Aviba is the Balearic association of travel agencies. It is forty years old. A new image has been created. In the words of its president, Toni Abrines: "We are Mediterranean, which means being sea, sun, infinite sunsets, the horizon, light. Aviba and the Balearics are blue and yellow."
The association is thus banking on an image that has served Mallorca for as long as there has been mass tourism. The image was officially, in promotional terms, once captured in Joan Miró's Sol de Mallorca. Little has therefore changed, except for Abrines adding that there have to be "tourist interests that go beyond sun and beach". He wants there to be a tourism strategic plan which recognises that there are "political ups and downs" but would nevertheless support the tourism industry by sticking to a plan.
Defining a plan that achieves consensus seems like a pipe dream. It would require agreement from political parties of differing complexions, from the numerous business associations, from unions, from society. Just as one example of how difficult it might be is the fact that Podemos (in the form of Laura Camargo) have drawn winter tourism into question by pointing out that the poor workers would have to work for more than eight months a year.
Aviba itself seems unclear what the strategy might be. In opting for a refreshed image that stresses the essential components of Mallorca's tourism (its summer tourism), it is making off-season tourism secondary. There again, that it is exactly what it is. And to suggest otherwise is a nonsense.
In the Canary Islands, they are working on such a plan, and the government there is opening it up to the public. It is inviting opinion. The Canaries, though, are a different proposition to the Balearics. Those islands have genuine all-year tourism. There is little variance in tourist numbers between summer and winter. But this is not the only way that the Canaries differ from the Balearics. Promotion is innovative, whereas in the Balearics it is not. The Disney-style element to the official promotional website says it all. Here is an imaginative means of selling attractions, including the national parks in the Canaries and their winter appeal. In the Balearics, promotion is almost a dirty word, and what word there is tends to be mixed.
The travel agents association does rather sum this up. It wants winter tourism but at the same time presents an image that can seem at odds with this. The Balearic tourism ministry, meanwhile, has simply stopped any promotion of summer. Its strategic plan is the winter. All promotional eggs are in the low-season basket.
This emphasis on the winter is perfectly reasonable. Indeed, Mallorca has been crying out for a concerted and coordinated winter promotional effort for years. Herein lies the rub - coordination. When there used to be the Winter in Mallorca campaign some years ago, it didn't have the necessary support politically or from business. It was eventually and quietly dropped. Indifference and lack of will had won the day.
Having a strategy is one thing. Selling it is quite another. This selling includes the messages and in particular how they are conveyed. I'm unconvinced that the ministry and its tourism agency know how to go about this in an effective way. Let me give an example.
I am to be working on a promotion for the ministry. Basically, this is a translation from Spanish for something which, as I understand it, is to be distributed on planes from the UK (or on arrival at the airport). It's all about the low season - Better In Winter. The first paragraph of this informs the reader that the Balearic archipelago is some two hours' flight time from central European cities. I looked at this and thought - you're kidding. Firstly, what sort of an introduction is that? Secondly, it's aimed at the UK market. Thirdly, if you're on a plane or have arrived, then you know how long the flight is.
My version will relegate this factual intro, but it is indicative of the kind of mindset that dominates the messages. Facts and information come before emotion and inspiration. It's hard enough to differentiate destinations when they are all essentially selling the same things, so you have to go hard on appealing to the heart and on creating a genuine connection in the minds of visitors (both potential and actual).
The same applied towards the end of 2015. The ministry was on a mission to explain the tourist tax to the UK market. I received some copy and binned it. What resulted was much longer and was written in order to tug at the heart strings. And this was from someone who was and remains no great supporter of the tourist tax.
The strategy for winter tourism is there, and it is unlikely to be altered if there is political change in two years time. The PP had assured us back in 2011 and 2012 that the fruits of its winter promotional efforts would have been realised by the time of the 2015 election. They would not be about to put the strategy in reverse. But far more important is what the strategy says. Far more important is getting all parties (and not just political ones) on board. Everyone has to buy into it - Aviba is right in this regard - but the most important party of all is the tourist. Strategies require implementation, and their messages are key.
Showing posts with label Promotion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Promotion. Show all posts
Sunday, June 25, 2017
Saturday, November 05, 2016
What Does The Tourism Promotion Agency Do?
The Balearic Tourism Agency (ATB) is the government agency which markets the Balearics as a tourist destination. Its budget for next year is being cut to 19.5 million euros. Based on recent experience, less than 20% will go on direct promotion, which doesn't mean advertising but does mean travel fairs and other such actions. London's World Travel Market, which starts on Monday, is one of the main items of expenditure. We may well be informed how much is being spent on this annual trip, but if we want to find out from the agency's action plan for 2016, we will be disappointed.
I keep archives of these plans. I went looking for 2016's and couldn't find it. On the agency's website, there is a link to a plan, but it isn't this year's; it's the one for 2015. Perhaps they didn't bother making a plan; so much for transparency. Maybe this had something to do with the revolving door at the agency, which saw the departure of the director who was initially appointed by Biel Barceló (it was said he got a better offer) replaced by an old friend of Barceló's, Pere Muñoz. Who can say?
One has to rely, therefore, on the 2015 plan for information. That showed that the London fair was the third costliest event. The quarter of a million budget was exceeded slightly by the budget for Berlin's ITB and greatly exceeded (by 129,000 euros) by the spend on Madrid's Fitur. Who were they wanting to promote to more? The British, the German or the Spanish market? The latter, it would seem: always well behind the UK and Germany in terms of tourist numbers.
The total cost of the various fairs and other exercises, such as press trips, was approximately 3.7 million euros. So what exactly was the agency doing - or planning on doing - with the rest of its budget (other than paying staff and advisers)? Well, there were, for example 4.9 million euros set aside for "territory actions", which meant investment in infrastructure. Of these - and there were thirteen of them - there was at least one that wasn't carried out. The second highest budgeted amount (837,000 euros) was for phase B of the boulevard in Playa de Muro. I'm unaware of there having been a phase A let alone B. What happened to the money for that then?
Going back to the budget for travel fairs and other actions, the 2015 plan stated that the market for 66 of them was yet to be determined. In other words, the plan didn't specify in which country 43% of these actions were to be undertaken. A footnote says that these would be determined once requests had been received from Spain's overseas tourism offices. Were they all, in the end, undertaken?
There is a question, therefore, about previous budgets. Was the money used for other purposes, or has it been held over? If there were other purposes, what were they? Is the reduction in the budget for 2017 a reflection of money in reserve? Some explanation would be welcome.
I keep archives of these plans. I went looking for 2016's and couldn't find it. On the agency's website, there is a link to a plan, but it isn't this year's; it's the one for 2015. Perhaps they didn't bother making a plan; so much for transparency. Maybe this had something to do with the revolving door at the agency, which saw the departure of the director who was initially appointed by Biel Barceló (it was said he got a better offer) replaced by an old friend of Barceló's, Pere Muñoz. Who can say?
One has to rely, therefore, on the 2015 plan for information. That showed that the London fair was the third costliest event. The quarter of a million budget was exceeded slightly by the budget for Berlin's ITB and greatly exceeded (by 129,000 euros) by the spend on Madrid's Fitur. Who were they wanting to promote to more? The British, the German or the Spanish market? The latter, it would seem: always well behind the UK and Germany in terms of tourist numbers.
The total cost of the various fairs and other exercises, such as press trips, was approximately 3.7 million euros. So what exactly was the agency doing - or planning on doing - with the rest of its budget (other than paying staff and advisers)? Well, there were, for example 4.9 million euros set aside for "territory actions", which meant investment in infrastructure. Of these - and there were thirteen of them - there was at least one that wasn't carried out. The second highest budgeted amount (837,000 euros) was for phase B of the boulevard in Playa de Muro. I'm unaware of there having been a phase A let alone B. What happened to the money for that then?
Going back to the budget for travel fairs and other actions, the 2015 plan stated that the market for 66 of them was yet to be determined. In other words, the plan didn't specify in which country 43% of these actions were to be undertaken. A footnote says that these would be determined once requests had been received from Spain's overseas tourism offices. Were they all, in the end, undertaken?
There is a question, therefore, about previous budgets. Was the money used for other purposes, or has it been held over? If there were other purposes, what were they? Is the reduction in the budget for 2017 a reflection of money in reserve? Some explanation would be welcome.
Saturday, September 17, 2016
Promoting Culture: Where's The Strategy?
Having dismissed the suggestion by Podemos that no money should be spent on tourism promotion, the regional government has come up with a new line of funding. It is going to promote cultural tourism. One presumes that even Podemos can't disagree with this. Or can it? Hordes of tourists will now be overwhelming obscure museums on the island, adding further to the myth of tourist saturation.
What a curious business this is. It is one which demands that the press is invited to witness an official signing ceremony. A "protocol" has been established between two ministries - tourism and culture - and from this there is an agreement. Signed, sealed, delivered by Biel Barceló and Ruth Mateu. It was as if they were signing a peace treaty.
PR nonsense. Why can't representatives from two ministries just sit round a table without making a ballyhoo about spending up to 600 grand on "internationalising" the culture of the islands via a "tourism strategy"? It's nice to know that there is a strategy. At least in theory. Why also does this protocol only run until the end of next year? What's the thinking with that? It must be strategic.
Barceló says that the only season that the government wishes to promote is the winter season: a misleading concept as it refers to more than winter. Such a statement is presumably designed to alleviate the fears of Podemos and the summer saturation propagandists (of whom, of course, Barceló is one). But there is nothing new behind this statement. Winter tourism has been the chief beneficiary of government promotional spend ever since Carlos Delgado and the Partido Popular took the knife to this spend. The austerity policies of José Ramón Bauzá decreed that promotional investment should be cut dramatically, and it was. Delgado and his then sidekick, Jaime Martínez, were going to be focusing on the winter.
The budget for promotion is miserly. What investment there is (around three to four million) goes towards travel fairs, forums and blogger and fam trips. It isn't as if summer is totally neglected, however. Much of the business done at the major travel fairs is for the summer. The government is party to only so much of this. Otherwise they are occasions for business to talk to business, though at present there is very little actual need for summer discussions.
Tour operators from the UK, Germany and Scandinavia are hoovering up hotels and hotel places with such rapidity that their Spanish counterparts are being left with scraps to fight over. If and when it is announced that domestic tourism to Mallorca next year is in decline, this won't be for lack of demand. It will be due to supply. However, the domestic market might not decline. Why not? Because it is finding alternatives. Which market is one of the most significant in driving demand for holiday rentals? The Spanish. Here's one reason for so-called saturation. And which market finds it easiest to come with its cars and clog up the roads? The Spanish.
Promotion for the summer isn't necessary at the moment. This isn't to say that there shouldn't be any. Even at times of summer tourism bonanza, it is important to keep the name out there and in the "front of mind" of the tourist punter. This doesn't require vast sums. Some well-conceived social media initiatives can achieve this. What do we get from the tourism ministry in this regard? Nothing.
The Balearic Tourism Agency (ATB), responsible for promotion, is a peculiar institution. In its former guise - Ibatur - it was at the heart of the corruption scandals that engulfed the Unió Mallorquina. Renamed, it has since then given an impression of ineffectualness. The only director to have ever made strong public statements about the need for and power of social networks was Mar Guerrero. She resigned because the job wasn't as had been said on the tin. Funding was cut off. This was almost six years ago.
So now we come to this latest initiative, to which the ATB is a party. And what will this "strategy" for cultural tourism entail? One aspect is getting more producers to come and film on the islands. Fine, but strategy demands that there is a structure, for which there has to be the right financial mix. Both Barceló and Mateu admit that there aren't the tax incentives for filming as there are in other parts of Spain. So they are coming up with a "strategy" without knowing if they have the wherewithal to implement it, while only having an agreement for fifteen months. Can anyone explain the sense of this?
What a curious business this is. It is one which demands that the press is invited to witness an official signing ceremony. A "protocol" has been established between two ministries - tourism and culture - and from this there is an agreement. Signed, sealed, delivered by Biel Barceló and Ruth Mateu. It was as if they were signing a peace treaty.
PR nonsense. Why can't representatives from two ministries just sit round a table without making a ballyhoo about spending up to 600 grand on "internationalising" the culture of the islands via a "tourism strategy"? It's nice to know that there is a strategy. At least in theory. Why also does this protocol only run until the end of next year? What's the thinking with that? It must be strategic.
Barceló says that the only season that the government wishes to promote is the winter season: a misleading concept as it refers to more than winter. Such a statement is presumably designed to alleviate the fears of Podemos and the summer saturation propagandists (of whom, of course, Barceló is one). But there is nothing new behind this statement. Winter tourism has been the chief beneficiary of government promotional spend ever since Carlos Delgado and the Partido Popular took the knife to this spend. The austerity policies of José Ramón Bauzá decreed that promotional investment should be cut dramatically, and it was. Delgado and his then sidekick, Jaime Martínez, were going to be focusing on the winter.
The budget for promotion is miserly. What investment there is (around three to four million) goes towards travel fairs, forums and blogger and fam trips. It isn't as if summer is totally neglected, however. Much of the business done at the major travel fairs is for the summer. The government is party to only so much of this. Otherwise they are occasions for business to talk to business, though at present there is very little actual need for summer discussions.
Tour operators from the UK, Germany and Scandinavia are hoovering up hotels and hotel places with such rapidity that their Spanish counterparts are being left with scraps to fight over. If and when it is announced that domestic tourism to Mallorca next year is in decline, this won't be for lack of demand. It will be due to supply. However, the domestic market might not decline. Why not? Because it is finding alternatives. Which market is one of the most significant in driving demand for holiday rentals? The Spanish. Here's one reason for so-called saturation. And which market finds it easiest to come with its cars and clog up the roads? The Spanish.
Promotion for the summer isn't necessary at the moment. This isn't to say that there shouldn't be any. Even at times of summer tourism bonanza, it is important to keep the name out there and in the "front of mind" of the tourist punter. This doesn't require vast sums. Some well-conceived social media initiatives can achieve this. What do we get from the tourism ministry in this regard? Nothing.
The Balearic Tourism Agency (ATB), responsible for promotion, is a peculiar institution. In its former guise - Ibatur - it was at the heart of the corruption scandals that engulfed the Unió Mallorquina. Renamed, it has since then given an impression of ineffectualness. The only director to have ever made strong public statements about the need for and power of social networks was Mar Guerrero. She resigned because the job wasn't as had been said on the tin. Funding was cut off. This was almost six years ago.
So now we come to this latest initiative, to which the ATB is a party. And what will this "strategy" for cultural tourism entail? One aspect is getting more producers to come and film on the islands. Fine, but strategy demands that there is a structure, for which there has to be the right financial mix. Both Barceló and Mateu admit that there aren't the tax incentives for filming as there are in other parts of Spain. So they are coming up with a "strategy" without knowing if they have the wherewithal to implement it, while only having an agreement for fifteen months. Can anyone explain the sense of this?
Friday, September 02, 2016
A New Fair In Town
There's a new fair today. It's in Inca, a town known for its autumn fairs, for the daddy of all Mallorca's fairs - Dijous Bo - and for the revived Dijous Gros of early May. It's a town also known for its market, the Thursday market especially. Inca would like to be more firmly on the tourist map, but it struggles to find a place. For most tourists, the Thursday market is the only touristic game in this town of leather and footwear - there's a museum dedicated to both, to which no one much goes. Otherwise, it's off the beaten motorway heading towards Alcudia or in the other direction to Palma. It's easily bypassed.
Next weekend, Inca will be where most of the pilgrims undertaking the "part forana" walk to Lluc arrive prior to setting off on the pilgrimage at four in the morning. Proximity to the mountains as opposed to being in the mountains makes the town the start point, a place to be left. In tourism terms, the walk means little or nothing. There's no real reason why it should. It is after all, and as the name suggests, a walk for the part forana, for people in the sticks of Mallorca; no one else.
Dijous Bo is a fair which, on account of its mediaeval antiquity and sheer scale, attracts attention like no other (in Mallorca, that is). November doesn't perhaps help, but when has it ever been a tourist attraction? Is there any real reason why it should be? It's more like a massive social gathering on which all quarters of the island descend in order to admire pigs in pens and canaries in cages. A massive gathering, it's a massive market, more massive than the normal massive market of a Thursday, one which itself has received its share of criticism for the sameyness of its stalls and the proliferation of exotic tat.
To counteract this criticism, efforts have been made to promote the wares of the artisan class. Mallorca has become an island nation of potters and purveyors of home-made chutneys/jams with indigenous (or other) ingredients plucked from the island land. The artisan has his or her place at all fairs, markets or fiestas (they can overlap and be indistinguishable). He or she is ubiquitous as are the mainstays of local gastronomy. The new Inca Friday fair will have both. Fried sobrassada in a llonguet loaf will be topping the culinary bill. Add mustard or ketchup and it could be like a German or British hot-dog, except of course that it is artisan and thus charcuterie apart.
Mayor Virgilio Moreno says that the fair is all about providing an additional element to the summer programme in the town. Dubbed "Divendres a la fresca", its combination of artisan craft and tapas is to be an annual occasion going under this name, a late summer add-on to feature on the same calendar as the spring and autumn Dijous of Gros and Bo. If you - be you resident or tourist - were unaware of today's fair, you are now aware. I've done my bit in promoting it. What has the town hall done?
Inca is a prime example of seeking to acquire an "alternative" tourist but of not seeming to know how to go about it and of not appearing to know if it really wants it or not. It's not as though there haven't been ambitions. Most certainly not. But some ambitions can be over-ambitious. The footwear industry, it has been reckoned, offers an opportunity to attract Japanese tourists, as the Japanese love footwear (this was Inca speaking, not me). There is more than just one problem with this, and you don't need me to tell you what. Suffice to say Inca is unlikely to become akin to Brontë Country with signage in Japanese.
The sad thing is that today's fair is part of what is a highly vibrant summer programme in the town. Jazz, classics, all manner of events at the showground at the General Luque Quarter (there's more ubiquity there on Sunday - a Holi colours festival). Inca has a lot going for it, but who ever truly finds out about it? What real incentive is there to go, when the resorts offer their entertainment and restaurants?
Inca, although not central to the island's tourism, does rather sum up a general impression of treatment of fairs and fiestas. Who are they for? What does Mallorca want from them? Who knows about them? Sure, there are the well-known events, but there are a hell of lot of others for every Moors and Christians battle.
This is all in sharp contrast to what has just happened in Valencia. The "Tomatina" of Buñol is, says the mayor, the most international fiesta in Spain, with 60% of participants coming from overseas, including Japan. Buñol knows what it wants from its fiesta. In Mallorca ... ?
Next weekend, Inca will be where most of the pilgrims undertaking the "part forana" walk to Lluc arrive prior to setting off on the pilgrimage at four in the morning. Proximity to the mountains as opposed to being in the mountains makes the town the start point, a place to be left. In tourism terms, the walk means little or nothing. There's no real reason why it should. It is after all, and as the name suggests, a walk for the part forana, for people in the sticks of Mallorca; no one else.
Dijous Bo is a fair which, on account of its mediaeval antiquity and sheer scale, attracts attention like no other (in Mallorca, that is). November doesn't perhaps help, but when has it ever been a tourist attraction? Is there any real reason why it should be? It's more like a massive social gathering on which all quarters of the island descend in order to admire pigs in pens and canaries in cages. A massive gathering, it's a massive market, more massive than the normal massive market of a Thursday, one which itself has received its share of criticism for the sameyness of its stalls and the proliferation of exotic tat.
To counteract this criticism, efforts have been made to promote the wares of the artisan class. Mallorca has become an island nation of potters and purveyors of home-made chutneys/jams with indigenous (or other) ingredients plucked from the island land. The artisan has his or her place at all fairs, markets or fiestas (they can overlap and be indistinguishable). He or she is ubiquitous as are the mainstays of local gastronomy. The new Inca Friday fair will have both. Fried sobrassada in a llonguet loaf will be topping the culinary bill. Add mustard or ketchup and it could be like a German or British hot-dog, except of course that it is artisan and thus charcuterie apart.
Mayor Virgilio Moreno says that the fair is all about providing an additional element to the summer programme in the town. Dubbed "Divendres a la fresca", its combination of artisan craft and tapas is to be an annual occasion going under this name, a late summer add-on to feature on the same calendar as the spring and autumn Dijous of Gros and Bo. If you - be you resident or tourist - were unaware of today's fair, you are now aware. I've done my bit in promoting it. What has the town hall done?
Inca is a prime example of seeking to acquire an "alternative" tourist but of not seeming to know how to go about it and of not appearing to know if it really wants it or not. It's not as though there haven't been ambitions. Most certainly not. But some ambitions can be over-ambitious. The footwear industry, it has been reckoned, offers an opportunity to attract Japanese tourists, as the Japanese love footwear (this was Inca speaking, not me). There is more than just one problem with this, and you don't need me to tell you what. Suffice to say Inca is unlikely to become akin to Brontë Country with signage in Japanese.
The sad thing is that today's fair is part of what is a highly vibrant summer programme in the town. Jazz, classics, all manner of events at the showground at the General Luque Quarter (there's more ubiquity there on Sunday - a Holi colours festival). Inca has a lot going for it, but who ever truly finds out about it? What real incentive is there to go, when the resorts offer their entertainment and restaurants?
Inca, although not central to the island's tourism, does rather sum up a general impression of treatment of fairs and fiestas. Who are they for? What does Mallorca want from them? Who knows about them? Sure, there are the well-known events, but there are a hell of lot of others for every Moors and Christians battle.
This is all in sharp contrast to what has just happened in Valencia. The "Tomatina" of Buñol is, says the mayor, the most international fiesta in Spain, with 60% of participants coming from overseas, including Japan. Buñol knows what it wants from its fiesta. In Mallorca ... ?
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Beer And Models: Promoting Mallorca
If you look at a map of Germany, you will discover that there are sixteen "Länder" in the country, the sixteen states of Germany. Missing from it is the seventeenth. It is a gag in Germany that Mallorca is the seventeenth state, so close has been the association for so long.
The German obsession with the island far outstrips any British fascination. It does of course have its downside, especially if the red-top "Bild" has anything to do with it. But it is otherwise a generally positive obsession, even if it can result in the German television-viewing public having inflicted upon it some atrocities in the name of popular entertainment. Geman broadcasters think nothing of flying in some appalling Schlagermusik acts, locating them in a "kneipe" in Paguera, Arenal or another mini-state of Germany in Mallorca, and filming them. The result? Truly awful.
My own personal favourite of this genre was an outdoor location. Some dame in a ball gown was on rocks with the water lapping over her feet, belting out a tune, while a bloke in full tux gear was on a different rock playing a trumpet. It was one of those jaw-dropping moments when one can only wonder what on Earth possesses anyone to dream up such a scenario. For the most part, though (or it would seem), the German telly watcher laps up ladies having water lapping over their stilettos. I personally couldn't identify where the rocks in question were, but the über and immer curious Germans would doubtless have undertaken such research, gone online and booked there and then.
Which is why it is all so positive. While the British are served a diet of "Geordie Shore" and Stacey Dooley, the Germans have unthreatening musical and other acts promoting the island. Which brings us to a more modern performance: one by German group Stereoact. This thirtysomethings DJ-producer duo have a smash hit, "Die Immer Lacht" (she always laughs). Even more of a smash is the number of YouTube views - currently some 47 million.
Its success may owe something to sixteen-year-old blonde model-singer, Greta Hirsch, who is never off camera during the video. But if eyes can be taken off Greta for one moment, then it is evident that there are certain scenes of Mallorca. Some of it is a bit "urban" in that, for example, a wall with graffiti features. Otherwise, the knowledge-seeking Germans have been figuring out where the different scenes are, such as Ses Covetes and Palma.
While parts of the British media were, thanks to "The Night Manager", alerted to the fact that there are indeed parts of Mallorca which aren't Magalluf and consequently appeared to try and outdo one another in professing their knowledge of the likes of Formentor, the BBC series was something of an unusual occurrence. For the Germans, on the other hand, there is more or less daily free promotion of Mallorca - and normally in a positive way - from one source or another. And the Stereoact song and video have just reinforced this, even if of the 47 million one suspects that the majority have been more interested in Greta than in a beach chiringuito.
Although the British and other tourism markets may be deprived when it comes to such publicity, the collective efforts of video producers do go some way to redressing the total imbalance, nay vacuum, of official tourism ministerial productions. Once more, the brewer Estrella Damm is doing its damnedest to promote Mallorca and the Balearics. Its 2012 promotion was a fabulous advert for the Tramuntana and especially its coastal parts. Two years previously it had highlighted Menorca and the Sant Joan fiestas (currently in full swing of course), while last year it was Ibiza and the fabulous short film with Dakota Johnson.
This year's video finds Estrella back in Mallorca, with the lead taken by Jean Reno, the French actor who was born to Spanish parents. (He's been in all sorts of things, such as "Mission Impossible" and "The Da Vinci Code".) Playing a grumpy actor, he finally comes to appreciate "those little things" (the title of the production) by his guide in Mallorca, Laia Costa, and with some help of course from the odd bottle of Estrella. Where was it filmed? Well, taking a look and trying to recognise the locations is half the fun. But as with other Estrella films, it is not just a great advert for the locations, it is also worth watching in its own right because of the story and the acting, thus lending the whole production double power.
The Balearic tourism ministry is very lucky that there are the Estrellas and others doing its work for it. The ministry should package them all up and place them on some as yet undeveloped website. But does it ever take any real notice of what is produced on its behalf?
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
The Tramuntana And Institutional Failure
Pratt was, it should be said, pretty even-handed. His jaundiced view of Mallorca was reserved for more or less everything. He couldn't have been accused of being biased in favour of certain aspects at the expense of others. He was, though, not unique in offering criticism of what was otherwise acquiring the title of the paradise island and which had, by the time he wrote, been dubbed the island of calm for some twenty years: and that description was from the painter Rusiñol, who was to capture what he perceived as a very different Tramuntana.
George Sand, almost one hundred years before Pratt, had launched insults directed at the locals (and some other subjects) which were at a comparative level of abuse. Unlike Pratt, she wasn't run off the island; she and Chopin left of their own accord. But also unlike Ted, she didn't engage in criticisms of the mountains; she was rather taken by the landscape.
One mentions these differing perspectives of the mountains - each of them by foreigners (Rusiñol was from Catalonia) - as they can seem to sum up what might be considered to be a certain ambivalence towards the Tramuntana by the residents of Mallorca: an ambivalence which appears to be reflected at institutional levels on the island.
This ambivalence might equally be defined as indifference or, in the estimation of historian Angel Morillas, as "low self-esteem" held by the people of Mallorca when it comes to the Tramuntana. Morillas is Unesco's representative in Spain. He is also a member of Unesco's council of monuments and sites, the one which awarded the Tramuntana World Heritage Site status five years ago. He had been closely associated with the award in the advance of its being granted. In September 2008, for example, he had attended a conference in Pollensa which addressed the processing of the award nomination. At that conference were representatives of various schools from Pollensa, Alcudia and elsewhere.
The presence of those people from Mallorca's education sector now appears pertinent, with a question - just as pertinent - being how much the island's schools do to inform and educate the young generation about the mountains and the very patrimony - that of dry stone formations - which was to prove to be key to the awarding of World Heritage status.
Morillas attended another conference at the weekend. It was in Selva and was organised as a way of celebrating the fifth anniversary. During his presentation he referred to the lack of self-esteem, a rather curious way of putting it, one thinks: it might be better explained as the mountains not being held in high esteem by the islanders. Morillas argued that there was a lack of knowledge of the "gem" that is the Tramuntana range. He called, therefore, for greater input by schools and levelled criticism at the University of the Balearic Islands. What does the university do for the mountains? Not very much was his answer to his own question.
As curious as styling the attitude as one of lack of self-esteem is the fact that Morillas should feel it necessary to highlight it. One would have the impression, given the amount that was written and said about the mountains at the time of the heritage award and has been since, that there is an island-wide attitude of high regard. Clearly not. Morillas will know better than I, and I am not about to disagree with him.
It is an unfortunate fact that in the years since the award was granted, there seems to have been an incoherent approach to promotion of the mountains as well as maintenance of their prized assets - the dry stone paths, walls, terraces and other structures. The fault lies at an institutional level, and not only with, if Morillas is right (and who's to argue with him?), the university.
There are of course any number of people and sources who inform and who heap praise on the mountains. Many of them are foreigners who write, paint and provide blogs and websites. The Pratt view of the mountains is certainly not the prevailing one. But then it often does seem to fall to others, and not the island's institutions, to act as promoters of Mallorca - mountains, beaches, villages and the rest. The institutional failure to promote is not discriminatory.
Photo: the templete at Son Marroig (Deia), one of the Tramuntana's iconic spots.
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
The Route Of All Corruption
Maria Dolores Cospedal is the national general secretary of the Partido Popular. Last week she took a pop at tourism policies and attitudes of the Balearic government, in which there is no Partido Popular participation. It, she said, had declared tourism public enemy number one. Tourism minister Barceló responded angrily. Irresponsible. Outrage. He insisted that she retract her statement. She didn't.
Cospedal, though even-handed in levelling her accusation at both governing parties (PSOE and Barceló's Més) as well as its parliamentary supporter, Podemos, would probably have had Més and Podemos more in mind than PSOE. These two parties, now united with the United Left in having formed an electoral pact for the 26 June election, are perhaps perceived as being somewhat less than wholeheartedly supportive of tourism. The perception, however, is more applicable to Podemos than Més. Barceló and his party may want change that brings about greater distribution of the wealth that tourism generates, but they are not agitators in the way that Podemos is in respect of, for instance, the hoteliers.
Anyway, this is something of the context for what might appear to fly in the face of what Cospedal had to say. Més, Podemos and their United Left allies were the other day promoting a tourism "route", one in Palma and one also that probably wouldn't have curried favour with Ms. Cospedal.
They like a route in Mallorca. There are routes for walking, for wine, for tapas. You name it, there is a route for it, and it is one designed with tourists in mind, though in the case of the particular route that was being promoted one would doubt if it has attracted too many of the new supply of high purchasing-power northern Europeans currently boosting Palma's boutique hotels to record levels of occupancy.
Since March there has been a route in Palma known as the "Via Corrupta". It was the idea of two journalists and an actor, and it has the backing of the Balearic journalists union. Each Saturday thirty people can embark upon this route. It starts at 10am by the former headquarters of the defunct (brought down by its corruption) Unió Mallorquina (UM) party and ends by the courts in Via Alemania. The route that was taken last Saturday attracted some notable politicians. Més, Podemos, the United Left as well as one PSOE representative and the Congress candidate for the Soberania per a les Illes (sovereignty for the islands) grouping all took part.
One trusts that each of these participants paid the twelve euros fee for the two-and-a-half-hour trek: there shouldn't be any suggestion of favouritism when it comes to a corruption route. They would have passed by, among other places, the headquarters of the PP and PSOE as well as the "palacete" of ex-president Jaume Matas. This is now his ex-palacete, it having been sold to a Frenchman for 2.5 million euros, 865,000 of which (corresponding to what Matas paid for it in 2004) have been deposited with the court as a means of getting Matas a reduction in the sentence that has been called for at the Nóos trial.
The politicians of the left taking part on Saturday clearly had an aim in mind: publicising corruption as a factor in the election. Though Podemos and its allies show no sign of losing support - polls for the Balearics and nationally suggest gains rather than losses - one wonders if corruption is as significant an issue with the electorate as it was. Voters may be more enticed with promises of better employment prospects and of a more equitable society, while in Mallorca there haven't been any major scandals for quite some time. The cases in the courts and under investigation relate to times past and to the days of Matas and of the UM. The recent focus on corruption has been more on the local police scandals, though these might yet find some PP figures being cited.
It doesn't harm, though, to keep corruption firmly on the boil as an election issue, which is therefore what happened on Saturday. The route, let's be blunt, isn't really about tourism, and even if it were, one would question if it would have much of an uptake. This said, there is a branch of tourism which falls under the general umbrella description of dark tourism, of which Civil War routes are an aspect (one wouldn't rule out there being one in Mallorca, given that the law on exhumations has been approved). Corruption might be said to fall within this category, but it is an abstract concept as opposed to a physical one. Hence, in order to give it tangibility, buildings become the attractions on Palma's corruption route. In tourism terms, it is more of a cultural route, and that is exactly what it is. Corruption as part of culture, now to be eradicated. Ms. Cospedal might take note.
Cospedal, though even-handed in levelling her accusation at both governing parties (PSOE and Barceló's Més) as well as its parliamentary supporter, Podemos, would probably have had Més and Podemos more in mind than PSOE. These two parties, now united with the United Left in having formed an electoral pact for the 26 June election, are perhaps perceived as being somewhat less than wholeheartedly supportive of tourism. The perception, however, is more applicable to Podemos than Més. Barceló and his party may want change that brings about greater distribution of the wealth that tourism generates, but they are not agitators in the way that Podemos is in respect of, for instance, the hoteliers.
Anyway, this is something of the context for what might appear to fly in the face of what Cospedal had to say. Més, Podemos and their United Left allies were the other day promoting a tourism "route", one in Palma and one also that probably wouldn't have curried favour with Ms. Cospedal.
They like a route in Mallorca. There are routes for walking, for wine, for tapas. You name it, there is a route for it, and it is one designed with tourists in mind, though in the case of the particular route that was being promoted one would doubt if it has attracted too many of the new supply of high purchasing-power northern Europeans currently boosting Palma's boutique hotels to record levels of occupancy.
Since March there has been a route in Palma known as the "Via Corrupta". It was the idea of two journalists and an actor, and it has the backing of the Balearic journalists union. Each Saturday thirty people can embark upon this route. It starts at 10am by the former headquarters of the defunct (brought down by its corruption) Unió Mallorquina (UM) party and ends by the courts in Via Alemania. The route that was taken last Saturday attracted some notable politicians. Més, Podemos, the United Left as well as one PSOE representative and the Congress candidate for the Soberania per a les Illes (sovereignty for the islands) grouping all took part.
One trusts that each of these participants paid the twelve euros fee for the two-and-a-half-hour trek: there shouldn't be any suggestion of favouritism when it comes to a corruption route. They would have passed by, among other places, the headquarters of the PP and PSOE as well as the "palacete" of ex-president Jaume Matas. This is now his ex-palacete, it having been sold to a Frenchman for 2.5 million euros, 865,000 of which (corresponding to what Matas paid for it in 2004) have been deposited with the court as a means of getting Matas a reduction in the sentence that has been called for at the Nóos trial.
The politicians of the left taking part on Saturday clearly had an aim in mind: publicising corruption as a factor in the election. Though Podemos and its allies show no sign of losing support - polls for the Balearics and nationally suggest gains rather than losses - one wonders if corruption is as significant an issue with the electorate as it was. Voters may be more enticed with promises of better employment prospects and of a more equitable society, while in Mallorca there haven't been any major scandals for quite some time. The cases in the courts and under investigation relate to times past and to the days of Matas and of the UM. The recent focus on corruption has been more on the local police scandals, though these might yet find some PP figures being cited.
It doesn't harm, though, to keep corruption firmly on the boil as an election issue, which is therefore what happened on Saturday. The route, let's be blunt, isn't really about tourism, and even if it were, one would question if it would have much of an uptake. This said, there is a branch of tourism which falls under the general umbrella description of dark tourism, of which Civil War routes are an aspect (one wouldn't rule out there being one in Mallorca, given that the law on exhumations has been approved). Corruption might be said to fall within this category, but it is an abstract concept as opposed to a physical one. Hence, in order to give it tangibility, buildings become the attractions on Palma's corruption route. In tourism terms, it is more of a cultural route, and that is exactly what it is. Corruption as part of culture, now to be eradicated. Ms. Cospedal might take note.
Thursday, August 06, 2015
Beaches Becoming No-Go Areas
Manacor isn't promoting its coves. The town hall's latest guide for tourists has removed the coves, they are non-beaches. The belief is that by not mentioning the coves, "massification" can be avoided. The unspoiled nature of the coves will be conserved, their ecologies will be sustained. Manacor is on a mission for "tourism of greater quality". Instead of the coves, this tourism, via the guide, will be directed to the beaches where there is massification - those of the town's resorts, none of which are, compared with others on Mallorca, that big, but they are big enough to qualify for the massification tag.
There is some sensible but at the same time curious and questionable thinking behind all this. The sense comes in not wanting the coves to be swamped. The curious aspect is that the horribly described "quality tourism" consists in part of precisely the type of tourism that would prefer a cove to a resort beach. The questionable part arises because whatever Manacor does by way of not promoting the coves will not make a scrap of difference. Is the town hall unaware that there is a great big world out there? One on the world wide web.
Making a song and dance, which the town hall is, about Cala Varques in particular is going to have precisely the opposite effect to what the council intends. No one had heard of it before. They know it now. Yes, there are new restrictions on parking that are designed to avoid "massification", but the town hall is thus providing promotion for this cove when non-inclusion in the guide is supposed to do otherwise. The fact is that parking has long been an issue. Trip Advisor can tell you that. Just as Trip Advisor, and other web sources, can tell you how "precioso" the cove is.
And will the town hall be passing on its message to its tourist offices and indeed tourist offices elsewhere. If you have ever spent time observing what is asked at tourist offices, you'll be aware that one of the top questions has to do with the "precioso" cove. Out come maps, and the information office personnel only too happily point it out. Or will it be notifying the tourism ministry with its extensive guide to beaches? Go to this and there is a seemingly endless list of Cala here, Cala there, some of which are the large calas that are beach resorts, but mostly they are the small ones: Cala Varques for example.
This guide does actually advise you to access the cove by sea. Not because it wishes to deter you from driving but because it points out that there is a bit of a trek to get to it. Access by boat is as much an issue for Manacor as by car: they want to clamp down on that as well.
For years, Mallorca has made much of the fact that it isn't an island that only has large resort beaches. The ministry's website, in describing Cala Varques, refers to the quiet and paradise nature of the coastline from Porto Cristo. The vastly overused "paradise" has consistently been adopted to promote the coves, the alternatives to the resort beaches: tourism of greater quality, one might suggest.
Now, however, Manacor wants to put an end to all of this. Which other town halls might follow suit? Are certain beaches around Mallorca to become virtual no-go areas because town halls say so, thus flouting a fundamental principle that the coasts of Mallorca (and Spain) are in the public domain and free to the public to enjoy?
Despite this, one can understand the town hall's position. But it is one that has been forced onto it by success, by promotion through means other than those of the town hall and by sheer weight of numbers: tourists adding to the residents who make a beeline for beaches at weekends and will be doing so during the weeks of August when many are on holiday. Simply put, are Mallorca's beaches being overwhelmed? And is the infrastructure, especially parking, incapable of coping? The answer to the latter question is yes. As examples there has been the chaos in Sa Rapita (for access to Es Trenc) because the unofficial car park was closed. There is the mayhem in Playa de Muro with people wanting to get to Es Comú beach. Neither beach is small. Both are vast, yet the infrastructure can't cope with the demand.
Something, you feel, has to give. Either more parking is made available (though goodness knows where in many instances) or there will be more cases of drivers being turned away by police, as can happen in Sa Rapita, or of passes for residents being issued, which is what has happened by Es Comú. The beaches, the coves are products of their own success and, despite what Manacor might wish, of promotion.
There is some sensible but at the same time curious and questionable thinking behind all this. The sense comes in not wanting the coves to be swamped. The curious aspect is that the horribly described "quality tourism" consists in part of precisely the type of tourism that would prefer a cove to a resort beach. The questionable part arises because whatever Manacor does by way of not promoting the coves will not make a scrap of difference. Is the town hall unaware that there is a great big world out there? One on the world wide web.
Making a song and dance, which the town hall is, about Cala Varques in particular is going to have precisely the opposite effect to what the council intends. No one had heard of it before. They know it now. Yes, there are new restrictions on parking that are designed to avoid "massification", but the town hall is thus providing promotion for this cove when non-inclusion in the guide is supposed to do otherwise. The fact is that parking has long been an issue. Trip Advisor can tell you that. Just as Trip Advisor, and other web sources, can tell you how "precioso" the cove is.
And will the town hall be passing on its message to its tourist offices and indeed tourist offices elsewhere. If you have ever spent time observing what is asked at tourist offices, you'll be aware that one of the top questions has to do with the "precioso" cove. Out come maps, and the information office personnel only too happily point it out. Or will it be notifying the tourism ministry with its extensive guide to beaches? Go to this and there is a seemingly endless list of Cala here, Cala there, some of which are the large calas that are beach resorts, but mostly they are the small ones: Cala Varques for example.
This guide does actually advise you to access the cove by sea. Not because it wishes to deter you from driving but because it points out that there is a bit of a trek to get to it. Access by boat is as much an issue for Manacor as by car: they want to clamp down on that as well.
For years, Mallorca has made much of the fact that it isn't an island that only has large resort beaches. The ministry's website, in describing Cala Varques, refers to the quiet and paradise nature of the coastline from Porto Cristo. The vastly overused "paradise" has consistently been adopted to promote the coves, the alternatives to the resort beaches: tourism of greater quality, one might suggest.
Now, however, Manacor wants to put an end to all of this. Which other town halls might follow suit? Are certain beaches around Mallorca to become virtual no-go areas because town halls say so, thus flouting a fundamental principle that the coasts of Mallorca (and Spain) are in the public domain and free to the public to enjoy?
Despite this, one can understand the town hall's position. But it is one that has been forced onto it by success, by promotion through means other than those of the town hall and by sheer weight of numbers: tourists adding to the residents who make a beeline for beaches at weekends and will be doing so during the weeks of August when many are on holiday. Simply put, are Mallorca's beaches being overwhelmed? And is the infrastructure, especially parking, incapable of coping? The answer to the latter question is yes. As examples there has been the chaos in Sa Rapita (for access to Es Trenc) because the unofficial car park was closed. There is the mayhem in Playa de Muro with people wanting to get to Es Comú beach. Neither beach is small. Both are vast, yet the infrastructure can't cope with the demand.
Something, you feel, has to give. Either more parking is made available (though goodness knows where in many instances) or there will be more cases of drivers being turned away by police, as can happen in Sa Rapita, or of passes for residents being issued, which is what has happened by Es Comú. The beaches, the coves are products of their own success and, despite what Manacor might wish, of promotion.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Why Does Mallorca Not Love Flamenco?
When Paco de Lucía passed away in February last year, the association between Mallorca and the world's greatest exponent of the flamenco guitar died with him. A few years before his death, but already a resident of the island, he became the last in a line of celebrity faces that the regional tourism ministry felt might help with promotion. Famous though he undoubtedly was, the choice seemed a little odd, though not perhaps any odder than there having been a German model (Claudia Schiffer) or a Russian tennis player (Anna Kournikova) as faces of Mallorca. Nevertheless, what did a flamenco musician have to do with Mallorca or the Balearics? Flamenco isn't Mallorcan music.
When de Lucía decided to uproot and move to Mallorca, he did so because he was looking for somewhere to enjoy peace and quiet. In Toledo, where he had been living in a six-storey mansion, he had tired of Japanese tourists flashing their cameras at the impressive gate. His house had been featured in tourist guides and on tourist routes.
Toledo lies not so far south of Madrid, a city which, despite being a fair old distance from the birthplace of flamenco in de Lucía's native Andalusia, was and is a centre of the flamenco tradition. It is said that Barcelona is also such a centre, which might seem a little surprising. Flamenco is synonymous with Spanish culture, even if it is a culture largely of Andalusia and of the capital: when Madrid was being promoted for the 2020 Olympic Games, the video featured flamenco strongly.
Away from Toledo, away from Madrid, de Lucía was able to enjoy the quiet life he craved. He would go with his family to the occasional village fiesta. He might play. But he had no interest in drawing attention to himself. He was content with being part of a community, mingling with the local people, unmolested by them.
That someone of his fame was able to achieve this says much for his humility, but what did it say of flamenco? Of course he was famous, enormously famous, a global superstar. He had been able to pack the main hall at Palma's auditorium in late 2010, but otherwise, what was the island's relationship with this music, with this tradition?
Take yourselves back to the days of early mass tourism in Mallorca, and there was a culture to be promoted which was pretty much mandated from Manuel Fraga's ministry for information and tourism. It wasn't a Mallorcan culture but a Spanish one. From the ubiquitousness of souvenirs to the bullfight to the music, it was Spanishness that was for sale, and flamenco was one of the products.
Flamenco had suffered badly because of the Civil War and its aftermath, not because it was proscribed but mainly because it was being lost amidst the poverty in Andalusia. It wasn't until 1956, when a "cante jondo" contest was held in Cordoba, that its revival started. The Franco regime was to cotton on to its renewed popularity as a tourism money spinner, and what was good for the Costa del Sol was also good for the Costa Brava and Mallorca.
Come forward fifty years to the current day, and flamenco in Mallorca, while it still has its place in the tourism scene, is a quite different beast. It is everywhere in its more serious guises - its music and its dance. Consult what's on pages, and you will find, especially in summer, flamenco seasons, flamenco nights, flamenco as part of music festivals (those of a classical nature), flamenco and dinner events. Mallorca appears to be almost drowning under the sheer weight of flamenco, further bolstered by Andalusian cultural fairs that have sprung up in many a town.
Yet despite all these events appearing in what's on listings, despite there being a significant Andalusian population in Mallorca, promoters of flamenco are bemoaning the fact that it simply isn't capturing the general public's imagination. They attribute this partly to a lack of promotional visibility, but how can this be? As I say, flamenco seems to be everywhere, and be it somewhere like the Embat beach chiringuito at Es Trenc or the Santanyi International Music Festival, promotion seems anything other than invisible.
Flamenco in a different, more of-the-moment guise - flamenco chill - is undoubtedly popular, but this genre differs quite significantly from more traditional flamenco and in one very important way: the singing, which is all but absent. There are various forms of singing, such as the "cante jondo", but it has to be said that it is an acquired taste. Vocally, flamenco can grate.
Is this a reason for not capturing the public's imagination? Maybe it is. Or maybe it is a memory of how traditional Mallorcan music was sidelined by the Spanishness of early tourism. And maybe, quite simply, because it isn't Mallorcan music.
When de Lucía decided to uproot and move to Mallorca, he did so because he was looking for somewhere to enjoy peace and quiet. In Toledo, where he had been living in a six-storey mansion, he had tired of Japanese tourists flashing their cameras at the impressive gate. His house had been featured in tourist guides and on tourist routes.
Toledo lies not so far south of Madrid, a city which, despite being a fair old distance from the birthplace of flamenco in de Lucía's native Andalusia, was and is a centre of the flamenco tradition. It is said that Barcelona is also such a centre, which might seem a little surprising. Flamenco is synonymous with Spanish culture, even if it is a culture largely of Andalusia and of the capital: when Madrid was being promoted for the 2020 Olympic Games, the video featured flamenco strongly.
Away from Toledo, away from Madrid, de Lucía was able to enjoy the quiet life he craved. He would go with his family to the occasional village fiesta. He might play. But he had no interest in drawing attention to himself. He was content with being part of a community, mingling with the local people, unmolested by them.
That someone of his fame was able to achieve this says much for his humility, but what did it say of flamenco? Of course he was famous, enormously famous, a global superstar. He had been able to pack the main hall at Palma's auditorium in late 2010, but otherwise, what was the island's relationship with this music, with this tradition?
Take yourselves back to the days of early mass tourism in Mallorca, and there was a culture to be promoted which was pretty much mandated from Manuel Fraga's ministry for information and tourism. It wasn't a Mallorcan culture but a Spanish one. From the ubiquitousness of souvenirs to the bullfight to the music, it was Spanishness that was for sale, and flamenco was one of the products.
Flamenco had suffered badly because of the Civil War and its aftermath, not because it was proscribed but mainly because it was being lost amidst the poverty in Andalusia. It wasn't until 1956, when a "cante jondo" contest was held in Cordoba, that its revival started. The Franco regime was to cotton on to its renewed popularity as a tourism money spinner, and what was good for the Costa del Sol was also good for the Costa Brava and Mallorca.
Come forward fifty years to the current day, and flamenco in Mallorca, while it still has its place in the tourism scene, is a quite different beast. It is everywhere in its more serious guises - its music and its dance. Consult what's on pages, and you will find, especially in summer, flamenco seasons, flamenco nights, flamenco as part of music festivals (those of a classical nature), flamenco and dinner events. Mallorca appears to be almost drowning under the sheer weight of flamenco, further bolstered by Andalusian cultural fairs that have sprung up in many a town.
Yet despite all these events appearing in what's on listings, despite there being a significant Andalusian population in Mallorca, promoters of flamenco are bemoaning the fact that it simply isn't capturing the general public's imagination. They attribute this partly to a lack of promotional visibility, but how can this be? As I say, flamenco seems to be everywhere, and be it somewhere like the Embat beach chiringuito at Es Trenc or the Santanyi International Music Festival, promotion seems anything other than invisible.
Flamenco in a different, more of-the-moment guise - flamenco chill - is undoubtedly popular, but this genre differs quite significantly from more traditional flamenco and in one very important way: the singing, which is all but absent. There are various forms of singing, such as the "cante jondo", but it has to be said that it is an acquired taste. Vocally, flamenco can grate.
Is this a reason for not capturing the public's imagination? Maybe it is. Or maybe it is a memory of how traditional Mallorcan music was sidelined by the Spanishness of early tourism. And maybe, quite simply, because it isn't Mallorcan music.
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Alcúdia's Language Of Tourism
Before everyone has the chance to troop off to Pollensa and get drunk next weekend, the town has its April Fair, one that is loosely based on the Seville Fair and is organised by the local Andalusian Cultural Association.
Something rather curious has happened with this fair this year. They have actually got round to publicising it rather more effectively than in the past. Accordingly, I was sent the programme by the tourist office and asked if I could supply a translation. Not, to be honest, that there was much to translate, but I'm always happy to oblige, as I am when Alcúdia tourist office makes a similar request. Could we have the boats and cuttlefish in English, pretty please?
The poster and programme that has been put out for the April Fair is a revealing document. It notes the "special collaboration" of both the regional government and Pollensa Town Hall, yet here is a piece of promotion that is not in Catalan. Andalusians don't speak Catalan, except perhaps for some who live in Pollensa, so Castellano it is.
Appropriate though the use of Castellano is, its use highlights, and not for the first time, the curious relationship between languages and promotion of events: curious primarily because there isn't a relationship, save one - Catalan. This subject is an old chestnut, I do recognise, but it is one that doesn't go away and indeed becomes ever more relevant. April is an odd month in tourism terms. Despite Easter falling in April this year, it isn't a month which is considered to officially form part of the tourism season. It is an off-season month, one which local authorities would love to develop in order to lengthen the season and so reduce the harmful impact of tourism seasonality.
The trouble is, as I think many of us are aware, there is a sizable gap between what is hoped for and said and what is actually done, and the promotion of events that occur this weekend pretty much sums this up. Pollensa's April Fair is, in the scheme of things, a minor event, but those in Muro and Puerto Alcúdia are not. Yet, if one takes the boat show and cuttlefish gastronomy extravaganza as an example, what does Alcúdia do? It asks some sucker to supply an English version. Free. This, to me, does not suggest a town hall fully committed to effective promotion. Rather, it suggests one that is content to put up with an ad-hoc arrangement so that English-speaking visitors might be aware that "sipia" is in fact cuttlefish.
Alcúdia has something called the consortium for overseas promotion. It is one rarely referred to and usually only when it has gone off to Miami to try and entice the odd cruise ship to put in an appearance. What does this consortium actually do? Who is on it? Does it not believe in a touch more professionalism, such as establishing a formal arrangement for having its promotional literature in foreign languages? (And I'm sorry, you Germans, I'm not about to put myself out and translate into German as well - there's probably some other mug doing that.)
The apparent indifference towards effective foreign promotion and so evidence of the lack of genuine commitment to lengthening the season can be found in the programme for this weekend's fair. It isn't simply that it is all in Catalan, it is what is to be found in one of the greetings. It comes from the councillor with responsibility for fairs, Carme Garcia. It starts: "Benvolguts Alcudiencs i Visitants". Dear people of Alcúdia and visitors. It is the "visitants" which gives the game away. If you are greeting dear visitors, do you not seek to do so in a fashion that they might understand? Or are the "visitants" considered only to be people from, say, Inca or Santa Margalida? I suspect that they may be.
Carme is a councillor from whom Castellano has to be wrenched out. Passion for the language is fine, and I have no objection, but not when it positively discriminates against precisely some of the people who should be being greeted. With such an attitude, and Carme also has responsibility for "linguistic normalisation" (i.e. the promotion of Catalan), what is she doing in charge of the fair?
I fail to understand, and Alcúdia is not unique in this regard, why fairs, fiestas and tourism are the responsibilities of three different councillors. Yes, there is administration required for fairs and fiestas and yes, of course, they are events for the people of Alcúdia, but they are regularly held up as being for tourists. And this weekend's fair is a prime example. But the town hall's own structure has an in-built mechanism which undermines what should be a principal objective: tourism development.
Friday, February 06, 2015
All The Fun Of The Tourism Fair
The Fitur tourism fair in Madrid was deemed a great success on account of a record turnout of 225,000 visitors. But its success can be measured in other ways, such as the massive following the fair attracted on social networks. While much of this will have been related to Fitur-specific events, not all of it will have been. There will have been exposure for destinations like Mallorca as well. The travel trade fair has always been the place for networking, contact-making and deal-making but now it isn't necessary to actually be there; it's all available through social media. Of course, it still does help to be able to do things face-to-face rather than via "Facetime", and for those who have wondered whether the regional tourism ministry ever talks to airlines and tour operators (which it does in any event), Fitur and other travel fairs provide the evidence: all the big players and not so big players gather.
The ministry does, with some justification, get criticised for its emphasis on travel fairs to the virtual exclusion of all other promotional means; its promotion budget is heavily geared towards fairs. If all that was happening was that some potential tourist was wandering onto the stand, then the criticism would be even more valid. But this, the public's participation in fairs, is only a part of what is happening. There is now a vast public which is being spoken to because of the innovations that fairs have introduced in recent years. One of these is the presence of bloggers. There were over 400 accredited bloggers from 20 countries at Fitur, and what they do is blog not only about the fair but also about what exhibitors are offering. The Balearics tourism ministry devotes part of its promotion budget to just these social media intermediaries. Their role may seem somewhat obscure, while social media, as a means of promotion, may seem to lack excitement when compared with the pizzazz of an expensive television advert, but they are representative of ways in which promotion has altered. They channel opinion, reviews and recommendations to the contemporary social media-savvy tourist, and it is acknowledged and understood that communication that is far more intimate than any advert (be it film or print) and which is review and recommendation-based is now the prime source of tourist decision-making.
All the news coming out of Fitur was positive for Mallorca and for the Balearics, even if the actual level of good news seemed to vary. On domestic Spanish tourism, for example, at one point there was talk of an increase between 10% and 15% this summer. Then it went up to 25%. It's difficult to understand how a forecast can fluctuate so significantly in the space of two days, but whoever said that such forecasting was an exact science?
The domestic market is one of the three main tourist markets, along with the British and the German, that Mallorca depends upon, and it has, fairly obviously, been in the doldrums for a few years. There was some recovery last year, but this is expected to be very much more significant in 2015. The forecast comes with a cautionary word or two, though. Spaniards have acquired sufficient confidence to throw off the shackles which were stopping them travelling on holiday, but they aren't necessarily going to be spending any more. This confidence, however, would be dented were there to be some return to economic uncertainty this year.
An interesting point about the domestic market is that less than a third of it stays in hotels. This isn't a recent phenomenon brought about by the increased availability of private accommodation. It's how it has tended to be.
The other two main markets are both expected to show strong growth in 2015. Sales campaigns in both Britain and Germany are said to be surpassing expectations. And to add to this positive news is the belief that the season will be longer this year with more hotels opening in March (and so in time for Easter in early April). For the British market, Jet2 is to begin operations by the end of March.
While this is all very positive, we will find out just how well-founded the optimism really is. Last year, there was at one time talk of an exceptional spring, only for this talk to turn to despair; May was a poor month, certainly for the hoteliers.
The ministry does, with some justification, get criticised for its emphasis on travel fairs to the virtual exclusion of all other promotional means; its promotion budget is heavily geared towards fairs. If all that was happening was that some potential tourist was wandering onto the stand, then the criticism would be even more valid. But this, the public's participation in fairs, is only a part of what is happening. There is now a vast public which is being spoken to because of the innovations that fairs have introduced in recent years. One of these is the presence of bloggers. There were over 400 accredited bloggers from 20 countries at Fitur, and what they do is blog not only about the fair but also about what exhibitors are offering. The Balearics tourism ministry devotes part of its promotion budget to just these social media intermediaries. Their role may seem somewhat obscure, while social media, as a means of promotion, may seem to lack excitement when compared with the pizzazz of an expensive television advert, but they are representative of ways in which promotion has altered. They channel opinion, reviews and recommendations to the contemporary social media-savvy tourist, and it is acknowledged and understood that communication that is far more intimate than any advert (be it film or print) and which is review and recommendation-based is now the prime source of tourist decision-making.
All the news coming out of Fitur was positive for Mallorca and for the Balearics, even if the actual level of good news seemed to vary. On domestic Spanish tourism, for example, at one point there was talk of an increase between 10% and 15% this summer. Then it went up to 25%. It's difficult to understand how a forecast can fluctuate so significantly in the space of two days, but whoever said that such forecasting was an exact science?
The domestic market is one of the three main tourist markets, along with the British and the German, that Mallorca depends upon, and it has, fairly obviously, been in the doldrums for a few years. There was some recovery last year, but this is expected to be very much more significant in 2015. The forecast comes with a cautionary word or two, though. Spaniards have acquired sufficient confidence to throw off the shackles which were stopping them travelling on holiday, but they aren't necessarily going to be spending any more. This confidence, however, would be dented were there to be some return to economic uncertainty this year.
An interesting point about the domestic market is that less than a third of it stays in hotels. This isn't a recent phenomenon brought about by the increased availability of private accommodation. It's how it has tended to be.
The other two main markets are both expected to show strong growth in 2015. Sales campaigns in both Britain and Germany are said to be surpassing expectations. And to add to this positive news is the belief that the season will be longer this year with more hotels opening in March (and so in time for Easter in early April). For the British market, Jet2 is to begin operations by the end of March.
While this is all very positive, we will find out just how well-founded the optimism really is. Last year, there was at one time talk of an exceptional spring, only for this talk to turn to despair; May was a poor month, certainly for the hoteliers.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Tramuntana Is Number One
The consortium which promotes the mountains and which was tasked with doing so following the declaration of the Tramuntana as a World Heritage Site has launched a website. About time, too, you might think. The declaration was made in 2011. Very little in promotional terms seems to have happened since. Better late than never, though.
The website is reasonable enough, and so it should be at a cost of 21 grand. It has a good amount of information and the English section, for once, seems to have actually been written in English and not passed through a Google Translate mangle or been Spanglished by a non-native speaker. It's reasonable in the worthy-but-dull sense of reasonable. Plenty of information, plenty of pictures, but no multimedia, interactivity or social media. This would probably cost too much.
Thanks to the press announcement of the site's launch, I knew of its existence and so went in search of it. I entered "Serra Tramuntana", and it was there in Google, though it might be confused with another website with the .eu suffix. The official one is .net. The first thing that occurred to me, though, was whether an English search would get to the site so easily. Its title is Catalan - Serra de Tramuntana - so would "Tramuntana mountains" work? They do. Very well. That's a big plus.
It was when checking that this English search was satisfactory that I noticed the fifth entry on the Google page. It was for the Serra de Tramuntana in Trip Advisor. Five of five stars, the abstract said, and on going into Trip Advisor, I found there were indeed five of five stars. Out of 196 reviews, 163 rated as excellent and 32 as very good. Not a hint of criticism, unless one considers a not-for-fainthearted warning for the route (by car) as being a criticism (which it isn't).
It is mightily reassuring and just a little surprising to find the Tramuntana at number one. It is reassuring in different ways. One very much doubts that someone is hard at it getting visitors to post positive reviews. They are, one has to presume, absolutely genuine and totally unsolicited. As such, it is an example of how one might hope that Trip Advisor would normally work but doesn't. There's nothing wrong at all in positive reviews being solicited - it's good business to do so because Trip Advisor is very powerful - but this can result in something of a credibility issue. We're back to some of those so-called "best restaurants".
A second way in which there is reassurance lies with the fact that the mountains are a natural attraction. Obviously they are. But the term attraction - in tourism circles - tends to mean something which isn't natural. We can all name some of them, and I would do, but to do so might imply a criticism when none is intended. It is the, shall we say, artificial attractions and the association that is made with them as "attractions" which makes the number-one position of the Tramuntana that much more surprising. Trip Advisor is hardly scientific, but occasionally it can be quite revealing, and this is one occasion. For all that Mallorca has its commercial tourist attractions, one that isn't commercial on account of it simply being there and that is ranked number one should tell a story. Mallorca's natural heritage is clearly appreciated and perhaps more so than might be thought.
The mountains can be enjoyed at any time of the year. I know how popular the excursion during the summer season is. As part of the island tour, it is probably the single most popular excursion that the island has to offer. But clearly, the mountains don't have to be enjoyed only during the summer season, and so one comes back, almost inevitably, to the theme of off-season tourism.
The hope with the World Heritage Site declaration was that this would lead to inroads being made into the absent off-season tourism through the promotion of the Tramuntana. With the website, at least there is some tangible evidence of this promotion, and with the Trip Advisor number-one ranking, there is evidence also of how impressed visitors are with the mountains.
Sometimes when number-one rankings are given, the relevant business or authority makes a point of saying so. Is anyone saying anything about the Tramuntana? This brings one back to the website. Because it seems to have neglected social media, there is no link to Trip Advisor and certainly no announcement of the ranking. A trick is being missed. Promotion isn't simply a case of spending twenty thousand euros on a website. One would have hoped that this would have been realised by now. Tramuntana. Number one on Trip Advisor.
* The web address is http://www.serradetramuntana.net
Thursday, March 06, 2014
Promoting Mallorca's Old Towns
The town of Capdepera occupies the north-eastern tip of Mallorca. For most tourists, it is a town whose name will mean relatively little. Capdepera's tourists go to Cala Ratjada, the Germanised resort whose reputation has taken a slight battering over the past two to three years on account of youthful German behaviour; but Magalluf or indeed Arenal it isn't. In addition to Cala Ratjada, the town's smaller Canyamel tourism area will become more known than it is, thanks to the luxury Hyatt holiday village complex that is currently being built there, and this new luxury complex, and the guests it will attract, form just one reason why the town of Capdepera is to undergo improvements in order to attempt to attract more tourists to it. For a town with an astonishing amount of history, and striking history at that, Capdepera doesn't do well in the tourism stakes; visitors go to the resorts and there they tend to stay.
It's a familiar tale. Capdepera is not alone in being a municipality with seaside resorts whose original, old town tends to get overlooked. Two nearby municipalities, Muro and Santa Margalida, are similarly neglected. But the feelings about tourists in the resorts and their avoidance of the old towns was once summed up by the owner of a grand old pile that doubles as a restaurant between Can Picafort and Santa Margalida who said that tourists just never ventured out of the resort. This was an exaggeration but it was perfectly understandable.
There are old towns which do very much better in attracting tourists. Pollensa is most certainly one of them and this to some extent reflects the fact that despite the distance between, Pollensa town and its port have tended to be promoted as more of a unified entity. Alcúdia is another, but Alcúdia's old town is unusual insofar as it isn't separated by distance from its tourism centres. It is not too arduous to walk to Alcúdia town. But it is arduous if you want to walk from, say, Playa de Muro to Muro town. The distance is one thing, the absence of pavements alongside what can be a dodgy road anyway is another; you would need your head examining were you to want to undertake such a walk.
The old towns, while all different, tend to have similar features; churches, squares and what have you. Not all of the towns have a blooming great castle. Capdepera does. Yet, for all that it can boast this edifice whose walls were completed at the end of the fourteenth century, the town still manages not to get the volume of tourists it would like or which it deserves.
The interior of the castle, in days of yore, became the main living space for the good folk of Capdepera, thanks to incentives offered by one-time king of Mallorca, Sancho I. Some centuries later, by which time piracy had become less of an everyday hazard, the good folk's descendants ventured out of the castle and so the town began to take shape. The point about this is that the castle, though it is in the old town, is to one side of it because of the way in which the town subsequently developed. For the tourist in a hurry to return to the beach or to a bier-und-wurst kneipe in Cala Ratjada, it is easy to "do the castle" and ignore the rest of the town.
Capdepera town hall has, therefore, adopted a plan to attract more tourists to the town. This plan consists of improved access for buses, a taxi rank by the Plaça Constitució, possible financial incentives for small shops to open and changes to local ordinance in order to permit the establishment of a petit hotel. Which all sounds fair enough but at the same time underwhelming. Making physical alterations is only part of the story, and Capdepera should look at Muro to understand why. This town, admittedly without a castle as an added attraction, underwent a significant beautification some five years. It would have been more beauteous had the money not run out, but that money which was spent - courtesy of the tourism ministry - stretched to a seven-figure sum and it was allocated primarily on improving pavements. Did it make any difference? Has it made any difference? For the people of Muro, it probably has, as they have some better pavements, but for tourists, it has made no difference at all. The reality of the anticipation that Muro might actually get more tourists can be seen by what isn't anywhere to be seen - a tourist information office.
While improvements are to be welcomed, the moral of the story for some of Mallorca's old towns which might covet greater tourism numbers lies with their promotion. Making things easier for buses or laying better pavements do not amount to promotion.
It's a familiar tale. Capdepera is not alone in being a municipality with seaside resorts whose original, old town tends to get overlooked. Two nearby municipalities, Muro and Santa Margalida, are similarly neglected. But the feelings about tourists in the resorts and their avoidance of the old towns was once summed up by the owner of a grand old pile that doubles as a restaurant between Can Picafort and Santa Margalida who said that tourists just never ventured out of the resort. This was an exaggeration but it was perfectly understandable.
There are old towns which do very much better in attracting tourists. Pollensa is most certainly one of them and this to some extent reflects the fact that despite the distance between, Pollensa town and its port have tended to be promoted as more of a unified entity. Alcúdia is another, but Alcúdia's old town is unusual insofar as it isn't separated by distance from its tourism centres. It is not too arduous to walk to Alcúdia town. But it is arduous if you want to walk from, say, Playa de Muro to Muro town. The distance is one thing, the absence of pavements alongside what can be a dodgy road anyway is another; you would need your head examining were you to want to undertake such a walk.
The old towns, while all different, tend to have similar features; churches, squares and what have you. Not all of the towns have a blooming great castle. Capdepera does. Yet, for all that it can boast this edifice whose walls were completed at the end of the fourteenth century, the town still manages not to get the volume of tourists it would like or which it deserves.
The interior of the castle, in days of yore, became the main living space for the good folk of Capdepera, thanks to incentives offered by one-time king of Mallorca, Sancho I. Some centuries later, by which time piracy had become less of an everyday hazard, the good folk's descendants ventured out of the castle and so the town began to take shape. The point about this is that the castle, though it is in the old town, is to one side of it because of the way in which the town subsequently developed. For the tourist in a hurry to return to the beach or to a bier-und-wurst kneipe in Cala Ratjada, it is easy to "do the castle" and ignore the rest of the town.
Capdepera town hall has, therefore, adopted a plan to attract more tourists to the town. This plan consists of improved access for buses, a taxi rank by the Plaça Constitució, possible financial incentives for small shops to open and changes to local ordinance in order to permit the establishment of a petit hotel. Which all sounds fair enough but at the same time underwhelming. Making physical alterations is only part of the story, and Capdepera should look at Muro to understand why. This town, admittedly without a castle as an added attraction, underwent a significant beautification some five years. It would have been more beauteous had the money not run out, but that money which was spent - courtesy of the tourism ministry - stretched to a seven-figure sum and it was allocated primarily on improving pavements. Did it make any difference? Has it made any difference? For the people of Muro, it probably has, as they have some better pavements, but for tourists, it has made no difference at all. The reality of the anticipation that Muro might actually get more tourists can be seen by what isn't anywhere to be seen - a tourist information office.
While improvements are to be welcomed, the moral of the story for some of Mallorca's old towns which might covet greater tourism numbers lies with their promotion. Making things easier for buses or laying better pavements do not amount to promotion.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Mallorca's Forgotten Tourist Resorts
If Mallorca's resorts were like football referees, then there are some which constantly do make a rick. For all the wrong reasons, the refs of Magalluf, Arenal, Playa de Palma and Cala Rajada have been too liberal with their red cards, have missed obvious penalties or offsides or have been conned by a dive. There are some resorts which do a degree of preening and bring attention to themselves. Alcúdia is one. It shouts about its marina and watersports, at the same time overlooking its Mile. But drawing attention is not as bad as making a rick, so long as the attention is merited.
As with the performance of the ref on the day, the reports in the papers the following day will make no mention of the man with the whistle if he has put in a solid and undemonstrative shift. Occasionally, he will be mentioned for having had a blinder: for rightly not issuing a red, for correctly not awarding a penalty and for not being conned by a dive. But usually it's the making of a rick which produces the reporter's column inches. Bad performance equals good copy.
So it also is with Mallorca's resorts. The reporting of them almost inevitably centres on the bad. Why? Well, what is there to be said about resorts that just get on with things, don't make a fuss and never experience any trouble? Of course, it isn't always the bad, which is why there are reports of the good. Alcúdia might be showing off when it shouts about its cruise ships arriving for the first time, but then why not.
But how many resorts ever really get mentioned? You would be forgiven for thinking sometimes that there were only about half a dozen, yet there are many more about which little is ever heard. These are the resorts which, like the sound-performing, undemonstrative ref, just get on with being resorts. If there is one thing wrong with some of them, it is that they don't indulge in more of the Alcúdia promo exercises. But then they don't all have cruise ships and supposedly award-winning marinas.
Some time ago, I wrote a piece about Mallorca's north-south divide in which I said that "if you are unfortunate enough to live right out on the east coast, you will know that, for all intents and purposes, you don't exist".
If one takes the east as stretching from Cala Rajada to Cala d'Or and Santanyí, ask yourself how often you ever hear about the east-coast resorts. Cala Rajada, yes, but mainly if you are German and you are concerned that it has become the New Arenal. Porto Cristo? Usually only when they are knocking bridges down. Other resorts?
If you take the three resorts along the bay of Alcúdia, their combined tourist population isn't that much lower than that in Calvià, which has the highest concentration of tourists and which attracts the greatest attention, mainly because Magalluf and to a lesser extent Santa Ponsa are considered to equate to Calvià when they quite plainly do not. But the bay of Alcúdia covers a fair distance. By comparison, the bay of Cala Millor, something of a misnomer admittedly, covers a far shorter distance. Yet, from Costa dels Pins to S'Illot there is a tourist population greatly in excess of Alcúdia on its own. In terms of tourist populations, it ranks third behind Calvià and Palma.
So why is so little heard of it? The reason lies with the ref analogy. It doesn't make a rick. There is no bad performance. Both police and politicians say that it is quiet. Nothing really happens other than tourists, in great numbers, getting on and enjoying themselves. There is, though, going to be a bit of showing-off. A tourist consortium has been formed by the two municipalities, Sant Llorenç and Son Servera, into which Cala Millor falls. It is something of a pioneering move for town halls to combine in order to undertake a joint promotional drive, one aimed at enhancing the bay as a tourist destination.
It's good. One can argue that it has taken the town halls a hell of a long time to get round to something as obvious as joint co-ordination and co-operation, but let's not be too critical. One fancies we'll be hearing more. And there won't be any ricks.
* Photo of Cala Millor from Wikipedia.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
I Would Like To Learn Spanish (in 150 minutes)
There is an awful lot of stuff that goes by the name of journalism but is in fact disguised advertising. Much of this masking can be elaborately and exquisitely worded and so give the reader little inkling as to the true purpose - selling; the subject of this selling being holiday travel. I am immensely grateful to the forum on PuertoPollensa.com for having brought to my attention an article on an obscure blog that conforms to this elaborate prose paradigm but appears to be a puff for the Cappuccino café in Puerto Pollensa. It might not be puff, but even if it is, and the reader doesn't consider it thus, then it has done its job. However, reactions to the article indicate that, notwithstanding a glowing description and therefore promotion for the resort, there might be something more to it. Something which makes you wonder as to its principal purpose.
If travel offers some fertile territory for the advert-dressed-up-as-lamb, product-placement journalistic tour de force or tour de wherever it happens to be this week (the tour courtesy of this, that or the other tour operator), it is not alone in inviting a PR agency to incentivise a journo to indulge in some veiled promotion. So prevalent is the practice that I have to conclude that there are now courses one can go on or purchase via the internet in order to rapidly become an expert on how to write the it-really-honestly-isn't-an-advertorial-but-a-legitimate-piece-of journalism. One can learn all one needs in no more than two and a half hours. Just as one can learn Spanish in two and a half hours. What do you mean, you thought that you needed longer? Oh no you don't, because an article in "The Guardian" tells you that you don't.
This article is for one of those CD, listen-and-repeat exercises that will give you sufficient vocabulary to undertake rudimentary Spanish conversation after 150 minutes. So, just think, if you live in Britain, speak nary a word of Spanish, but get on an easyJet this summer, you will, by the time you touch down in Palma, be able to discuss the Spanish national debt crisis with the bloke at passport control. Only in a rudimentary fashion admittedly, but the bloke at the desk will be sufficiently impressed to overlook the fact that your passport matches with a name on a blacklist database.
I don't doubt that one can pick up some vocab and some bits and pieces, but speak Spanish in two and a half hours!? Pull the other one, it's got "campanas" on. If it was really quite this easy, then the Balearic Government, now having approved its new language bill, one by which the young of the islands will be taught English from age three, should just scrap the bill, as the kids wouldn't need to go right through the school system until they leave secondary education in order to acquire English skills. They could give up when they are about five and then move onto another language, and so be proficient in about eight foreign languages by age 16. Just plug the Balearics kids into a CD player and within no time they'll be analysing the Hegelian dialectic in word-perfect English.
"The Guardian" article, and no, I'm not identifying the "larn-yersel-Spanish" course it refers to, is curious in more ways than it just being some puffery for the course. There is some of the usage, such as "quisiera". Strictly speaking, it is correct, as it translates as I would like, but this is not everyday use; the simple present "quiero" is. It is as well that the course, to quote the article, does not do "overt grammar". Try explaining to an English speaker that "quisiera" is in fact the imperfect preterite subjunctive, and he would either look at you as though you were mad or smack you in the mouth for trying to be a clever bastard. English speakers, as a general rule, wouldn't know a subjunctive of any type, imperfect preterite or otherwise, if it were, well, to smack them in the mouths. Oh, and "if it were to smack etc." is a subjunctive (a future one), just in case you were wondering.
Still, there is something to be said for the CD language-learning way. And so, in the spirit of the new language law, the Balearic Government should insist on all passengers travelling to Mallorca being made to listen to a "larn-yersel-Catalan" course. Oh hang on, no, that's wrong, they don't want people to learn Catalan. Or do they?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2013/apr/22/learn-spanish-150-minutes-course
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
If travel offers some fertile territory for the advert-dressed-up-as-lamb, product-placement journalistic tour de force or tour de wherever it happens to be this week (the tour courtesy of this, that or the other tour operator), it is not alone in inviting a PR agency to incentivise a journo to indulge in some veiled promotion. So prevalent is the practice that I have to conclude that there are now courses one can go on or purchase via the internet in order to rapidly become an expert on how to write the it-really-honestly-isn't-an-advertorial-but-a-legitimate-piece-of journalism. One can learn all one needs in no more than two and a half hours. Just as one can learn Spanish in two and a half hours. What do you mean, you thought that you needed longer? Oh no you don't, because an article in "The Guardian" tells you that you don't.
This article is for one of those CD, listen-and-repeat exercises that will give you sufficient vocabulary to undertake rudimentary Spanish conversation after 150 minutes. So, just think, if you live in Britain, speak nary a word of Spanish, but get on an easyJet this summer, you will, by the time you touch down in Palma, be able to discuss the Spanish national debt crisis with the bloke at passport control. Only in a rudimentary fashion admittedly, but the bloke at the desk will be sufficiently impressed to overlook the fact that your passport matches with a name on a blacklist database.
I don't doubt that one can pick up some vocab and some bits and pieces, but speak Spanish in two and a half hours!? Pull the other one, it's got "campanas" on. If it was really quite this easy, then the Balearic Government, now having approved its new language bill, one by which the young of the islands will be taught English from age three, should just scrap the bill, as the kids wouldn't need to go right through the school system until they leave secondary education in order to acquire English skills. They could give up when they are about five and then move onto another language, and so be proficient in about eight foreign languages by age 16. Just plug the Balearics kids into a CD player and within no time they'll be analysing the Hegelian dialectic in word-perfect English.
"The Guardian" article, and no, I'm not identifying the "larn-yersel-Spanish" course it refers to, is curious in more ways than it just being some puffery for the course. There is some of the usage, such as "quisiera". Strictly speaking, it is correct, as it translates as I would like, but this is not everyday use; the simple present "quiero" is. It is as well that the course, to quote the article, does not do "overt grammar". Try explaining to an English speaker that "quisiera" is in fact the imperfect preterite subjunctive, and he would either look at you as though you were mad or smack you in the mouth for trying to be a clever bastard. English speakers, as a general rule, wouldn't know a subjunctive of any type, imperfect preterite or otherwise, if it were, well, to smack them in the mouths. Oh, and "if it were to smack etc." is a subjunctive (a future one), just in case you were wondering.
Still, there is something to be said for the CD language-learning way. And so, in the spirit of the new language law, the Balearic Government should insist on all passengers travelling to Mallorca being made to listen to a "larn-yersel-Catalan" course. Oh hang on, no, that's wrong, they don't want people to learn Catalan. Or do they?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2013/apr/22/learn-spanish-150-minutes-course
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - Hotel Formentor in Spanish luxury promotion
The Hotel Formentor in Pollensa has become part of the Circuló Fortuny, an association which was formed last year and that brings together leading Spanish names devoted to the luxury end of the market and with the purpose of promoting these businesses, products and services overseas.
See more: Diario de Mallorca
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The Pressure Of Tourism Recommendation
Another day, another barometer. The barometer used to be a contraption hanging on the wall in your great aunt's house that was intended to measure something to do with weather. Next to it would hang a piece of old seaweed, and consulting a combination of the two would lead to the conclusion that it was about to snow or to be 80 degrees (in old money). It was a de rigueur wall adornment for great aunts' houses, a device employed not solely as a means of weather forecasting but as a guide to the daily arthritis bulletin and as a way of keeping small children quiet while they stood and stared at the damn thing in the hope that its gauge might move.
The barometer has been updated for the modern marketing era. It is now what used to be called a survey. And in keeping with modern times, the barometer has gone European. The European Commission's "Eurobarometer" not only has 27 member-state points on its changing-conditions compass it also has those for wannabe EU members, for couldn't-care-less, not-about-to-be EU members (Norway) and for members that have no chance of being members as they are not European (Israel).
The thirty-four member and non-member states have been surveyed - sorry, barometered - as to what their people think about tourism. The Commission does this each year, which is good of them, and no one of course takes any notice of the results. Oddly though, the 2012 barometer might just demand slightly more attention than usual.
Most of it is almost totally pointless, as in, for example, the discovery that 48% of respondents the length and breadth of the European Union and other parts of Europe as well as parts that aren't Europe go on holiday for rest and recreation. Well, not entirely pointless, as what are the other 52% doing?
You will be able to amaze your friends with the knowledge, as I am being good enough to tell you, that the Czechs, with a huge 65% of the vote, come in at number one in saying that natural features, including weather, would make them revisit the same holiday destination. This is a full 7% lead over the Dutch in second place. Coming in tailed off in this category are the people of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. A lousy 24% rated natural features, which makes one wonder what would entice a Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonian to go on holiday anywhere. Or perhaps they mistook the Eurobarometer question for the Eurovision Song Contest and gave the answer as "Serbia".
Reassuring for Spain and therefore Mallorca among all this barometering is that Spain is the most visited country. And given that the Brits are so important to the local tourism industry, it might be noted the UK is Eurobarometer champion in the quality of accommodation as a reason for revisiting a destination category. 48% of Brits are happy with accommodation, while the Estonians are the least happy, a miserly 12%.
Where the Eurobarometer does get interesting, and trust me that it does, is the bit about how holidaymakers come to make decisions about where to go on holiday and what influences this decision. What do you think? A TV ad perhaps? A magazine article? Both do, but to nothing like the degree that you might think. The most important influence is personal recommendation. 52% of respondents are swayed by the views of friends, colleagues or relatives. A mere 7% are influenced by either a TV ad or by something in a magazine or guidebook.
If this isn't a persuasive case for the power of word of mouth over other forms of promotion, it would be hard to know what it is. And it is the combination of word of mouth and technology that makes for a powerful means of tourism selling. We're back of course to social media and to how they are defined.
40% of respondents also say that an internet site influenced them. Of this 40%, you can be pretty sure that Trip Advisor or something similar was one of these sites. It differs from the obvious social media, but Trip Advisor is very much a part of broader social marketing via the internet or mobiles. And its recommendations are from those who travellers don't know personally (as are its recommendations to avoid a destination).
The conclusion from this is clear. Forget the expensive TV ads. When it comes to tourism promotion, harness the power of word of mouth and the media which enable it. This is the barometer of the change in how holidays are chosen. And it is a change across the whole of Europe.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The barometer has been updated for the modern marketing era. It is now what used to be called a survey. And in keeping with modern times, the barometer has gone European. The European Commission's "Eurobarometer" not only has 27 member-state points on its changing-conditions compass it also has those for wannabe EU members, for couldn't-care-less, not-about-to-be EU members (Norway) and for members that have no chance of being members as they are not European (Israel).
The thirty-four member and non-member states have been surveyed - sorry, barometered - as to what their people think about tourism. The Commission does this each year, which is good of them, and no one of course takes any notice of the results. Oddly though, the 2012 barometer might just demand slightly more attention than usual.
Most of it is almost totally pointless, as in, for example, the discovery that 48% of respondents the length and breadth of the European Union and other parts of Europe as well as parts that aren't Europe go on holiday for rest and recreation. Well, not entirely pointless, as what are the other 52% doing?
You will be able to amaze your friends with the knowledge, as I am being good enough to tell you, that the Czechs, with a huge 65% of the vote, come in at number one in saying that natural features, including weather, would make them revisit the same holiday destination. This is a full 7% lead over the Dutch in second place. Coming in tailed off in this category are the people of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. A lousy 24% rated natural features, which makes one wonder what would entice a Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonian to go on holiday anywhere. Or perhaps they mistook the Eurobarometer question for the Eurovision Song Contest and gave the answer as "Serbia".
Reassuring for Spain and therefore Mallorca among all this barometering is that Spain is the most visited country. And given that the Brits are so important to the local tourism industry, it might be noted the UK is Eurobarometer champion in the quality of accommodation as a reason for revisiting a destination category. 48% of Brits are happy with accommodation, while the Estonians are the least happy, a miserly 12%.
Where the Eurobarometer does get interesting, and trust me that it does, is the bit about how holidaymakers come to make decisions about where to go on holiday and what influences this decision. What do you think? A TV ad perhaps? A magazine article? Both do, but to nothing like the degree that you might think. The most important influence is personal recommendation. 52% of respondents are swayed by the views of friends, colleagues or relatives. A mere 7% are influenced by either a TV ad or by something in a magazine or guidebook.
If this isn't a persuasive case for the power of word of mouth over other forms of promotion, it would be hard to know what it is. And it is the combination of word of mouth and technology that makes for a powerful means of tourism selling. We're back of course to social media and to how they are defined.
40% of respondents also say that an internet site influenced them. Of this 40%, you can be pretty sure that Trip Advisor or something similar was one of these sites. It differs from the obvious social media, but Trip Advisor is very much a part of broader social marketing via the internet or mobiles. And its recommendations are from those who travellers don't know personally (as are its recommendations to avoid a destination).
The conclusion from this is clear. Forget the expensive TV ads. When it comes to tourism promotion, harness the power of word of mouth and the media which enable it. This is the barometer of the change in how holidays are chosen. And it is a change across the whole of Europe.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, October 31, 2011
A Certain Cachet? Puerto Alcúdia
Puerto Alcúdia has lost some of its cachet. Discuss.
The loss of cachet suggestion is not mine. It is that of the president of the recently formed Alcúdia Bay restaurant association. Before we delve too far into the suggestion, we do need to ask ourselves what is meant by cachet. Prestige is a reasonable alternative. Well, the Oxford English Dictionary (Concise version) says so, and I'm not about to disagree.
If Puerto Alcúdia has lost cachet, then when did it ever actually have it? And as much as the definition of cachet can be rather loose, so also can be a definition of Puerto Alcúdia. It is not one place.
Cachet that attaches itself historically to Puerto Alcúdia might be said to date back to the 1930s, to the original Golf hotel (and golf course) and to the seaplanes that dropped French tourists into the bay. It was shortlived, thanks to a somewhat unpleasant member of the military who was wedded to notions of arch-Spanishness and arch-Catholicism.
Of tourism-age cachet, there has been relatively little. Puerto Alcúdia is and has long been a resort for the mass, and it created for itself the environment in which this mass could enjoy the prestige that the resort has always enjoyed: a fabulous beach most obviously.
Cachet might also, in tourism terms, imply chic. But has Puerto Alcúdia ever been chic? Not really. Its near neighbour, Puerto Pollensa, might well claim this; at least in its past, along with a somewhat Bohemian reputation. It was Puerto Pollensa that acquired the cachet of celebrity visitor and party-goer (in the seventies and into the eighties) that Puerto Alcúdia didn't.
Puerto Alcúdia's cachet applies not to its purpose-built, anti-cachet tourism centre, some three kilometres out of the port area, but to the port area itself and also to the fact that, as a whole, it is a leading tourism resort. The prestige has been earned over decades, not because the resort is phenomenally attractive, but because it is highly functional; it serves a purpose, and does this rather well.
However, attractiveness and a fellow-travelling concept of ambience can distort this prestige/cachet estimation. And it's one of cachet found rather than cachet lost: there is many a current-day visitor who would argue that Puerto Alcúdia's port area is greatly more attractive/vibrant than its haughty neighbour, i.e. Puerto Pollensa. Perhaps so, but the argument is irrelevant. Difference is what counts, and point-scoring for relative chicness, cachet, prestige is completely pointless.
The Alcúdia Bay restaurant association does, though, wish to win back this cachet, whatever it might once have been. It wishes to make more dynamic Puerto Alcúdia's frontline and to bring quality tourism. It wishes this without the slightest hint as to what it means by more dynamic, without the slightest embarrassment that it might actually be offending tourists who are, by implication, not "quality" and by alluding to a past that is all but illusory.
To be fair, the association might be said to be responding to the criticisms that have emanated from the hotels, and not just in Puerto Alcúdia, which have accused the "complementary offer" of restaurants etc. of doing nothing to promote tourism and of leaving it to others to do so.
To this end, what has the association come up with? A guide. It appeared late into the season this year and it was, as is all too often the case with such guides, an exercise in amorphous repetition in that restaurants, side-by-side, proclaim the same "typical Mallorcan cuisine" or "speciality in meat" that leave the punter none the wiser and in no way incentivised by any sense of differentiation, and an exercise also in self-regarding delusion as to the importance of gastronomy to the tourism punter who perceives restaurants not as the be all and end all but as a necessary sub-text to the tourism experience.
The association will be establishing a "junta", a board which will drive its cachet-creating initiatives. The heart sinks. Another talking-shop of vested interests, ultimately inward-looking, believing that gastronomy is the way to the tourism stomach, when it should be part of a greater whole that promotes the resort. As should be the case with all resorts.
The association is right in one regard: that promotion should be local, local to resorts. Too much has been generic, for Mallorca, when resorts do mean different things - as between Puerto Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa. But if it were serious about greater dynamism, it would not be ghettoising itself into a gastronomic corner, but engaging with, and promoting with, all other sectors of the local tourism economy.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Index for October 2011
ABTA Convention, Palma - 5 October 2011, 6 October 2011, 7 October 2011
Adults-only hotels - 10 October 2011
Beach exploitation by hotels and Costas Authority - 17 October 2011
Bingo in hotels - 16 October 2011
Bishop of Mallorca and gay marriage - 29 October 2011
Britishness and integration - 8 October 2011
Camí de Ternelles walk - 22 October 2011
Catalonian and Balearic presidents meet - 28 October 2011
Foreign and local trips by Balearics politicians - 15 October 2011
Hotels in Mallorca, the big four - 11 October 2011
Industrial tourism - 27 October 2011
Land use and luxury developments - 21 October 2011
Magalluf redevelopment: Meliá Hotels International - 1 October 2011, 2 October 2011
Pirates-themed hotel in Santa Ponsa - 9 October 2011
Pollensa auditorium - 13 October 2011
Posters, tourism - 26 October 2011
Poverty in the Balearics - 25 October 2011
Publicity award, Barceló hotels and - 30 October 2011
Puerto Alcúdia's cachet and restaurant association - 31 October 2011
Real Mallorca, more crisis at - 4 October 2011
Senior tourism - 24 October 2011
Subsidies and flights to Mallorca - 12 October 2011
Sun, temperature and winter tourism in Mallorca - 14 October 2011
Theme park between Campos and Llucmajor - 20 October 2011, 23 October 2011
TUI, Russian tourism and Alexei Mordashov - 3 October 2011
Voting rights, expatriates and national election - 19 October 2011
Welsh Rugby World Cup defeat - 18 October 2011
The loss of cachet suggestion is not mine. It is that of the president of the recently formed Alcúdia Bay restaurant association. Before we delve too far into the suggestion, we do need to ask ourselves what is meant by cachet. Prestige is a reasonable alternative. Well, the Oxford English Dictionary (Concise version) says so, and I'm not about to disagree.
If Puerto Alcúdia has lost cachet, then when did it ever actually have it? And as much as the definition of cachet can be rather loose, so also can be a definition of Puerto Alcúdia. It is not one place.
Cachet that attaches itself historically to Puerto Alcúdia might be said to date back to the 1930s, to the original Golf hotel (and golf course) and to the seaplanes that dropped French tourists into the bay. It was shortlived, thanks to a somewhat unpleasant member of the military who was wedded to notions of arch-Spanishness and arch-Catholicism.
Of tourism-age cachet, there has been relatively little. Puerto Alcúdia is and has long been a resort for the mass, and it created for itself the environment in which this mass could enjoy the prestige that the resort has always enjoyed: a fabulous beach most obviously.
Cachet might also, in tourism terms, imply chic. But has Puerto Alcúdia ever been chic? Not really. Its near neighbour, Puerto Pollensa, might well claim this; at least in its past, along with a somewhat Bohemian reputation. It was Puerto Pollensa that acquired the cachet of celebrity visitor and party-goer (in the seventies and into the eighties) that Puerto Alcúdia didn't.
Puerto Alcúdia's cachet applies not to its purpose-built, anti-cachet tourism centre, some three kilometres out of the port area, but to the port area itself and also to the fact that, as a whole, it is a leading tourism resort. The prestige has been earned over decades, not because the resort is phenomenally attractive, but because it is highly functional; it serves a purpose, and does this rather well.
However, attractiveness and a fellow-travelling concept of ambience can distort this prestige/cachet estimation. And it's one of cachet found rather than cachet lost: there is many a current-day visitor who would argue that Puerto Alcúdia's port area is greatly more attractive/vibrant than its haughty neighbour, i.e. Puerto Pollensa. Perhaps so, but the argument is irrelevant. Difference is what counts, and point-scoring for relative chicness, cachet, prestige is completely pointless.
The Alcúdia Bay restaurant association does, though, wish to win back this cachet, whatever it might once have been. It wishes to make more dynamic Puerto Alcúdia's frontline and to bring quality tourism. It wishes this without the slightest hint as to what it means by more dynamic, without the slightest embarrassment that it might actually be offending tourists who are, by implication, not "quality" and by alluding to a past that is all but illusory.
To be fair, the association might be said to be responding to the criticisms that have emanated from the hotels, and not just in Puerto Alcúdia, which have accused the "complementary offer" of restaurants etc. of doing nothing to promote tourism and of leaving it to others to do so.
To this end, what has the association come up with? A guide. It appeared late into the season this year and it was, as is all too often the case with such guides, an exercise in amorphous repetition in that restaurants, side-by-side, proclaim the same "typical Mallorcan cuisine" or "speciality in meat" that leave the punter none the wiser and in no way incentivised by any sense of differentiation, and an exercise also in self-regarding delusion as to the importance of gastronomy to the tourism punter who perceives restaurants not as the be all and end all but as a necessary sub-text to the tourism experience.
The association will be establishing a "junta", a board which will drive its cachet-creating initiatives. The heart sinks. Another talking-shop of vested interests, ultimately inward-looking, believing that gastronomy is the way to the tourism stomach, when it should be part of a greater whole that promotes the resort. As should be the case with all resorts.
The association is right in one regard: that promotion should be local, local to resorts. Too much has been generic, for Mallorca, when resorts do mean different things - as between Puerto Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa. But if it were serious about greater dynamism, it would not be ghettoising itself into a gastronomic corner, but engaging with, and promoting with, all other sectors of the local tourism economy.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Index for October 2011
ABTA Convention, Palma - 5 October 2011, 6 October 2011, 7 October 2011
Adults-only hotels - 10 October 2011
Beach exploitation by hotels and Costas Authority - 17 October 2011
Bingo in hotels - 16 October 2011
Bishop of Mallorca and gay marriage - 29 October 2011
Britishness and integration - 8 October 2011
Camí de Ternelles walk - 22 October 2011
Catalonian and Balearic presidents meet - 28 October 2011
Foreign and local trips by Balearics politicians - 15 October 2011
Hotels in Mallorca, the big four - 11 October 2011
Industrial tourism - 27 October 2011
Land use and luxury developments - 21 October 2011
Magalluf redevelopment: Meliá Hotels International - 1 October 2011, 2 October 2011
Pirates-themed hotel in Santa Ponsa - 9 October 2011
Pollensa auditorium - 13 October 2011
Posters, tourism - 26 October 2011
Poverty in the Balearics - 25 October 2011
Publicity award, Barceló hotels and - 30 October 2011
Puerto Alcúdia's cachet and restaurant association - 31 October 2011
Real Mallorca, more crisis at - 4 October 2011
Senior tourism - 24 October 2011
Subsidies and flights to Mallorca - 12 October 2011
Sun, temperature and winter tourism in Mallorca - 14 October 2011
Theme park between Campos and Llucmajor - 20 October 2011, 23 October 2011
TUI, Russian tourism and Alexei Mordashov - 3 October 2011
Voting rights, expatriates and national election - 19 October 2011
Welsh Rugby World Cup defeat - 18 October 2011
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Image Rights? The right image of Mallorca
Gabriel Escarrer is the president and founder of the Mallorca-based hotel group Sol Meliá, now renamed Meliá Hotels International. An interview with him appeared in "Ultima Hora" at the weekend. When someone of Sr. Escarrer's eminence speaks, it is worth taking note.
A newspaper interview can only go into so much depth, which is unfortunate as it would have been instructive to have had more detail, such as that to do with the improvement of Mallorca's image.
This, in a way, was one of the more surprising parts of the interview; surprising because the image has improved, certainly when compared with one that the island had not so long ago when Mallorca was looked down upon and when it was very much Madge-orca, a place lumped in with Eric Idle's Watney's Red Barrel Torremolinos of so many years ago.
In part, it still is, but the image has shifted and the shift has been ongoing for quite some while. So a question I would like to ask is, what image do you believe Mallorca has? Your answers are likely to be diverse, which is what might be expected, as Mallorca is a place of huge diversity.
Recently I was asked to write about some of Mallorca's towns and villages. I was given a list of those to be covered. The piece ended up as a sort of tour. It started in Sóller, cut down to Banyalfabur, went across to Campos and Colonia Sant Jordi, up to Porto Cristo and then Artá and ventured inland via Santa Margalida, Campanet and Santa Maria until it came to an end in Lloret de Vista Alegre and Sineu, the geographical and arguably spiritual centre of Mallorca.
With the exception of touching on Can Picafort (as part of Santa Margalida), there was little by way of vast tourist resort in this tour (I would exclude Colonia Sant Jordi and Porto Cristo from such a description). Instead it was a route that embraced orange and lemon groves, an old railway, mountains, the terraces of Banyalfabur, Es Trenc, the view to Sa Cabrera, the caves of Drach and Hams, Talayotic Bronze Age settlements, the fiesta of La Beata, peculiar water phenomena, ancient hermitages, old markets, a baroque church with a blue bell, rural culture and the palace of the kings of Mallorca.
Want diversity? You've got it. The problem is that diversity does not mean image. Or not as the island's image is largely perceived. Sr. Escarrer said in the interview that the image needed to be cleaned up, that there needed to be a repositioning of Mallorca and one at an international level.
He was not wrong in saying this, but there is something distinctly not right about it. Because all this diversity, this different image is meant to have been part of a repositioning, one at an international level. Is Sr. Escarrer saying that the efforts of all that promotion that has gone on, or is supposed to have gone on, has been ineffective? One suspects he may have been being diplomatic.
I shan't be. It has been ineffective. Partly it has been ineffective for the right reasons, those of sun and beach, which remain Mallorca's most enduring attractions and reasons for being. Despite promotion of alternatives, sun and beach constitute the island's number one product and the most important of the elements of the island's promotional mix. And rightly so.
But sun and beach bring with them attendant problems. They are ones we are only too aware of and may well be to what Sr. Escarrer was alluding when he spoke of cleaning up the image.
In another newspaper at the weekend (the "Diario de Mallorca") there was an article which delved into crime in one of the main tourist centres of the island, Playa de Palma: pickpocketing, prostitution, drug dealing. To this can be added the periodic reports of violence. The need for an image clean-up has moved on from the days when Mallorca and some of its resorts were simply considered as being naff.
Despite media negativity and reporting of crime and violence, Mallorca's image has changed. But the change in image has a way to go, a long way to go. The question is how this image change is truly effected, how the diversity of the island is truly conveyed, and in such a way that the harmful consequences of seasonality, to which Sr. Escarrer also referred, are mitigated.
It's the sixty-four million euro question. And it has been ever since the euro was introduced. Prior to this, it was the the ten billion plus peseta question. It's a question, the answer to which no one has found. Sadly, one fancies it will never be discovered. Yet it should be. Start in Sóller, cut down to Banyalfabur ... .
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
A newspaper interview can only go into so much depth, which is unfortunate as it would have been instructive to have had more detail, such as that to do with the improvement of Mallorca's image.
This, in a way, was one of the more surprising parts of the interview; surprising because the image has improved, certainly when compared with one that the island had not so long ago when Mallorca was looked down upon and when it was very much Madge-orca, a place lumped in with Eric Idle's Watney's Red Barrel Torremolinos of so many years ago.
In part, it still is, but the image has shifted and the shift has been ongoing for quite some while. So a question I would like to ask is, what image do you believe Mallorca has? Your answers are likely to be diverse, which is what might be expected, as Mallorca is a place of huge diversity.
Recently I was asked to write about some of Mallorca's towns and villages. I was given a list of those to be covered. The piece ended up as a sort of tour. It started in Sóller, cut down to Banyalfabur, went across to Campos and Colonia Sant Jordi, up to Porto Cristo and then Artá and ventured inland via Santa Margalida, Campanet and Santa Maria until it came to an end in Lloret de Vista Alegre and Sineu, the geographical and arguably spiritual centre of Mallorca.
With the exception of touching on Can Picafort (as part of Santa Margalida), there was little by way of vast tourist resort in this tour (I would exclude Colonia Sant Jordi and Porto Cristo from such a description). Instead it was a route that embraced orange and lemon groves, an old railway, mountains, the terraces of Banyalfabur, Es Trenc, the view to Sa Cabrera, the caves of Drach and Hams, Talayotic Bronze Age settlements, the fiesta of La Beata, peculiar water phenomena, ancient hermitages, old markets, a baroque church with a blue bell, rural culture and the palace of the kings of Mallorca.
Want diversity? You've got it. The problem is that diversity does not mean image. Or not as the island's image is largely perceived. Sr. Escarrer said in the interview that the image needed to be cleaned up, that there needed to be a repositioning of Mallorca and one at an international level.
He was not wrong in saying this, but there is something distinctly not right about it. Because all this diversity, this different image is meant to have been part of a repositioning, one at an international level. Is Sr. Escarrer saying that the efforts of all that promotion that has gone on, or is supposed to have gone on, has been ineffective? One suspects he may have been being diplomatic.
I shan't be. It has been ineffective. Partly it has been ineffective for the right reasons, those of sun and beach, which remain Mallorca's most enduring attractions and reasons for being. Despite promotion of alternatives, sun and beach constitute the island's number one product and the most important of the elements of the island's promotional mix. And rightly so.
But sun and beach bring with them attendant problems. They are ones we are only too aware of and may well be to what Sr. Escarrer was alluding when he spoke of cleaning up the image.
In another newspaper at the weekend (the "Diario de Mallorca") there was an article which delved into crime in one of the main tourist centres of the island, Playa de Palma: pickpocketing, prostitution, drug dealing. To this can be added the periodic reports of violence. The need for an image clean-up has moved on from the days when Mallorca and some of its resorts were simply considered as being naff.
Despite media negativity and reporting of crime and violence, Mallorca's image has changed. But the change in image has a way to go, a long way to go. The question is how this image change is truly effected, how the diversity of the island is truly conveyed, and in such a way that the harmful consequences of seasonality, to which Sr. Escarrer also referred, are mitigated.
It's the sixty-four million euro question. And it has been ever since the euro was introduced. Prior to this, it was the the ten billion plus peseta question. It's a question, the answer to which no one has found. Sadly, one fancies it will never be discovered. Yet it should be. Start in Sóller, cut down to Banyalfabur ... .
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The World's Most Popular Breakfast
The bacon must be lean; crispy but certainly not incinerated. The egg yolk should be runny but white sealed and without pools of what comes from a docker's nose. The tomato should, on no account, be from a tin and therefore not be a tomato. The sausage should, like the bacon, be reasonably well done and not be pink inside. The beans' sauce should not have acquired a glutenous state.
I am, you might realise, somewhat fastidious when it comes to the full English. I don't mind confessing both that I demand high standards and that I actually eat full Englishes. They are a guilty pleasure. Firstly, because it is claimed that they aren't necessarily good for you (I'd dispute this). Secondly, because consuming the full English is being oh so British. I should eschew the bacon 'n' eggs in favour of going-native breakfasting, which means the ensaïmada. Sorry, but if I'm going to have any lard, I want it with sausage and not in the form of a twirly thing with a sugar coating. The ensaïmada is rubbish. Over sweet, over hyped and over here.
It is a short pastry step from the execrable ensaïmada to the puffed-up contortion of the croissant. The two are dough to the pretentious fellow travellers of anything but the full English. And neither is any good.
The croissant is not originally French, but French it has become. Because it is French, as with anything else that can be noshed or imbibed that has a French label, the French would claim it to be superior to anything from anywhere else. Such culinary jingoism makes it the more surprising, therefore, that the French themselves have placed the full anglais in the number-one position on the breakfast chart.
A poll by Hotels.com has revealed that 19% of French people rate the full English as being number one. The survey of 2,400 travellers from more than 20 countries in all finds that the F.E. is the most popular first meal of the day.
The breakfasting habits of different nationalities can be hard to comprehend. The Dutch are arguably the maddest of all. Whatever made them think that putting little bits of chocolate onto bread and butter was a good thing? Probably the same thought process that has led them to eating raw herrings. They simply have no idea. Yet the Dutch, giants that they are, should thoroughly enjoy getting stuck into a full English. As should the Germans and the Scandinavians, and most obviously the Danes who, rather than eating Danish bacon, export most of it to the UK.
The discovery that the full English is in fact the world's number one breakfast should come as no surprise, as it quite obviously is the best, and should cause Bar Brits across Mallorca to stop and think for a moment.
The much-spoken-of gastronomy of Mallorca is naturally enough Mallorcan, but some of it, the ensaïmada clearly, is lousy. Both the lousy and the not lousy gets itself a fair amount of the spotlight, but what of the gastronomy that isn't Mallorcan?
One of the most bizarre reasons I have heard as to why a restaurant should not advertise was one offered by an Italian restaurant. People don't come to Mallorca to eat Italian food was the argument. If this is so, then it begs a pretty fundamental question as to why the restaurant exists.
The argument was rubbish, because "Italian" has its own power to promote and to attract. So why not, therefore, "British" or "English"? Because of the association with Bar Brit and consequently with tattoos, bellies, white-turning-pink skin and Sky, this gastronomy is ignored. Yet, it can boast the best breakfast in the world, one that can come in different varieties. It could be, for instance, the grand full English, that which might be served at Simpson's-in-the-Strand (nearly twenty quid for the real thing or "the ten deadly sins" to include also kidneys and bubble and squeak). It could come with accompanying Guinness - in a bottle and not out of some peculiar can with a syrup. It could be promoted as the "world's most popular breakfast".
Bar Brits could co-operate in pushing a gastronomy fair of their own, directed at the nationalities who come to Mallorca (and who also live here) and who are unaware of the great British fry-up. They could educate as to quite why a bean has been covered in a tomatoey sauce; advance the cause of the black pudding which isn't, after all, that far removed from local sausages about which a song and dance is made.
The world's most popular breakfast. Now get frying.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
I am, you might realise, somewhat fastidious when it comes to the full English. I don't mind confessing both that I demand high standards and that I actually eat full Englishes. They are a guilty pleasure. Firstly, because it is claimed that they aren't necessarily good for you (I'd dispute this). Secondly, because consuming the full English is being oh so British. I should eschew the bacon 'n' eggs in favour of going-native breakfasting, which means the ensaïmada. Sorry, but if I'm going to have any lard, I want it with sausage and not in the form of a twirly thing with a sugar coating. The ensaïmada is rubbish. Over sweet, over hyped and over here.
It is a short pastry step from the execrable ensaïmada to the puffed-up contortion of the croissant. The two are dough to the pretentious fellow travellers of anything but the full English. And neither is any good.
The croissant is not originally French, but French it has become. Because it is French, as with anything else that can be noshed or imbibed that has a French label, the French would claim it to be superior to anything from anywhere else. Such culinary jingoism makes it the more surprising, therefore, that the French themselves have placed the full anglais in the number-one position on the breakfast chart.
A poll by Hotels.com has revealed that 19% of French people rate the full English as being number one. The survey of 2,400 travellers from more than 20 countries in all finds that the F.E. is the most popular first meal of the day.
The breakfasting habits of different nationalities can be hard to comprehend. The Dutch are arguably the maddest of all. Whatever made them think that putting little bits of chocolate onto bread and butter was a good thing? Probably the same thought process that has led them to eating raw herrings. They simply have no idea. Yet the Dutch, giants that they are, should thoroughly enjoy getting stuck into a full English. As should the Germans and the Scandinavians, and most obviously the Danes who, rather than eating Danish bacon, export most of it to the UK.
The discovery that the full English is in fact the world's number one breakfast should come as no surprise, as it quite obviously is the best, and should cause Bar Brits across Mallorca to stop and think for a moment.
The much-spoken-of gastronomy of Mallorca is naturally enough Mallorcan, but some of it, the ensaïmada clearly, is lousy. Both the lousy and the not lousy gets itself a fair amount of the spotlight, but what of the gastronomy that isn't Mallorcan?
One of the most bizarre reasons I have heard as to why a restaurant should not advertise was one offered by an Italian restaurant. People don't come to Mallorca to eat Italian food was the argument. If this is so, then it begs a pretty fundamental question as to why the restaurant exists.
The argument was rubbish, because "Italian" has its own power to promote and to attract. So why not, therefore, "British" or "English"? Because of the association with Bar Brit and consequently with tattoos, bellies, white-turning-pink skin and Sky, this gastronomy is ignored. Yet, it can boast the best breakfast in the world, one that can come in different varieties. It could be, for instance, the grand full English, that which might be served at Simpson's-in-the-Strand (nearly twenty quid for the real thing or "the ten deadly sins" to include also kidneys and bubble and squeak). It could come with accompanying Guinness - in a bottle and not out of some peculiar can with a syrup. It could be promoted as the "world's most popular breakfast".
Bar Brits could co-operate in pushing a gastronomy fair of their own, directed at the nationalities who come to Mallorca (and who also live here) and who are unaware of the great British fry-up. They could educate as to quite why a bean has been covered in a tomatoey sauce; advance the cause of the black pudding which isn't, after all, that far removed from local sausages about which a song and dance is made.
The world's most popular breakfast. Now get frying.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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