The First And Last Resort

The resorts of Mallorca are not subject to detailed research into what visitors make of them. They should all be. Every year there should be surveys. What you get instead is a mass of anecdotes, snotty letters to an editor here or there, soundings-off on the internet and precious little, if anything, by way of a coherent response.

Of resorts that are put under the researchers' lens, only one (or, strictly speaking, three) is paid much attention to: Playa de Palma (along with Arenal and Can Pastilla). History decrees that it should be. This is where it pretty much all began; mass tourism, that is. The resort's antiquity affords it a special status, one that has meant to be bringing about its transformation.

The research organisation Gadeso was in Playa de Palma in 2009. It has been back again recently. The transformation of Playa de Palma can't come soon enough, it would appear. Excusing a touch of the dramatic, the introduction to Gadeso's 2011 survey states that "every day it becomes more urgent" to improve and modernise Mallorca's resorts, and Playa de Palma in particular.

It's not all bad news, unless you happen to run a hotel, tourist apartments or residential tourist accommodation. For each category, the level of satisfaction has gone down since 2009, and the all-inclusive rates lower than the other categories. It's not surprising: the restaurants are worse than regular hotels; the comfort is worse; the standards of cleanliness and facilities are lower. Customers may demand all-inclusives - the tour operators keep insisting that they do - but they also demand a reasonable level of service.

The satisfaction with Playa de Palma is lower than with the rest of Mallorca and so is the likelihood of people coming back again. The report's conclusion: could do better, see me!

This year's survey and that in 2009 are not the only ones that Gadeso has done in Playa de Palma. It hasn't gone into other resorts, or hadn't until it went to Cala Bona and Cala Millor last year. The survey there didn't report in the same way. Though the conclusions said that there was an excessive amount of all-inclusive, it didn't specifically offer information on hotel satisfaction.

The focus on this factor in Playa de Palma is understandable. Hotels are really at the heart of the whole project to transform Playa de Palma. And much as there is a desire for an overall upgrading of hotels across Mallorca, there has been not insignificant resistance from Playa de Palma hoteliers who argue that the bread-and-butter of the three-star should not be interfered with.

Gadeso has appended documents to its survey. One is a paper that emanates from the University of Barcelona which highlights the fact that, six years on from the creation of a consortium, political scraps, opposition (from hoteliers who should mainly welcome it and some residents who haven't welcomed it) and general inertia have failed to effect a process of transformation that would make the resort the model for subsequent redevelopments elsewhere and also a model of which Mallorca could be proud. The paper emphasises the fact that the resort is deteriorating, thus reinforcing what Gadeso says in its survey introduction and what the survey itself suggests.

A different document, a letter to the tourism minister, argues that to continue with a consortium that is hamstrung by a lack of government finance is a "nonsense and a waste". There is a plea that the project should be in the hands of the private sector, given the inability of the politicians to carry out such projects and to wrong priorities.

And one of those priorities, about the only public project that appears to have escaped President Bauzá's axe, is the Palacio de Congresos, described as a bottomless pit that will do nothing to alleviate seasonality. The Palacio can't be abandoned now, but it should never have been a priority. Its whole being, apart from the vanity of Palma and Mallorca being able to claim that it has a conference complex - as do many other cities in Spain as well as the Canaries - is predicated on a market, that of "meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE)", which is largely unknown.

The sun and beach of Playa de Palma is known. It's been known for years. Hopefully, it will be known for many more years to come, but its future has been placed in the balance by inadequate political supervision. Hand it over to the private sector, and just let them get on with it.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Are You Experienced?

Another day, another tourist website. I suppose I shouldn't complain given that I have vague connections with such a thing myself, but does one reach a point at which destinations get websited out? The latest is yet another from the Balearic Government - all to do with culture, hence its name http://www.balearsculturaltour.es - and designed to make all-year-round tourists come to the islands. If only. To be fair, it is quite a decent site, quite informative, but it makes the mistake - again - of missing the Mallorcan (or Menorcan or Ibizan) target. People do not go to the Balearics, they go to Mallorca, or to Menorca or to Ibiza or even Formentera. Yet, here once more we have something in the name of the Balearics, and something that has cost close to 100,000 euros. Apparently, "a good part" of the moolah has been spent on getting the site into its different languages. Sounds like a fair amount to me for a site that hops around the islands giving some cultural recommendations. The trouble is that no-one would actually do a tour of that sort; it's one island or not at all.

Nevertheless, culture, if we are to believe another survey, ranks number three on the list of things of importance to the Brit holidaymaker. This is a survey by ABTA and was reported on in "The Bulletin" a couple of days ago. Culture appears to be defined here as local food and customs: it seems you can include pretty much anything under the culture banner these days, including local sausage. Whatever. Culture, however one wishes to categorise it, ranks higher - at 18% - than either sunshine in the form of sunbathing or having sex (with one's partner). Did it occur to ask if having sex with someone other than one's partner might have ranked higher? Chances are it might have done, and one should not forget that sex tourism in Mallorca is worth a significant amount of money - apparently. But be that as it may. The trouble, as always with surveys, is what the question is and who is asked. There is also the fact that people lie. Were one to try and draw a conclusion from this survey and to link it to this new "cultural tour" website and suggest that the survey proves the value of the site, I'm afraid one would be taking the wrong tour.

I was curious enough to find out some more about this survey. So I went to ABTA's website. The results, as presented in The Bulletin, were as they were stated in the press release on the site, but if you go to the actual survey - which you can - you will find that this "culture" aspect is made up of different components. In answer to the question "what do you value most about going on holiday", five per cent said "the culture", so it is not 18% after all, although it is 18% when one adds on "gaining life experience", "new people" and "the food". Food, though, was rated by only 1.63%. What "gaining life experience" is I'm not sure, but it has been assumed - by ABTA - to mean culture. I don't know that this follows; indeed I'm sure it doesn't follow. ABTA have made much of "culture-vulture Brits ... ditching their 'sex on the beach' image", but I stress - only 5% actually responded to the specific culture prompt. The survey, as such, doesn't say anything about a sex on beach image, only through this totally tenuous connection with rating sex with a partner lower than traipsing round a museum.

You do, I'm afraid, have to be very, very careful when it comes to surveys and especially when it comes to press releases offering a biased interpretation, because bias is exactly what there is. Oh, and you do also have to be careful when it comes to surveys which are reported on in the press that were actually published over a month before - http://www.abta.com/resources/news/view/85.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - A-Ha (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x24eif_aha-the-sun-always-shines-on-tv_music). Today's title - who did this? Pretty damn easy I'd reckon.

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