No More Tears For Souvenirs

When Ken Dodd had the biggest-selling single of 1965 with "Tears", the British holidaymaking love affair with Mallorca had barely started. Those were the days of holiday innocence and simplicity. Sophistication was a word rarely to be found in the lexicon of Mallorca's resort tourism or in the holidaymaker's phrase book. Britons, and those of other nations, preferred things that were not too foreign. Or indeed foreign at all, except for the sun. But on the rare occasions when foreign did invade the consciousness of these virgin travellers, it was through their shopping consumption. The kids were given their holiday money, the parents had gifts to buy for relatives and friends, and there were any number of donkeys with sombreros to be acquired and to later take pride of place on the mantelpiece.

The resort's souvenir shops could rely on a brisk trade. While not all semblance of Mallorcan culture was banished from the shops, much of it was usurped by a standardised shopping experience very much in line with Francoist notions of the resorts and hotels as standard entities. They conformed to certain paradigms, and one of these was Spanishness in naff abundance. Hence, the donkey, the castanets, or one of the earliest ventures into product personalisation - the El Cordobes poster. The souvenirs sold by the bucket load in the days when the bucket more generally doubled as an item to be stuffed with the velvety white sands of the Mallorcan beach rather than the cheap alcohol and several straws of "drunken tourism" that fill it to the brim nowadays.

The authentic souvenirs were more commonly to be found away from the resorts, but with a rediscovery and reassertion of local culture, they gradually came to share shelf space with the tat of Spanishness and indeed to push it to one side. These souvenirs are familiar in shops and specialist outlets - the glass, the siurell figurines, the pearls, the leather goods.

The souvenir shop is as much a staple of holidays as the beach, the bars and bombardment by lookies, whose souvenirs (in a loose sense of the word) have long competed unfairly for the holidaymaker's peseta and subsequently euro. This competition is but one part of an equation that saw the souvenir trade go into decline. Discretionary spend by tourists became far more discretionary than it once was, the all-inclusive chipped away at the incentive to even spend with some discretion and then along came economic crisis. In 2008, when crisis was in its infancy, turnover for souvenirs was said to have slumped by around 60%.

Though crisis is not as it was, the other deleterious market dynamics remain in place. Fifty years on from Doddy and his number one, tears are some of the souvenirs left for the hard-pressed souvenir shop owner, whose product diversification has not embraced innovations such as the resort-branded tickling stick.

In certain instances it is difficult to ascertain quite what constitutes a souvenir. Shops boast that they have them, but as you pass by the rows of souvenir shops, you appreciate that they have been consumed by a more contemporary standardisation of offer. It comes in plastic and it floats on water or is worn on the feet. Apart from the uniformity and monotony, there is the sheer clutter on shop terraces. You have to battle your way past the piles of sea-bound dinosaurs and Messi or Ronaldo shirts (most but not all authentic) in order to see if there is something less uniform inside. Or alternatively, you can't be bothered.

There is, however, some salvation at hand. It comes in the form of a guide that the regional government is promoting. Entitled the "Guide to best practice for souvenir shop terraces", it is in fact the same as one that was produced last year for businesses in Calvia, and it is really quite good. Its title is a bit misleading as it also deals with shop interiors, but one of the best practices for terraces is to get rid of all that clutter in order to open the shop up more and make it more inviting.

The advice should in many ways be obvious, but how many souvenir shops ever consider issues such as marketing or motivational and sensible displays? One accepts that it is a guide aimed at a more sophisticated souvenir market than the one that might be observable in hard-core tourist areas, but there again one purpose of it is to create greater sophistication in terms of what is being sold and how it is being presented. It even includes a guide to the use of colours and how psychologically they can impact on the shopper. Rather than tears, it is a guide to how to tear up the manual of souvenir shop mess. To see Calvia's guide (in Spanish): www.idi.es/docs/guia.sovenir.lab.web.pdf.

Souvenir

Never accuse "The Bulletin" of a lack of hyperbole. It headlines a letter "the demise of the tourist industry". And this is? Oh no, spare me. Someone change the record. Or rather, don't, as to do so would deprive me of some blog inches. Yep, you've probably guessed it; everything's so expensive, tourists being ripped off, locals having a laugh, blah, blah.

Let's put the euro-pound thing to one side, shall we. The crisis has created a mindset that has made tourists - and not just tourists - pay far greater attention to prices than was the case. Therefore, things seem more expensive because people are more conscious of what they're spending. In real terms, prices for many items are generally no higher than they were say five years ago, but costs have contributed to increases, inevitably so. Certain things are undeniably more expensive. Car hire for one. And the letter refers to this being "extortionate". Unfortunately, the writer is probably unaware of the supply and demand in the car hire business this season; the agencies could not get hold of the bank finance so had to reduce their fleets. It's not having a laugh, it's very basic economics and very basic doing business.

And doing business is what some tourists seem to resent. There is an enduring belief that Mallorca and Spain should still be some tin-pot economy on the edges of the civilised economic world. It once was, and it was once also very cheap. Not now though. Not cheap to buy products or services, and not cheap to run businesses either. But when the letter-writer refers to eating out for a "reasonable sum", what is reasonable? Are the two large pieces of cod with chips and a salad at the Pins i Mates tourist restaurant in Alcúdia Pins unreasonably priced at 5.75 euros? I don't think so. It all depends where you go and what you have.

Elsewhere we learn that souvenir shops are having a particularly thin time. Well, nothing new there. Last year it was being reported that sales were down by around 60% in some cases. That didn't stop the souvenir shops opening up again. If there was going to be one sector that suffered particularly spectacularly this year, it was going to be the souvenir shops and other stores, such as perfumeries. All that buying gifts for friends and family has been kicked into touch. I never quite understood it anyway. But it's all part of the same greater awareness of what is being spent and therefore what it all costs. A hideous piece of kitchen ceramic may have seemed a reasonable thing to have bought before, but now the price tag, and the fact that it is hideous, has made the tourist think twice before pulling out some folding euros.

But to come back to that letter, the writer was saying all this based on a holiday in Puerto Pollensa. Poor old PP. If it's not the wicked uncles of Dakota or the leg-overing, sweet-dispensing José, it's the fact that the resort is too expensive. As a conclusion, the letter says that officials "need to act now and cap prices". Cap which prices, which products or services? And at what level? The suggestion is nuts, but it probably won't prevent an editorial in the paper reiterating a previous call for price controls.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Dubliners, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVJK1Sl6My8. Today's title - from the '80s, who did this and a completely pointless video that went with it?

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