Scenario planning is not necessarily a complex process. It may need some imagination to attempt to come up with all possible scenarios, but even then some will not dreamt up. There are, though, ones which are relatively easy to consider. A decision to leave the European Union by the people of the United Kingdom is one of them. That possibility doesn't even require the complexity of scenario planning. It is something inherent to Business Studies 101 - the SWOT analysis - and it comes under the T, i.e. threats. It is so basic a tool that any business or government should have no difficulty in working up a SWOT.
For the Balearics, the threat of Brexit should have been abundantly clear. It was of course a decision totally beyond Balearic control. But that is the point. You seek to manage events beyond your control. You plan, you make decisions based on probability. How probable did Balearic businesses or government rate Brexit? At all?
The government made a decision some months ago to introduce the tourist tax a week after the result of the referendum would be known. Perhaps it did consider the probability. Indeed, perhaps it believes that it planned for the probability. At least there will be some tax revenue to compensate for losses through other revenue generation, it might believe.
The tourism advisory council is to meet this week. It comprises President Armengol, the tourism minister Biel Barceló, representatives of town halls, island councils, business associations, unions, plus "prestigious professionals" from the tourism sector. Its meeting is expressly to consider Brexit. It's about the closest the Balearics get to a sort of war council. The islands have got an emergency on their hands.
A sensible emergency measure, on account of the size of the British tourism market, would be to stall the tourist tax. With the pound going through the floor, spending power will be greatly reduced, and yet of course so much has been bet on tourist spend this year. The government's four per cent growth figure for 2016 is now looking unattainable. Its revenues will not be what they were - the tax from property sales will be just one lost stream. The tourist tax revenue, modest by comparison with other sources, will not compensate, but take it out of the equation and spending might, just might, not plummet as much as it would otherwise do.
The government won't do this. Or you would think not. If it did, it would be proof that it hadn't factored Brexit into the equations, when it should have done. Furthermore, while there is chaos all round because of Brexit, there is the chaos which surrounds the regional government. At least this has not yet been heightened, given that the election did not give Podemos what it (and Més) had sought - a third seat in Congress. Nevertheless, while Armengol might want to move in one direction, others would prevent her.
No one seems to have seen this coming. Take the hotels and tour operators. They announce that there will be price rises for 2017 of up to 15% at the very time the referendum is taking place. British tour operators are already asking for discounts.
What a complete and utter mess. Yes, it was out of anyone's control, but a modicum of planning and awareness of the T-threat might have helped to limit the damage.
Showing posts with label Planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Planning. Show all posts
Monday, June 27, 2016
Monday, February 02, 2015
Yes, We Have No Plan
Look at any website for a town hall in Mallorca and you will find that they all have a councillor who is responsible for fiestas. This is not a sole responsibility, but responsibility there nevertheless is. Fiestas (and indeed fairs) represent one of the strongest statements as to what a town (or parts of towns) is all about. It is local culture in the form of a party. It would be odd were there not a councillor who was charged with looking after this culture.
The demands placed on such a councillor will vary enormously depending on the size of any given municipality, but even in the smaller towns there is more to it than simply ensuring that the pipers turn up at the appointed time (preferably with their pipes) and that DJ Deejay has remembered his USB sticks that will whisk the partygoers back to the good old days of the 1980s. The fiesta needs organising. It needs planning. The plan may not vary greatly from year to year, but that doesn't mean it can be neglected.
Palma town hall has admitted that it doesn't have a plan for fiestas. It is an extraordinary admission. If there is one municipality on Mallorca you would think would most definitely have a plan - and a pretty detailed one, too - then Palma would be that municipality. Alas, it does not.
The confession that there is no plan has come in the aftermath of what, by general consensus, was the worst Sant Sebastià fiesta since it was given its current-day look at the end of the 1970s. Even the town hall seems to accept that the 2015 edition was a bit of a washout. It wasn't only attributable to the weather; the music events for the "revetla", the grand party for the eve of Sant Sebastià, reached an all-time low.
Perhaps even more extraordinary is that Esperanza Crespí, the councillor for citizen participation, has not only admitted that there is no plan she has also accepted, amidst apologies for this year's fiesta, that a proposal from the PSOE opposition last year for there to be a plan was not followed up. She has said that she didn't know what PSOE was suggesting but would have liked to have done. Maybe she should have asked them for more detail then.
That Esperanza even has responsibility for fiestas might seem a little surprising. She heads an area within the council that combines citizen participation with commerce, work and youth. Fiestas fall somewhere within this lot. Forget what I was saying about fiestas and local culture. Palma has a councillor for culture and sport who doesn't have responsibility for fiestas.
It is possible, therefore, that this is part of the problem. Fiestas, in the grand scheme of things in a city which has as much on its plate as Palma does, are far from being a number-one priority and so may fall down some black hole of organisational structure. Or they may be assigned wrongly; if not the councillor for culture and sports, then maybe the one for tourism and what is called municipal co-ordination should take care of fiestas.
Wearing her participation hat, Esperanza has said that the time may have come for the town hall to sit down with residents, business associations and others and discuss fiestas. Yes, it probably is time and probably should have been happening anyway: principles of participation appear to be developed slowly in Palma.
To make matters worse, the Més grouping at the town hall has been calling for Esperanza's head because other fiesta activities have been prohibited - three demons' fire-runs, for instance, one of them in Son Sardina. And then there was all the fuss over the town hall's apparent indifference to this year's alternative Sant Sebastià fiesta, Sant Kanut. Despite the fact that Kanut is not an official fiesta, the town hall now seems to accept that they got things terribly wrong. Citizens participating in staging their own fiestas has rapidly become an accepted wisdom at the council; Kanut will happen next year and do so over three days. Sounds like a plan.
The sadness is of course that Sant Sebastià should be a major event in the Mallorcan calendar and should be promoted more strongly. The need for promotion on an international level was accepted some years ago at the time when a version of ELO and Echo and the Bunnymen were coming to Palma. Crisis took over, but critics of the town hall say that it is no longer enough to just blame a cut to financing for the fiesta having gone into decline. Meanwhile, one wonders what all the sponsors of Palma 365 make of the situation. In terms of winter promotion of the city, it doesn't get much better than a dazzling fiesta in January. Time to get planning.
The demands placed on such a councillor will vary enormously depending on the size of any given municipality, but even in the smaller towns there is more to it than simply ensuring that the pipers turn up at the appointed time (preferably with their pipes) and that DJ Deejay has remembered his USB sticks that will whisk the partygoers back to the good old days of the 1980s. The fiesta needs organising. It needs planning. The plan may not vary greatly from year to year, but that doesn't mean it can be neglected.
Palma town hall has admitted that it doesn't have a plan for fiestas. It is an extraordinary admission. If there is one municipality on Mallorca you would think would most definitely have a plan - and a pretty detailed one, too - then Palma would be that municipality. Alas, it does not.
The confession that there is no plan has come in the aftermath of what, by general consensus, was the worst Sant Sebastià fiesta since it was given its current-day look at the end of the 1970s. Even the town hall seems to accept that the 2015 edition was a bit of a washout. It wasn't only attributable to the weather; the music events for the "revetla", the grand party for the eve of Sant Sebastià, reached an all-time low.
Perhaps even more extraordinary is that Esperanza Crespí, the councillor for citizen participation, has not only admitted that there is no plan she has also accepted, amidst apologies for this year's fiesta, that a proposal from the PSOE opposition last year for there to be a plan was not followed up. She has said that she didn't know what PSOE was suggesting but would have liked to have done. Maybe she should have asked them for more detail then.
That Esperanza even has responsibility for fiestas might seem a little surprising. She heads an area within the council that combines citizen participation with commerce, work and youth. Fiestas fall somewhere within this lot. Forget what I was saying about fiestas and local culture. Palma has a councillor for culture and sport who doesn't have responsibility for fiestas.
It is possible, therefore, that this is part of the problem. Fiestas, in the grand scheme of things in a city which has as much on its plate as Palma does, are far from being a number-one priority and so may fall down some black hole of organisational structure. Or they may be assigned wrongly; if not the councillor for culture and sports, then maybe the one for tourism and what is called municipal co-ordination should take care of fiestas.
Wearing her participation hat, Esperanza has said that the time may have come for the town hall to sit down with residents, business associations and others and discuss fiestas. Yes, it probably is time and probably should have been happening anyway: principles of participation appear to be developed slowly in Palma.
To make matters worse, the Més grouping at the town hall has been calling for Esperanza's head because other fiesta activities have been prohibited - three demons' fire-runs, for instance, one of them in Son Sardina. And then there was all the fuss over the town hall's apparent indifference to this year's alternative Sant Sebastià fiesta, Sant Kanut. Despite the fact that Kanut is not an official fiesta, the town hall now seems to accept that they got things terribly wrong. Citizens participating in staging their own fiestas has rapidly become an accepted wisdom at the council; Kanut will happen next year and do so over three days. Sounds like a plan.
The sadness is of course that Sant Sebastià should be a major event in the Mallorcan calendar and should be promoted more strongly. The need for promotion on an international level was accepted some years ago at the time when a version of ELO and Echo and the Bunnymen were coming to Palma. Crisis took over, but critics of the town hall say that it is no longer enough to just blame a cut to financing for the fiesta having gone into decline. Meanwhile, one wonders what all the sponsors of Palma 365 make of the situation. In terms of winter promotion of the city, it doesn't get much better than a dazzling fiesta in January. Time to get planning.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Mallorca: The Brazil Of Tourism
Ultra-efficient, superbly organised, highly modern in approach, swift to move, react and take the attack to the opponent: the product of integrated thinking, planning and development. Inefficient, poorly organised, outdated in approach, slow to move, react and attack: the product of disjointed thinking, lack of planning and development. Germany thrashed Brazil. A nation known for many things, not just its football but also engineering and motor cars, applied the science, quality and skills of Mercedes and BMW in order to drive a high-speed autobahn through the dead end of a team that had nowhere to go, except in reverse; a very heavy reverse. The other nation is known for one thing - football. Yes, there is an awful lot of coffee in Brazil as well, but its national being is defined by the limits of the white lines of the pitch and by the clichéd soccering samba of the sons of Pele and Zico. Or was.
Betting your whole national being, your societal raison d'être on one thing is a sure route to ultimate disappointment. But once upon a time that national being was unquestioned and, though there were disappointments, the nation could take solace from the knowledge that spiritually it ruled the world, and the world watched in awe. But then the world began to wake up to the possibilities that it admired so greatly. Simultaneously, the one-time world leader forgot its roots. It exported its talent to distant shores, which watered down the very essence of the pool from which it had sprung. It failed to once again foster, nurture and encourage the flamboyance to be found on wonderful, sandy beaches under a burning sun. The nation's gold and silver were sold off, and there was not even tarnished bronze to cling onto. For all this, there had been hope. There were still jewels among the fool's gold. Until, that is, disaster struck. The nation was deprived of the backbone of its Silva, while a broken bone in the back of its golden boy left it flopping around like a great big floppy thing.
The world had long known about Brazil's football, but it wasn't until after the Second World War that it really started to take notice. There was the disappointment of 1950, but then there was the boom of the late '50s and early '60s. On an island in the Mediterranean, there was no disappointment in 1950 because there wasn't as yet anything to be disappointed with. Instead, there was the incipient manifestation of what was to come, housed in tents by a beach in Alcúdia. The great tourism football club was in the process of being conceived, and Club Med was the seed. Within a few years, at the end of the '50s and into the early '60s, the boom was to blast tourism into a totally new orbit. The world looked on in wonder, and was then further wonderstruck as other booms occurred, such as around 1994, when the island indulged in a binge of new development. Over this period, the island could count on a solidity in the defence of its market, but one combined with adventure. It was the touristic defence of Nilton Santos and Carlos Alberto, racing forward to deliver the coup de grâce. And from this solidity came the real flair and riches from the extravagant supply lines of its Garrincha and Jairzinho for its number tens, its Pele and Zico, to net the seemingly endless bonanza that erupted from its wonderful, sandy beaches under a burning sun.
The world, though it looked on in wonder and in admiration, did not do so with deference. It looked on and learned. And one thing it learned was efficiency, organisation, modernity, swiftness to act and integrated planning. In some parts of the world this meant a bottom-up approach from all but scratch combined with top-down guidance from strategically minded governments. One thing in particular that it learned was that the island, rather like Brazil, had extracted its riches as much if not more through improvisation than planning. It had taken the talent of its beaches and built castles on its sand but failed to pay adequate attention to the foundations and to the potential breaches by the tides of competition. And this competition was aided by its foreign coaches, those from the island itself, its grand hotel chains which exported know-how and expertise and left the island in the hands of politicians, in thrall to ProZone tourism statistics but without the soul of that one-time flair.
Betting your whole island being on one thing is a sure route to ultimate disappointment. There are many other things in Mallorca, but its island being is defined by the limits of one industry, which is prone to a disastrous snap in its back that renders it supine in the face of challenges. Re-definition is needed. Real planning is needed. The bounceback starts now. For Brazil, at any rate.
Betting your whole national being, your societal raison d'être on one thing is a sure route to ultimate disappointment. But once upon a time that national being was unquestioned and, though there were disappointments, the nation could take solace from the knowledge that spiritually it ruled the world, and the world watched in awe. But then the world began to wake up to the possibilities that it admired so greatly. Simultaneously, the one-time world leader forgot its roots. It exported its talent to distant shores, which watered down the very essence of the pool from which it had sprung. It failed to once again foster, nurture and encourage the flamboyance to be found on wonderful, sandy beaches under a burning sun. The nation's gold and silver were sold off, and there was not even tarnished bronze to cling onto. For all this, there had been hope. There were still jewels among the fool's gold. Until, that is, disaster struck. The nation was deprived of the backbone of its Silva, while a broken bone in the back of its golden boy left it flopping around like a great big floppy thing.
The world had long known about Brazil's football, but it wasn't until after the Second World War that it really started to take notice. There was the disappointment of 1950, but then there was the boom of the late '50s and early '60s. On an island in the Mediterranean, there was no disappointment in 1950 because there wasn't as yet anything to be disappointed with. Instead, there was the incipient manifestation of what was to come, housed in tents by a beach in Alcúdia. The great tourism football club was in the process of being conceived, and Club Med was the seed. Within a few years, at the end of the '50s and into the early '60s, the boom was to blast tourism into a totally new orbit. The world looked on in wonder, and was then further wonderstruck as other booms occurred, such as around 1994, when the island indulged in a binge of new development. Over this period, the island could count on a solidity in the defence of its market, but one combined with adventure. It was the touristic defence of Nilton Santos and Carlos Alberto, racing forward to deliver the coup de grâce. And from this solidity came the real flair and riches from the extravagant supply lines of its Garrincha and Jairzinho for its number tens, its Pele and Zico, to net the seemingly endless bonanza that erupted from its wonderful, sandy beaches under a burning sun.
The world, though it looked on in wonder and in admiration, did not do so with deference. It looked on and learned. And one thing it learned was efficiency, organisation, modernity, swiftness to act and integrated planning. In some parts of the world this meant a bottom-up approach from all but scratch combined with top-down guidance from strategically minded governments. One thing in particular that it learned was that the island, rather like Brazil, had extracted its riches as much if not more through improvisation than planning. It had taken the talent of its beaches and built castles on its sand but failed to pay adequate attention to the foundations and to the potential breaches by the tides of competition. And this competition was aided by its foreign coaches, those from the island itself, its grand hotel chains which exported know-how and expertise and left the island in the hands of politicians, in thrall to ProZone tourism statistics but without the soul of that one-time flair.
Betting your whole island being on one thing is a sure route to ultimate disappointment. There are many other things in Mallorca, but its island being is defined by the limits of one industry, which is prone to a disastrous snap in its back that renders it supine in the face of challenges. Re-definition is needed. Real planning is needed. The bounceback starts now. For Brazil, at any rate.
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