking advantage of post-August lower prices and the fact that young Jordan is still too young for nursery school. It is the relative convenience of the collapsible baby buggy that has enabled the Kylies and Waynes to opt to go "foreign" in a way that the pram would never have permitted.
In a sense, Mallorca and other tourist destinations owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Maclaren's invention. Without it, Septemberist mobility would be confined to the mobility scooter or the Zimmer four-wheeler. As a consequence of the various means of getting about, the Septemberists diverge dramatically in terms of age group, though they are all defined by modes of transport, some of them eschewing both buggy and mobility scooter in favour of the motor car. Typically, this is a Fiat Panda which moves at extraordinarily low speeds on account of the occupants admiring whatever view happens to be on offer. It is very easily observed, not just because of the sub-40kph speeds but because the occupants, for reasons that escape me, insist on wearing sun hats while inside the car.
Mallorca can, mainly because it has no choice, boast being buggy-friendly. This contrasts with other parts of Europe. Vienna, for example, where A.A.Gill once observed that the buggy had been deemed a curse on civilised society and where a "waiter looked at the buggy the way a French polisher might regard a lawnmower on a dining table".
Buggy-friendliness results in whole terraces becoming buggy parking lots. As such, they are off-road liabilities, the potential for collisions with erratically steered mobility scooters or out-of control Zimmers on wheels heightened by the sheer weight of personalised transport that manoeuvres itself onto Mallorca's congested terrace space. Tourist forefathers could not have foreseen all this, but their descendants can now see it for themselves. The time has come for streets to have dedicated buggy lanes and for all bars to have dedicated buggy parking spaces. And given the wear and tear to Mallorca's already creaking urban infrastructures, there should be a buggy tax. A euro for every buggy that comes through the airport. It would raise millions, especially in September.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Air transport was indirectly responsible for the baby buggy. By the mid 1960s, cross-Atlantic travel was commonplace when one traveller arrived in the UK from the US with what was then the still awkward and cumbersome conventional pushchair. She was the daughter of Owen Maclaren, a former test pilot and designer of the Spitfire's undercarriage. Maclaren observed the clumsiness of the pushchair and set about revolutionising baby and toddler mobility. It was he who invented the collapsible baby buggy.
While the pushchair was an inconvenience of inflexible non-collapsibility, it was less cumbersome than the perambulator, aka the pram. If you could imagine the kerfuffle trying to get prams onto Ryanair, then you can understand the vital role played by the buggy; there might never have been a Michael O'Leary without it. Moreover, prams invariably came with a nanny attached. Apart from the additional cost of transporting the nanny, were the pram to be with us in any great number on the streets and terraces of Mallorca, we wouldn't have moved on in musical terms but would instead have to suffer karaoke in an oh, gor blimey, cockney Dick Van Dyke style - "it's a jolly 'oliday with Mary", when it would be anything but.
We should, I suppose, be grateful for not having to put up with brigades of Julie Andrews waving umbrellas around, but what we have instead are brigades, nay armies, nay entire Panzer divisions of Kylies blitzkrieging their baby buggies along Mallorcan streets broad or narrow. The summer season is devoted to infant transportation but in the late season it arrives in bulk containers, the streets becoming impassable, terraces inaccessible. The Septemberist tendency takes over and it comes armed to the teeth with baby mobility. Mallorca becomes Buggy Central.
It is my contention that had Maclaren stuck to Spitfires, there would now be far fewer tourists and certainly fewer Septemberists taking advantage of post-August lower prices and the fact that young Jordan is still too young for nursery school. It is the relative convenience of the collapsible baby buggy that has enabled the Kylies and Waynes to opt to go "foreign" in a way that the pram would never have permitted.
In a sense, Mallorca and other tourist destinations owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Maclaren's invention. Without it, Septemberist mobility would be confined to the mobility scooter or the Zimmer four-wheeler. As a consequence of the various means of getting about, the Septemberists diverge dramatically in terms of age group, though they are all defined by modes of transport, some of them eschewing both buggy and mobility scooter in favour of the motor car. Typically, this is a Fiat Panda which moves at extraordinarily low speeds on account of the occupants admiring whatever view happens to be on offer. It is very easily observed, not just because of the sub-40kph speeds but because the occupants, for reasons that escape me, insist on wearing sun hats while inside the car.
Mallorca can, mainly because it has no choice, boast being buggy-friendly. This contrasts with other parts of Europe. Vienna, for example, where A.A.Gill once observed that the buggy had been deemed a curse on civilised society and where a "waiter looked at the buggy the way a French polisher might regard a lawnmower on a dining table".
Buggy-friendliness results in whole terraces becoming buggy parking lots. As such, they are off-road liabilities, the potential for collisions with erratically steered mobility scooters or out-of control Zimmers on wheels heightened by the sheer weight of personalised transport that manoeuvres itself onto Mallorca's congested terrace space. Tourist forefathers could not have foreseen all this, but their descendants can now see it for themselves. The time has come for streets to have dedicated buggy lanes and for all bars to have dedicated buggy parking spaces. And given the wear and tear to Mallorca's already creaking urban infrastructures, there should be a buggy tax. A euro for every buggy that comes through the airport. It would raise millions, especially in September.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, June 01, 2012
Leadership Lost: After Mallorca's industrial revolution
The business world knows all about the concept of the first mover, the company that grabs a hold of a particular market by being the first one to enter it and therefore creating it. The first-mover concept in business bears a similarity to the now ancient one of industrial revolution. Britain was the first mover in being the first nation to undergo a true industrial revolution, and look where it is now.
The great achievements of the industrial revolution could not disguise the mistakes that were made. These mistakes were inevitable. A first mover has no model to draw on; it is making things up as it goes along. Subsequent industrial revolutions elsewhere could draw on the lessons of the British industrial revolution and create more efficient versions of their own.
The business world has been full of first movers. IBM was the first genuine mover in the computer industry. Later, despite being slow to react to the arrival of the personal computer (which IBM had pretty much invented), once it did react, it made itself the industry standard. It remains a massive business and has done so by reinventing itself in a rapidly evolving industry. The first mover has to keep changing in order to maintain competitiveness. In a similar way, Britain has had to adapt by junking much of its old industrial base, but unlike IBM it has slipped down the competitiveness charts.
Mallorca never underwent a real industrial revolution. The island had industrialised, but the real revolution occurred with the arrival of mass tourism in the 1960s. Mallorca, along with the main Costas - Brava, Blanca, Sol - spearheaded an industrial revolution in tourism. The island invented tourism as it is now understood and it, together with the Costas, was the first mover in a whole new industry.
This collision of industrial revolution and first movement brought about with great suddenness Arenal, Playa de Palma, Magalluf, Lloret de Mar, Benidorm and Torremolinos. The first-mover resorts endure but all have reputations for varying levels of naffness. To the Mallorcan resorts, one can add Lloret's reputation for having the drunkest tourists, the Benidorm of the Garveys and Johnny Vegas, and Eric Idle's Watney's Red Barrel that Torremolinos has never shaken off.
Despite the reputations, Mallorca and the Costas retained the competitiveness that came with being industrial revolutionaries and with being first movers. For years, they remained industry leaders and unchallenged until they started to lose their way. Competition grew and spread, but critically Mallorca was unable to react. It had become bogged down by the complacency of its success and by the stasis and lack of agility caused by differing interests and the absence of clear vision, especially on behalf of politicians.
IBM was willing to accept that change meant that leadership may have to be relinquished (it is behind both Apple and Microsoft in terms of market value), but the company's change was one predicated on innovation. It is this latter factor that has maintained its reputation as one of the world's great companies. But it has been a lack of innovation that has helped to undermine Mallorca, along with the fact of its own industrial revolution (that of mass tourism) having been one that other countries could observe, copy or amend. From Mallorca's mistakes came Portugal, Greece, Turkey and gradually everywhere else.
Banca March has just released a report about tourism going forward to 2030. It highlights the huge growth of near competitors - Croatia, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco - and their anticipated growth. Banca March reckons that Croatia is in fact the greatest competitive threat to Mallorca and Spain because of easy land transport links to other European countries.
The bank observes that Mallorca does have the genuine capacity to innovate and that this resides with its hotels, and there is evidence of this in the spurt of innovation in the likes of Magalluf. But the hotels face certain pressures. Their profitability in Mallorca has been reduced for various reasons. There are richer pickings for them elsewhere, and it has been an irony that a good deal of competition that has arisen in other countries has come thanks to the exporting of Mallorcan hotel know-how and investment. Like IBM, which made its system open and so became the industry standard for PCs (and not doing this was what killed Apple's chances of being industry leader back in the early '80s), the hotels have reinvented themselves through their technology.
While the hotels have changed, Mallorca as a whole hasn't. It is crucial that it now does. If not, then like Britain, the leader of an industrial revolution will gradually slip and slip.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The great achievements of the industrial revolution could not disguise the mistakes that were made. These mistakes were inevitable. A first mover has no model to draw on; it is making things up as it goes along. Subsequent industrial revolutions elsewhere could draw on the lessons of the British industrial revolution and create more efficient versions of their own.
The business world has been full of first movers. IBM was the first genuine mover in the computer industry. Later, despite being slow to react to the arrival of the personal computer (which IBM had pretty much invented), once it did react, it made itself the industry standard. It remains a massive business and has done so by reinventing itself in a rapidly evolving industry. The first mover has to keep changing in order to maintain competitiveness. In a similar way, Britain has had to adapt by junking much of its old industrial base, but unlike IBM it has slipped down the competitiveness charts.
Mallorca never underwent a real industrial revolution. The island had industrialised, but the real revolution occurred with the arrival of mass tourism in the 1960s. Mallorca, along with the main Costas - Brava, Blanca, Sol - spearheaded an industrial revolution in tourism. The island invented tourism as it is now understood and it, together with the Costas, was the first mover in a whole new industry.
This collision of industrial revolution and first movement brought about with great suddenness Arenal, Playa de Palma, Magalluf, Lloret de Mar, Benidorm and Torremolinos. The first-mover resorts endure but all have reputations for varying levels of naffness. To the Mallorcan resorts, one can add Lloret's reputation for having the drunkest tourists, the Benidorm of the Garveys and Johnny Vegas, and Eric Idle's Watney's Red Barrel that Torremolinos has never shaken off.
Despite the reputations, Mallorca and the Costas retained the competitiveness that came with being industrial revolutionaries and with being first movers. For years, they remained industry leaders and unchallenged until they started to lose their way. Competition grew and spread, but critically Mallorca was unable to react. It had become bogged down by the complacency of its success and by the stasis and lack of agility caused by differing interests and the absence of clear vision, especially on behalf of politicians.
IBM was willing to accept that change meant that leadership may have to be relinquished (it is behind both Apple and Microsoft in terms of market value), but the company's change was one predicated on innovation. It is this latter factor that has maintained its reputation as one of the world's great companies. But it has been a lack of innovation that has helped to undermine Mallorca, along with the fact of its own industrial revolution (that of mass tourism) having been one that other countries could observe, copy or amend. From Mallorca's mistakes came Portugal, Greece, Turkey and gradually everywhere else.
Banca March has just released a report about tourism going forward to 2030. It highlights the huge growth of near competitors - Croatia, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco - and their anticipated growth. Banca March reckons that Croatia is in fact the greatest competitive threat to Mallorca and Spain because of easy land transport links to other European countries.
The bank observes that Mallorca does have the genuine capacity to innovate and that this resides with its hotels, and there is evidence of this in the spurt of innovation in the likes of Magalluf. But the hotels face certain pressures. Their profitability in Mallorca has been reduced for various reasons. There are richer pickings for them elsewhere, and it has been an irony that a good deal of competition that has arisen in other countries has come thanks to the exporting of Mallorcan hotel know-how and investment. Like IBM, which made its system open and so became the industry standard for PCs (and not doing this was what killed Apple's chances of being industry leader back in the early '80s), the hotels have reinvented themselves through their technology.
While the hotels have changed, Mallorca as a whole hasn't. It is crucial that it now does. If not, then like Britain, the leader of an industrial revolution will gradually slip and slip.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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