MALLORCA TODAY - Zones for tiqueteros in Calvià proposed

Business associations in Calvià have proposed that there be seven zones for tiqueteros (PRs) to operate in the main tourist centres of the town, e.g. Magalluf and Santa Ponsa. These would only be for PRs from clubs and not small bars. PRs for the latter can only operate in front of their establishments.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

MALLORCA TODAY - Calvià reduces tiquetero tax

The daily charge on businesses who will now be able to once more employ tiqueteros (PRs) to promote their businesses in resorts such as Magalluf has been reduced by Calvià town hall to between 15 and 30 euros per day, depending on the size of the establishment. The PRs will be limited to operating in front of the businesses, though those representing discos will be able to operate more widely.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

Turning Back The Clock: Terrace times

So, Palma town hall is planning to break the midnight terrace curfew. Mayor Isern and his tourism supremo Álvaro Gijón have seen the light, and it needs to stay on past twelve o'clock. "We cannot allow (businesses) to lose the business opportunity caused by the obligation to clear terraces at midnight."

If the town hall goes through with the abandonment of the curfew, it would apply mainly and probably exclusively to tourist area frontlines. It's a move that will doubtless have bar owners in backlines clamouring for a similar dispensation. It could raise charges of discrimination, but it is something.

Apart from bar owners away from the sea fronts, not everyone will be happy, especially if they live above a bar. The midnight curfew has been a compromise, and it has been one of trying to work out a means by which residents (and indeed some tourists) in tourism areas can be accommodated and can get a good night's sleep.

There isn't and never has been a happy medium. Palma, by loosening the regulations, is turning the clock back to a time when residents were disadvantaged. Howls of protest are likely to follow, if it does indeed loosen the regulations. But it would be a loosening very much in line with regional government thinking. As tourism minister Delgado has announced, tourism should no longer be subjugated to urbanism, something that can be interpreted in all sorts of ways.

If Palma goes ahead, there will be calls elsewhere for a relaxation of the midnight rule. Local ordinance governs the operation of terraces in individual municipalities, but changes to local ordinance would run up against a general law, one that defines the parts of a day (and night).

This law, and as far as I am aware it was not re-amended, established during the last administration that "evening" was no longer from eight to twelve but from eight to eleven. It caused a ruckus in Magalluf, Calvià being the only town hall which sought to apply what, for almost everyone, was a totally unknown change to the law. Police went in soon after the law changed, made bars close terraces at eleven, there were protests and everyone promptly forgot about it.

The re-definition of evening was one of a raft of measures brought in by Enviro Man, Miguel Grimalt, daily in the news as he raced across Mallorca in a constant campaign to save the environment in all its facets. The loss of an hour of evening was a confirmation of just how much regulation was being used to make bar owners' lives nigh on impossible.

It was also a confirmation of how little was understood of what many tourists enjoy. In a word, it is fun. It is an impossible compromise, as many other tourists want to be tucked up by midnight, but the possibility to enjoy being up late, sitting outside on a warm summer's night and having a drink was one of the great attractions of "holiday". Along the way, regulators forgot that people came on holiday. A semantic preference for "tourist" has relegated the word association of holidaymaker and fun into virtual non-existence.

Holidays have become sanitised and have lost some of their essence as a consequence. That old romantic Pedro Iriondo, now put out to presidential pasture by the Mallorca Tourist Board, alluded to this when he became president. He reminisced of a time when everyone had happy, smiling faces and there could be night-time barbecues on the beaches, and the police, rather than issuing tickets, would join in. There didn't used to be all the regulation. And if there was, no one took much notice.

Palma's move would not be one of turning the clock back to those more hedonistic days. It would not be one so much with the desires of tourists in mind as with the needs of businesses. And behind the move, one senses the influence of both other regulation and of market change, namely and respectively, the smoking ban and all-inclusives.

A turning back of the clock of a different sort will occur in Calvià, the town hall allowing tiqueteros (PRs) once more. But it is a turning back that comes with a price tag. Calvià's ludicrous tiquetero tax proposal will in all likelihood bring back the worst excesses of tourist harassment. The move is meant to help businesses, but it gives with one hand and takes with another. And unlike longer hours on terraces, it is not a move that most tourists will appreciate, proving that there is indeed no such thing as a happy medium between the wishes of businesses and all tourists.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.


Index for February 2012

Alfredo Rubalcaba is PSOE leader - 6 February 2012
British tourism: reservations down - 26 February 2012
Brochure speak - 1 February 2012
Carnival in Mallorca - 12 February 2012
Charles Dickens, the Mallorcan novel and - 8 February 2012
Class in the Balearics - 7 February 2012
Competitiveness in Mallorca - 21 February 2012
Consumer confidence survey - 15 February 2012
Correbou and tradition - 2 February 2012
Cruise operators and Catalonia tourist tax - 28 February 2012
Culture and expatriates - 10 February 2012
Cyclists and drivers - 24 February 2012
Duke of Palma's court appearance - 27 February 2012
Electricity in Mallorca - 20 February 2012
English in Balearics schools - 3 February 2012
Established since ... - 19 February 2012
French doping satire of Spanish sport - 14 February 2012
Judiciary, Spanish - 23 February 2012
Magalluf new hotels and image - 16 February 2012
Mallorca Tourist Board finances - 18 February 2012
Pesetas - 4 February 2012
Protests - 22 February 2012
Ryanair and Spanish air industry - 9 February 2012
Social media and news - 13 February 2012
Terraces opening after midnight - 29 February 2012
Tiqueteros in Calvia - 25 February 2012
Tourism law - 11 February 2012
Winter weather - 5 February 2012, 17 February 2012

PR Disaster: Calvia's tiquetero tax

Calvia town hall is to permit "tiqueteros" once more. It hasn't decided exactly what the new ordinance governing the PRs will entail, but it has already decided what it is going to cost. Going to cost bars, restaurants and clubs, that is. The town hall is licking its lips at the prospect of 1.2 million euros finding their way into the municipal coffers, over a third of them in the form of fines, as a consequence of the PRs returning to the streets of Magalluf and other resorts and of their employers having to pay the town hall for the privilege.

Depending on the size of establishment and therefore the number of PRs that will be allowed, a bar owner could find him or herself having to fork out up to 3,500 euros a week.

For larger places, the cost of one employee could be as much as 350 euros more per week. This is because larger establishments will be obliged to fork out 50 euros a day (and they would be allowed to employ a maximum of ten PRs). Smaller places, i.e. less than one hundred square metres in size, will have to pay 30 euros a day but can only employ one PR.

To the onus of the tax (and this is the only way it can be described) is added an engineering of the business process. Smaller bars might wish to employ more PRs, so why shouldn't they be allowed to? What is the obsession with 100 square metres (or 200, another level of tax determination?

Over and above the arbitrariness, there is the question as to how such a tax can be justified, as it is a tax on marketing. The town hall's response would probably be along the lines of the fact that a PR occupies space owned by the town that is on the "public way". It is the same sort of principle as is applied to terraces which encroach onto the public way.

Up to a point, one can understand this, but where PRs are concerned, to be allowing them and then to be charging for them is a case of giving with one hand and taking with the other. But what if PRs were to be based only on a bar's property? What if they never moved? This would be unlikely, but were it to be so, then how could the town hall justify the tax? Only if the town's property is being used, can it feel safe in levying such a charge.

While regulating what businesses do is a legitimate responsibility of local authorities, too often bars appear to bear the brunt of petty and heavy-handed regulation. This is symptomatic of a culture in which business often appears to be misunderstood or simply exploited. There is a them-and-us culture, one exacerbated by a town hall mindset in which revenue calculations are arrived at with fines having been factored in. Town halls might be right to think like this, but it doesn't exactly make for an atmosphere in which all sectors of local resorts are co-operating for the greater good.

But, aside from the tax, what of the return of the PRs? Plenty of businesses have argued that they have suffered because they can't employ them (well, not legitimately). Perhaps so, but one reason why they were banned and why in other resorts they were confined to the premises and not meant to be patrolling the streets, was that there were so many complaints about harassment.

The town hall doubtless has a list of rules that it will unfurl to cover how PRs should operate, and doubtless they will be ignored. Allowing the return of PRs is one thing, making bars pay a tax for them is another. Calvia is making a rod for its own back. A bar owner who is obliged to spend as much as is being envisaged will want to make damn sure that he or she gets a return. And this is likely to mean a return to harassment of passers-by.

You can already begin to imagine how it's going to be. The local police will be spending all their time under instruction from the town hall to go in search of PRs acting inappropriately or without the tax having been paid so that the town hall can say it is keeping a lid on things and make a few more bob from fines. Meanwhile, other complaints that surface in the tourism season in resorts such as Magalluf will go unattended.

They're bringing back the PRs, but they're likely to bring about a PR disaster as well. Just wait for the internet to get clogged up with tourists moaning about the PRs.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Calvia bars will have to pay tax for PRs

Calvia town hall, in the process of approving anew the permission for bars and other establishments to publicise themselves through "tiqueteros" (commonly referred to as PRs), is to also introduce a tax whereby the businesses would have to pay between 30 and 50 euros a day per PR. Calvia includes the resorts of Magalluf, Santa Ponsa and Palmanova.

Lucky, Lucky, Lucky

They should be so unlucky. Unlucky, unlucky, unlucky. Ah yes, the power of the bottom-line, kick-ass self-interest. When all else fails, or more aptly, when nothing else has actually really been done, one can rely on commercial motives to rouse the slumbering leviathan of the Alcúdia town hall from its summer stupor.

ACOTUR is an organisation that represents Mallorca's tourist businesses. It has been sending letters, two of them in fact, both to the Alcúdia ayuntamiento, complaining about the "invasion" of what are formally here called "vendedores ambulantes" but more commonly are known as lucky-lucky men. (Why, by the way, are there no lucky-lucky women? Whatever.) Every season an invasion of some sort; usually it's jellyfish, but this year the sting is taking place on the streets, and especially along and around one street - Pedro Mas y Reus - which the "Diario" insists on saying is referred to as the dollar mile, when we know better. ACOTUR seems not to be saying that its members are being harmed commercially, but one can assume that the fact that they say that each of the lucksters can trouser 2,500 euros or more a month is a roundabout way of saying that these 2,500 euros are not being spent elsewhere. And I thought tourism spend was meant to be down. No accounting for taste or good sense I suppose. If a tourist wants to part with hard cash for crap, that's his outlook.

But ACOTUR is not solely taking the commercial line. It points out, rightly, that the street sellers give the place a bad name and that they are the cause for many a complaint. Just as important are the facts that the watches, the sunglasses, the CDs, the things that glow and spin and the jewellery are all fake and that the street sellers are plying their trade illegally and paying nary a centimo in taxes. The lucksters will indeed be unlucky, unlucky, unlucky if ACOTUR's protests are met with the sound of heavy boots in pursuit of a collaring.

This is not the first time that the local businesses have tried to gang up. Three years ago, the businesses along The Mile started issuing leaflets telling tourists to say "no" to the street sellers and pointing out that the business was illegal. It didn't do much good. And one does wonder quite what the town hall and therefore also the local police have been doing all this time. Step forward Miquel Ferrer, mayor of Alcúdia, who says that the plod haven't been sitting on their backsides and do represent a significant presence around The Mile. Of course they do. Last night I was in The Mile. Late on, I was down by the canal where there is a row of five or so bars. If the police had a mind, they could hang around in the shadows there and await their prey. They wouldn't have to wait long.

For all that ACOTUR do rightly point to the fact that many tourists do get hacked off with the street sellers, there is - for every pissed-off holidaymaker - another who will happily engage in the banter and the transaction. And then, one has to ask, why do the bar and restaurant owners tolerate the lucksters coming onto their premises? If they were to all tell them to piss off, the trade would not be stopped in its tracks but would be undermined.

There is another worry for the business organisation, another worry that is giving rise to complaints and a bad image - and that is the operation of tiqueteros (PRs as they are known). Now I am not sure what the "Diario" report is referring to when it speaks of the forceful way in which tourists are approached. Might they be talking about our friends the scratch-cardists?


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Culture Club (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgJq5QPkpKQ). Today's title - can anyone not know this?

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

The Public Gets What The Public Wants?

Overhearing a confused conversation in a newsagents as to what was going on at the Hospital d’Alcúdia and what it all meant, I went into the hospital to see what information was available. Looked around, expected some notice or perhaps some sheets of a “dear patient, it is with regret that we have to inform you” variety. Nothing.

This has been a PR disaster for the hospital managers. The denials were one thing, but now that the decision has been taken to close the hospital, they should have set in motion a communications plan. Perhaps they yet will, but to this point the handling of the affair has demonstrated a disregard for the local community, and not just in Alcúdia but also in Pollensa, Sa Pobla, Can Picafort and other towns which have relied on the hospital.

The Juaneda group will doubtless point to the advantages of shifting everything to Muro. Fair enough. However, it is neglecting not only the “hearts and minds” psychology of the consumer but also its own role in the community. For most businesses, there is a degree of social and community responsibility in what they do, no more so than in the provision of heath care. Must do better.


PR of a different sort. “Euro Weekly” leads on the crackdown in Calvia on the work of those who tout for bars etc.: they are comically referred to as PRs. In Magaluf and other parts of Calvia, bars will be liable to hefty fines if they use them. In a way, this is good. The PRs, sometimes quite aggressive, jack-the-lad Brits looking for an excuse for a summer in the sun, can be a real nuisance. They operate mainly or exclusively on a commission basis, and can be found in many resorts. In Alcúdia, the actions of the PRs can be a source of irritation. They are to be found along The Mile, but do also pop up in the port and in Playa de Muro.

But to damn all PRs would be unfair. There are some I know who are in a sense “professionals”. They have been at the PR game for years, are good at what they do, have amusing lines in banter and form a part, if you like, of the “local colour”. Not all are as they are portrayed, the female PRs in particular who for the most part are cheerful and charming. The problem lies with the occasional aggression and with the numbers of PRs – it is the cumulative effect that irritates as much anything else. It is seemingly inevitable that if one bar has a PR, the next bar will want one, and so it goes on. But not always. In at least one part of The Mile, the bar operators have agreed amongst themselves that none of them will operate PRs. Self-regulation in other words. Perhaps this, or a code of practice amongst bar and restaurant owners is the solution, though this would fail if the likely-lad PRs have to drag tourists kicking and screaming into a bar to secure their only source of income, i.e. a commission. If the PRs were to be outlawed, I wonder what difference it would really make. In some cases they must surely be counter-productive if they hack tourists off so much. Were there to be none, then all the bars would be on a level playing-field and have to look to more subtle forms of promotion than hassling some poor visitor and his family.

I don’t wish to see the PRs banned, but I suspect it will occur on a wider scale than just in Calvia. Because of some bad apples, the whole PR produce is likely to fail.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Bonnie Tyler. Today’s title – I’ve made a question out of this line from which song? Huge English act of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)