There's No Such Thing As Unfair Competition

Time was when only scant attention, if any attention at all, was paid to health and safety in Mallorca. There are still examples of this attention being scantily clad but an unsafe and an unhealthy cultural tradition has been replaced by one that bears more resemblance to Anglo-Saxon fastidiousness than the previous Latin-Mediterranean couldn't-care-less-ness. And when it suits certain interested parties to come over all safety-concious-righteous, they will play the H&S card for all it's worth.

Safety, or the perceived absence of safety, is invoked as a means of attacking unfair competition. Go back a couple of years, and you might recall all the fuss about the Mallorca Rocks hotel in Magalluf. Objectors to this dealt the safety card (all those thousands of people packed into a hotel inner square with a swimming-pool slap bang in the middle). But the safety thing was really only a healthily-safely correct smokescreen to disguise the main source of objection - the alleged unfair competition that was being provided by an upstart operator who had allied with a hotel chain to provide music concerts and so threaten the years of dominance of certain clubs in Magalluf. One in particular.

Safety isn't really the issue. It wasn't in Magalluf and it isn't in Alcúdia, where the taxi-drivers, to no one's surprise, have launched their objections against the tourist mini-train. When it was announced some while back that the tourist train was making a comeback, I wondered how it could make a comeback. It was primarily the taxi-drivers that ganged up in order to ensure the demise of the old train. Yes, there was a fair old dose of politics as well, but while these might have changed in the thirteen years since the tourist train hit the buffers, taxi-driver business hasn't. Bringing the train back was always going to prompt objections from the interested party that is the taxi-driver collective of Alcúdia, and it has taken only a few days of the train being operable for the objections to surface.

The taxi-drivers see the train as a competitor. This is the issue. There isn't another one. They append the "unfair" adjective to competitor, because unfair competition is a regular way for interested parties to seek sympathy for their cause. The competition was unfair at Mallorca Rocks (for reasons that were never that clear, given that concerts finished by midnight and that clubs don't get going until midnight), the competition to bars and restaurants from all-inclusive hotels is unfair (when in fact it isn't, as it is competition driven by a free market), the competition to hotels from so-called illegal accommodation is unfair because this accommodation does not adhere to the same standards of safety, quality and tax disclosure (a spurious argument, as it would adhere to these standards if such accommodation could be fully regulated rather than exist in a legal vacuum).

The unfair competition gambit goes only so far, however, in creating sympathy for the cause. It is not as emotional an argument as the safety one; hence, the reason for safety being invoked. In the case of the train, think of all those little tourist kiddies who might be thrown to their deaths from a vehicle with no doors. Or something like this. Yes, there is, in theory, a safety risk. But have there ever been any incidents? There are tourist trains in Playa de Muro, Can Picafort, Cala Bona and elsewhere, but I have never heard of there being any accidents, or any that have been at all serious.

The taxi-drivers simply can't accept any competition. As established operators, they will object to anything that might be. It was similar when the Alcúdia sightseeing bus started. There were objections to this from the taxis and also from the local public-bus operator. In fact, the sightseeing bus was denounced. On what grounds? It was an excursion bus. People couldn't just hop on and off and use it as a means of getting from A to B.

The tourist train is as much an excursion as it is a way of getting from one place to another. It is a pretty inefficient way of, say, travelling from Bellevue to the port. It goes slowly, it stops en route, it doesn't go right into the port. It is also, for a family of four as an example, more expensive than a taxi. If two kids qualify for the kids' rate, the family of four will pay eight euros, forty. A taxi wouldn't cost as much.

The taxi-drivers reckon that the train has already meant that their local business is down by 40%. Perhaps it is, there is no way of being able to dispute or verify this, but it would be a surprise if it were, but not a surprise because such statistics are tossed around as further evidence for building up the case for sympathy. But sympathy is in limited supply. There is none from the town hall and there will be none from tourists. The tourist train is back, and competition or not, unfair or not, tourists like little tourist trains.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Giving Focus: Muro's little train

The little tourist train in Playa de Muro that does a round trip from the resort's end (more or less) at Alcúdia Pins to Las Gaviotas on the border with Alcúdia is not well liked by everyone; motorists mainly, and especially when the train takes the narrow English bridge over the canal (s'Obert) that connects Albufera and the sea. Slow-moving, it makes the rest of the traffic move slowly.

There is a further reason why it might not be as liked as it was; it is making for more of a noise than it used to. It hasn't suddenly become driven by steam; its noise is not the sound of its movement, it is the sound of its bell and its whistle. The bell is being rung almost constantly, the whistle is being blown far more often has been the case in the past. I imagine, as this is how things work here, that rather than someone saying would you mind not ringing the bell so much a visit to the police will be undertaken - a denuncia for the making of.

The inability of the local Mallorcan to deal with any matter however mildly bothersome by means other than the sneaky dobbing-in of the denuncia is a subject worthy of its own article; its own book in fact. Instead, I shall concentrate on the little train.

They're obviously wanting to make more of a business out of the train than has been the case. In fact I know they are, because I've spoken to them. The bell being rung constantly is all part of the train's business strategy, the more noise it makes, the more attention it gets. The more attention, the more passengers. And it seems as though it might be working.

Though as a motorist, I am one of those who gets trapped behind the little train, I am all in favour of little tourist trains. They add to a sensation of tourism, as if this were really necessary, kids like them, they're a pleasant way to get around and they're pretty good for advertisers. Can Picafort has its own little train, Alcúdia used to have one (and I seem to recall that a fairly nonsensical claim that it posed unfair competition to other transport providers was at the root of its being done way with), while Cala d'Or can boast the first little train to run off solar energy in Spain.

Playa de Muro's little train does, in a sense, act in a wider capacity than being merely a means of ferrying tourists around. It is a unifying symbol of the resort. It literally unifies a sprawling coastal, but it unifies it also in giving the resort something of a focal point, even if it is a focal point which moves around.

Playa de Muro's greatest single drawback is that it has no centre, no part of it to which people naturally gravitate. There is a square in front of the municipal building, but this is not a square enclosed by bars. It's a square and that's all it is. The train, though, and thanks to the greater initiative being shown by its operators this year and thanks also to positive response from certain businesses, gives the possibility of adding focus, and in adding a specific stop in front of the resort's only obvious attraction - the Fun Park/Maze - it creates a sort of focus, and one that isn't moving around.

Because Playa de Muro has no centre, it is easy to understand why it is just considered to be either a part of Alcúdia or merely an adjunct. Without a real focus, it doesn't represent anything. And without this focus, it can lose tourists in the evenings. There has to be more than some restaurants to keep people in-resort, especially when neighbouring Alcúdia has different focal points - the bustling tourism centre around Bellevue and Magic, the port and the old town.

If the little train can provide the impulse to add focus, then it will be doing an even better job than it does by giving tourists a pleasant ride. Mind you, its bell can be a bit of a pain.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Cala Millor tourist train

The tourist train that runs between Cala Millor and the Costa Pinos and which was suspended last summer because of various technical and safety issues has been given the all-clear by Son Servera town hall to start up again this season.