P&O Cruises are to offer seven "Strictly Come Dancing"-themed voyages in 2013. One might just turn up in Palma. What an appalling prospect. It is bad enough that the local expatriate community appears to have forgotten that it isn't living in the UK and has turned Mallorca into Little Brucie Land, without Strictly groupies becoming orgasmic at the possibility of sighting Craig Revel Horwood on board a P&O, dickie round the neck, being terminally lovey while simultaneously spitting superficial venom.
Strictly has so consumed the every waking moment of expat lives that there is now no other topic of conversation, that there are now Strictly contests cropping up left, right and centre and that even a non-British-owned restaurant in Puerto Pollensa wishes to cash in on this obsession by staging its own Strictly evenings. Is there no end to this madness?
Sadly, I suspect that there isn't. P&O showing the way, how soon before a hotel or two on the island decides to become Strictly-themed?
Theming is likely to assume epidemic proportions. Hotels have realised that they can nick popular ideas or themes, dress themselves up to look the part, re-name themselves and, Brucie's your uncle, they've got themselves a themed hotel and a whole marketing opportunity. If it isn't Brucie, then it is Captain Jack or Long John Silver. The hotel that had been threatening to become pirates-themed is to carry out its threat. The Gran Santa Ponsa is now the Gran Santa Ponsa Pirates Village and will open its doors, or possibly its gangplanks, for the first time next year.
The saving grace with Pirates Village is that it is all-inclusive, which hopefully therefore means that its piratical inmates won't be taking themselves to the streets and so permit insufferable eight-year-olds to inflict on the rest of Mallorca an interminable stream of jokes that aren't jokes but which are lifted straight from a Robert Newton pirate pastiche that is now almost 60 years old. While children might be excused issuing a constant volley of "aaarhh" alleged gags, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, which excuses adults from doing the same. Any adult who does so should be forced to walk the plank, preferably in the deepest part of the Mediterranean where a commune of extremely hungry Great White Sharks has been gathered. That'll learn 'em.
The thing with theming, however, is that it has to be accurate. And Pirates Village isn't totally. For one thing, it will have a Mobby Dick section. Not Moby but Mobby. Someone should really tell them. They might also mention that Moby Dick doesn't really have an awful lot to do with pirates (though maybe Mobby Dick does; I really couldn't say). There is also the Francis Drake Palace. Some of you may know that Drake was a great English sea captain and vice-admiral who specialised in giving the Spanish regular thrashings. This is the English/British version of history. The Spanish, on the other hand, thought him to be a thoroughly disreputable sort; a pirate in fact. Pirates Village, from a Spanish perspective, may be accurate in affording Drake pirate status, but there may have to be some explaining going on to the British guests who consider him to have been anything but a pirate.
The Pirates Village does, nevertheless, represent some commitment in the form of hard cash for turning a previously unremarkable hotel into the stuff of the Caribbean. As such, there should be some congratulation. A Strictly theme is rather different. Yes, as far as P&O are concerned, there is an investment in Revel Horwood and whoever else they can haul on board, but the theme is very much self-liquidating; it is the punter who provides the theme.
From a business point of view, this isn't such a bad idea, and so other hotels might consider other themes: "X Factor", "Britain's Got Talent (in Mallorca)", for example. It would be no more than a massive karaoke, but if you get the paying customer to be the theme, then you win both ways; establish a theme and don't actually pay anything for it, save for a possible monetary prize or a cheap bottle of cava.
More exotic - if exotic is the right word, which it isn't - would be to borrow further from British telly. A "Coronation Street" or "Eastenders" themed hotel perhaps. As many British soap stars appear to spend most of their spare time in Mallorca, then they could be put to good use for once. And as Real Madrid have their own themed hotel in the Middle East and Barcelona appear to be going to get one of their own, why not a Man U or Chelsea themed hotel in Mallorca? All those replica kits need somewhere to go, so why not a hotel where all the wearers can compare shirts?
If none of these ideas are for you, then what about just going back to basics and having a Mallorca-themed hotel? A radical notion, I agree, but then Mallorca is Mallorca. The trouble would be knowing what a Mallorca-themed hotel would contain. Sadly, where most of Brit expat land is concerned, it would be Strictly.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Showing posts with label Themed hotels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Themed hotels. Show all posts
Friday, November 16, 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Preferential Treatment: Magalluf
"These project innovators are going to distinguish us as a preferential tourist destination." Thus spake Manuel Onieva, mayor of Calviá, and with his words, he probably put a considerable number of noses out of joint, those belonging to mayors of other resort towns. These other mayors will already know that they are second-class tourist-resort citizens, but they don't need their noses being rubbed in it as well as being put out of joint.
Onieva was speaking in the context of the announcement of the venture between Meliá Hotels International and Katmandu Park whereby the Sol Magalluf Park hotel will become the Sol Katmandu Resort. Themed hotels have become the vogue and when you have a theme virtually on your doorstep, i.e. the House of Katmandu, why not integrate it as a theme?
Innovative it is and Meliá are going further in introducing a so-called "Sol Fun Pass", an entertainment card that will apparently guarantee the best prices for entrance to Katmandu and to Golf Fantasia to clients of its Sol brand of hotels in Magalluf and Palmanova. In essence, this is a dose of added value to guests as well an added incentive for tourists to choose Meliá, and is part also of Meliá's vision of the Sol Calviá Resort and its transformation of Magalluf.
It is a further example as well of the extent to which Meliá seems to be taking Magalluf over. I suggested from the outset, when Meliá's plans were first announced for its major upgrade, that Magalluf may as well be renamed Sol Calviá Resort. Little did I know that the town hall were thinking along similar lines, though the Nova Calviá suggestion that's been doing the rounds misses the point. It is Meliá which is providing the wherewithal for the new Magalluf, so why not indeed just rename the place Sol Calviá Resort?
To come back to Onieva's preferential tourist destination; how mayors in other resort towns must be looking on at what is happening in Magalluf with envy and probably no small amount of anxiety. The revamp, which now includes the new Katmandu theme, is going to make other resorts look tired by comparison, and some of them are tired enough without the bright, shiny new beast of Magalluf beaming lights of innovation.
The anxiety would stem from the fact that Magalluf is not only becoming a preferential tourist destination in the sense that tourists will prefer to go there than elsewhere it has also been granted preferential status in terms of the attention being lavished on it. But this is not preferential treatment as a consequence of governmental favouritism, it owes everything to Meliá.
Another old resort, Alcúdia (just to take an example), would bite the hands off a hotel chain that came up with similar plans. Meliá would be most unlikely to be that chain, as it operates only one hotel in Alcúdia. Magalluf and Meliá go together like the horse and carriage.
It is the concentration of hotels under the same ownership that has facilitated Meliá's plans. Such concentration of ownership doesn't necessarily occur elsewhere. In Alcúdia, it certainly doesn't. In its main tourist centre, that part of the resort some three kilometres away from its port centre, ownership is fragmented, but there is always the Bellevue question.
This vast complex, saddled with debt and all manner of horrors for years, would, were a visionary organisation with massively deep pockets to contemplate such a thing, make an ideal location for some transformational theming. If not on the same scale as that in Magalluf, there is nevertheless tremendous scope, which includes the fact that currently the site can accommodate around 5,000 people.
There again, perhaps simply seeking to ape what is occurring in Magalluf is not the right approach. Magalluf will end up, even if it doesn't have its name changed, as a re-branded resort with an emphasis on holiday fun of a less unsophisticated type than it is currently known for. Fun should always be uppermost in delivering the goods to hoildaymakers, but there are different types of fun, so perhaps Alcúdia really should go all out to make itself what it has wanted to, which is a centre of sports tourism, rather than do it in the half-baked fashion it has been doing until now.
Whatever other resorts might dream up, there is one aspect in which they find it hard to be competitive, and this is the level of attraction that exists both within Magalluf and close by it. These attractions are an additional means by which Magalluf has preferential status bestowed on it. And with the onset of themed hotels as attractions, it enhances this status. Mayor Onieva is not wrong.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Onieva was speaking in the context of the announcement of the venture between Meliá Hotels International and Katmandu Park whereby the Sol Magalluf Park hotel will become the Sol Katmandu Resort. Themed hotels have become the vogue and when you have a theme virtually on your doorstep, i.e. the House of Katmandu, why not integrate it as a theme?
Innovative it is and Meliá are going further in introducing a so-called "Sol Fun Pass", an entertainment card that will apparently guarantee the best prices for entrance to Katmandu and to Golf Fantasia to clients of its Sol brand of hotels in Magalluf and Palmanova. In essence, this is a dose of added value to guests as well an added incentive for tourists to choose Meliá, and is part also of Meliá's vision of the Sol Calviá Resort and its transformation of Magalluf.
It is a further example as well of the extent to which Meliá seems to be taking Magalluf over. I suggested from the outset, when Meliá's plans were first announced for its major upgrade, that Magalluf may as well be renamed Sol Calviá Resort. Little did I know that the town hall were thinking along similar lines, though the Nova Calviá suggestion that's been doing the rounds misses the point. It is Meliá which is providing the wherewithal for the new Magalluf, so why not indeed just rename the place Sol Calviá Resort?
To come back to Onieva's preferential tourist destination; how mayors in other resort towns must be looking on at what is happening in Magalluf with envy and probably no small amount of anxiety. The revamp, which now includes the new Katmandu theme, is going to make other resorts look tired by comparison, and some of them are tired enough without the bright, shiny new beast of Magalluf beaming lights of innovation.
The anxiety would stem from the fact that Magalluf is not only becoming a preferential tourist destination in the sense that tourists will prefer to go there than elsewhere it has also been granted preferential status in terms of the attention being lavished on it. But this is not preferential treatment as a consequence of governmental favouritism, it owes everything to Meliá.
Another old resort, Alcúdia (just to take an example), would bite the hands off a hotel chain that came up with similar plans. Meliá would be most unlikely to be that chain, as it operates only one hotel in Alcúdia. Magalluf and Meliá go together like the horse and carriage.
It is the concentration of hotels under the same ownership that has facilitated Meliá's plans. Such concentration of ownership doesn't necessarily occur elsewhere. In Alcúdia, it certainly doesn't. In its main tourist centre, that part of the resort some three kilometres away from its port centre, ownership is fragmented, but there is always the Bellevue question.
This vast complex, saddled with debt and all manner of horrors for years, would, were a visionary organisation with massively deep pockets to contemplate such a thing, make an ideal location for some transformational theming. If not on the same scale as that in Magalluf, there is nevertheless tremendous scope, which includes the fact that currently the site can accommodate around 5,000 people.
There again, perhaps simply seeking to ape what is occurring in Magalluf is not the right approach. Magalluf will end up, even if it doesn't have its name changed, as a re-branded resort with an emphasis on holiday fun of a less unsophisticated type than it is currently known for. Fun should always be uppermost in delivering the goods to hoildaymakers, but there are different types of fun, so perhaps Alcúdia really should go all out to make itself what it has wanted to, which is a centre of sports tourism, rather than do it in the half-baked fashion it has been doing until now.
Whatever other resorts might dream up, there is one aspect in which they find it hard to be competitive, and this is the level of attraction that exists both within Magalluf and close by it. These attractions are an additional means by which Magalluf has preferential status bestowed on it. And with the onset of themed hotels as attractions, it enhances this status. Mayor Onieva is not wrong.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - New Magaluf hotels will be themed
More information is coming out regarding the construction of four new hotels in a complex in Magaluf. Work is due to start within a year's time (though a further report suggests that it will not begin until the end of 2013), and the hotels, in which Viva Hotels will be a major partner, will be themed along health and sporting lines.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
The Pirates Of Ponsance
I blame Robert Newton. Did he ever actually utter the line - "belay there, Jim lad"? Probably not. You can go further back - to J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan and Captain Hook - but Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver was what propelled the pirate into the common Sunday-afternoon-black-and-white-film-on-telly consciousness, thus setting off a trail that has passed through the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Johnny Depp to now a hotel in Santa Ponsa.
Mallorca has long done pirates. Many of its old fortifications were designed with them in mind, not as entertainment but as a means of defence. Actual pirates, rather than pretend ones, remained on the scene until alarmingly recently. There is the marvellous story of the Jolly Roger bar in Puerto Alcúdia which, when it first opened in the early 1970s, was told to take down its skull-and-crossbones flag. Presumably, passing post-Newtonian Silvers (and there were some then) might have mistaken it as an invitation for a spot of pirating.
The island's culture is wrapped up in tales of derring-do involving pirates and their being repelled. The grand entertainment that is the annual street theatre of the Moors and Christians battle during Pollensa's Patrona fiesta is a pirate adventure without the entrance fee. Dragut (Turgut) is often portrayed as a sixteenth-century chancer, a pirate in other words. He was far from being so; he was in fact the commander of the Ottoman navy. But the pirate myth has come to suit.
Santa Ponsa has its own Moors and Christians thrash. But it is not one that has been subjected to piratical revisionism. It's the real clash-of-the-religions thing, in that it celebrates the taking of Mallorca by Jaume I and the defeat of the Moors in the thirteenth century as part of the re-conquest of Spain.
A short journey down the Calvia coast, to Magalluf, and there is the Pirates Adventure, the contemporisation for stage of an island history rich in pirate legend.
Santa Ponsa, without a pirate theme as such, now wants to get in on the pirates' act. It is to be the site for more of this stuff of legend and for its commercialisation. The Gran Santa Ponsa Apartments are to become pirate-themed.
"Complementary things" are needed, so says the head of the local hotel association, in order to ward off the competition from other destinations. Like Turkey, for example. Which is where Dragut came from. There's a coals to Newcastle metaphor lurking in this latest piratisation.
Santa Ponsa, it would appear, is to undergo a thematic transformation. The Gran Santa Ponsa will be followed by other theme hotels, thus, according to the hotel association, securing the support of tour operators in guaranteeing flights in March and November. The pirate ships will fly for longer than they currently do. Will they really? Are the pirates not more for the kiddies? How many school holidays are there in November? Or will there be an out-of-season pirates uncut in Santa Ponsa?
The pirates of Ponsance follow in the wake of the Magalluf tourism-reinvention mothership. One of the hotels in line for the Magalluf makeover is already themed; the modern stone-age family hotel, the Antillas Barbados, where you meet The Flintstones - Pedro, Vilma, Pablo and Betty, as they are usually not known.
From the rubble of prehistoric Mallorcan tourism rises the modern stone work of its new age, and it is one full of pirates. The Euro, fast disappearing into the Mediterranean, locked in chests of buried un-treasure, will be replaced by pieces of eight, always assuming they are required and that the pirates are not all-inclusive.
Theming is all well and good, but doesn't it run the risk of becoming a bit out of date? The pirates thing has been done to death. Or maybe it hasn't been. The Flintstones really do now seem like they're from the stone age.
Where next for the theme hotel, then? Bearing in mind a need for internationalism, it would need to make sense to more than just the Brits (or the Irish in Santa Ponsa). A Big Brother-themed hotel perhaps. An X Factor theme maybe, a sort of Eurovision Song Contest hotel; every night is karaoke night with text voting. Dinosaurs and planets of the apes must surely already be being lined up for hotels across Mallorca.
But for now, the pirates have it, so if you go to the Gran Santa Ponsa and see some bloke with one leg and a parrot on his shoulder, be sure to introduce yourself. "I'm Jim Hawkins." "Belay there, Jim lad."
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Mallorca has long done pirates. Many of its old fortifications were designed with them in mind, not as entertainment but as a means of defence. Actual pirates, rather than pretend ones, remained on the scene until alarmingly recently. There is the marvellous story of the Jolly Roger bar in Puerto Alcúdia which, when it first opened in the early 1970s, was told to take down its skull-and-crossbones flag. Presumably, passing post-Newtonian Silvers (and there were some then) might have mistaken it as an invitation for a spot of pirating.
The island's culture is wrapped up in tales of derring-do involving pirates and their being repelled. The grand entertainment that is the annual street theatre of the Moors and Christians battle during Pollensa's Patrona fiesta is a pirate adventure without the entrance fee. Dragut (Turgut) is often portrayed as a sixteenth-century chancer, a pirate in other words. He was far from being so; he was in fact the commander of the Ottoman navy. But the pirate myth has come to suit.
Santa Ponsa has its own Moors and Christians thrash. But it is not one that has been subjected to piratical revisionism. It's the real clash-of-the-religions thing, in that it celebrates the taking of Mallorca by Jaume I and the defeat of the Moors in the thirteenth century as part of the re-conquest of Spain.
A short journey down the Calvia coast, to Magalluf, and there is the Pirates Adventure, the contemporisation for stage of an island history rich in pirate legend.
Santa Ponsa, without a pirate theme as such, now wants to get in on the pirates' act. It is to be the site for more of this stuff of legend and for its commercialisation. The Gran Santa Ponsa Apartments are to become pirate-themed.
"Complementary things" are needed, so says the head of the local hotel association, in order to ward off the competition from other destinations. Like Turkey, for example. Which is where Dragut came from. There's a coals to Newcastle metaphor lurking in this latest piratisation.
Santa Ponsa, it would appear, is to undergo a thematic transformation. The Gran Santa Ponsa will be followed by other theme hotels, thus, according to the hotel association, securing the support of tour operators in guaranteeing flights in March and November. The pirate ships will fly for longer than they currently do. Will they really? Are the pirates not more for the kiddies? How many school holidays are there in November? Or will there be an out-of-season pirates uncut in Santa Ponsa?
The pirates of Ponsance follow in the wake of the Magalluf tourism-reinvention mothership. One of the hotels in line for the Magalluf makeover is already themed; the modern stone-age family hotel, the Antillas Barbados, where you meet The Flintstones - Pedro, Vilma, Pablo and Betty, as they are usually not known.
From the rubble of prehistoric Mallorcan tourism rises the modern stone work of its new age, and it is one full of pirates. The Euro, fast disappearing into the Mediterranean, locked in chests of buried un-treasure, will be replaced by pieces of eight, always assuming they are required and that the pirates are not all-inclusive.
Theming is all well and good, but doesn't it run the risk of becoming a bit out of date? The pirates thing has been done to death. Or maybe it hasn't been. The Flintstones really do now seem like they're from the stone age.
Where next for the theme hotel, then? Bearing in mind a need for internationalism, it would need to make sense to more than just the Brits (or the Irish in Santa Ponsa). A Big Brother-themed hotel perhaps. An X Factor theme maybe, a sort of Eurovision Song Contest hotel; every night is karaoke night with text voting. Dinosaurs and planets of the apes must surely already be being lined up for hotels across Mallorca.
But for now, the pirates have it, so if you go to the Gran Santa Ponsa and see some bloke with one leg and a parrot on his shoulder, be sure to introduce yourself. "I'm Jim Hawkins." "Belay there, Jim lad."
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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