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 Winter tourism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Winter tourism. Show all posts
Sunday, June 25, 2017
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
"Fijo Discontinuo": Winter Tourism's Villain?
In 1984, the PSOE national government of Felipe Gónzalez enacted labour legislation under which there would be a new form of employment contract. There was logic to this reform. The contract was intended to give some greater stability to a workforce which was engaged in seasonal sectors of the economy. Tourism was one of these. The contract was and is the "fijo discontinuo", essentially one by which an employee is retained but also laid off for a number of months, during which time he or she can claim benefit.
The contract has been subject to revision over the years and also to numerous legal cases, but its essence remains largely as it was thirty-two years ago while its use continues to grow. In August last year, it was reported that there were almost 70,000 employees in the Balearics who were registered with social security for this type of contract. As there were some 475,000 people signed on at the end of September 2015, employees working with this contract constituted getting on for 15% of the working population in employment. The 70,000 of last August were around 8,000 more than in August 2014, a fact that led one of the main unions, the CCOO, to complain that there were too many "discontinuo" contracts.
The complaint was ironic. It had been the unions who had pressed the Gónzalez government into creating "discontinuo", as it did ensure some greater job security. But that was thirty-two years ago. The general narrative surrounding employment contracts nowadays, one familiar to the Balearic regional government, is for work that limits even more the potential for job insecurity. And allied to this is the narrative of tackling seasonality, most obviously in the tourism sector.
Getting to grips with seasonality is a subject that is old as mass tourism. In the 1960s the tourism season ground to a halt in September. Go forward some years and there were some inroads - the pockets of resorts in Mallorca where there was discernible winter tourism business. It was never great, despite what some might suggest, but it did exist. By the end of the 1980s, some 25% of Mallorca's tourism was between November and April, though this was based on half the annual total today: roughly five million tourists. That it had come about owed little to political initiative. It was largely the consequence of tour operator business, but when the Balearics had become an autonomous region in 1983 the politicians had started talking up plans for dealing with seasonality. There were plans for the likes of cycling and golf, just as there are today.
The truth of the matter is that regardless of what politicians have ever said, seasonality has remained an issue and always has been an issue. The politicians keep returning to it and insisting that they will indeed be tackling it - as the current Balearic government is - but behind this talk has long been, so it is argued, a kind of conspiracy which allows talk to be cheap and to be spoken because it makes politicians appear to be doing something when they themselves have aligned themselves with forces that are inherently opposed to low-season tourism. And none more so than the "fijo discontinuo".
The argument goes that hoteliers have no incentive to remain open because they can shed a whole load of staff who will be looked after by the state and then take them on again the following spring. The employees themselves are happy with this state of affairs: several months off and the government pays them. And from this disincentive has sprung a collective lack of will and creativity that might truly tackle seasonality. For hoteliers, they have virtually no risk. They make their profits in the summer season and close up shop at the first sign of November coming into view. Everything is stacked in their favour because of the nature of employment.
There are commentators, such as the journalist Javier Mato, who attribute the low-season malaise to "fijo discontinuo". Mato has asked why, if it is such a good system, no other country has adopted it. But if it is such a negative influence, then what are the alternatives? Mallorca has far too much tourism infrastructure - hotels, restaurants, etc. It's fine for summer, but for the rest of the year it is unsustainable. Full-time contracts for any more than a small minority are out of the question.
There are, though, certain movements. The system of social security 50% "bonus" for "discontinuo" employees has been extended to now include February as well as March and November, as has been the case for three years. Is it in fact this labour modification which is leading to more hotel opening in Mallorca in these low-season months? And if it is, then why not extend it further? "Discontinuo" may not be perfect but it can be made to work better.
The contract has been subject to revision over the years and also to numerous legal cases, but its essence remains largely as it was thirty-two years ago while its use continues to grow. In August last year, it was reported that there were almost 70,000 employees in the Balearics who were registered with social security for this type of contract. As there were some 475,000 people signed on at the end of September 2015, employees working with this contract constituted getting on for 15% of the working population in employment. The 70,000 of last August were around 8,000 more than in August 2014, a fact that led one of the main unions, the CCOO, to complain that there were too many "discontinuo" contracts.
The complaint was ironic. It had been the unions who had pressed the Gónzalez government into creating "discontinuo", as it did ensure some greater job security. But that was thirty-two years ago. The general narrative surrounding employment contracts nowadays, one familiar to the Balearic regional government, is for work that limits even more the potential for job insecurity. And allied to this is the narrative of tackling seasonality, most obviously in the tourism sector.
Getting to grips with seasonality is a subject that is old as mass tourism. In the 1960s the tourism season ground to a halt in September. Go forward some years and there were some inroads - the pockets of resorts in Mallorca where there was discernible winter tourism business. It was never great, despite what some might suggest, but it did exist. By the end of the 1980s, some 25% of Mallorca's tourism was between November and April, though this was based on half the annual total today: roughly five million tourists. That it had come about owed little to political initiative. It was largely the consequence of tour operator business, but when the Balearics had become an autonomous region in 1983 the politicians had started talking up plans for dealing with seasonality. There were plans for the likes of cycling and golf, just as there are today.
The truth of the matter is that regardless of what politicians have ever said, seasonality has remained an issue and always has been an issue. The politicians keep returning to it and insisting that they will indeed be tackling it - as the current Balearic government is - but behind this talk has long been, so it is argued, a kind of conspiracy which allows talk to be cheap and to be spoken because it makes politicians appear to be doing something when they themselves have aligned themselves with forces that are inherently opposed to low-season tourism. And none more so than the "fijo discontinuo".
The argument goes that hoteliers have no incentive to remain open because they can shed a whole load of staff who will be looked after by the state and then take them on again the following spring. The employees themselves are happy with this state of affairs: several months off and the government pays them. And from this disincentive has sprung a collective lack of will and creativity that might truly tackle seasonality. For hoteliers, they have virtually no risk. They make their profits in the summer season and close up shop at the first sign of November coming into view. Everything is stacked in their favour because of the nature of employment.
There are commentators, such as the journalist Javier Mato, who attribute the low-season malaise to "fijo discontinuo". Mato has asked why, if it is such a good system, no other country has adopted it. But if it is such a negative influence, then what are the alternatives? Mallorca has far too much tourism infrastructure - hotels, restaurants, etc. It's fine for summer, but for the rest of the year it is unsustainable. Full-time contracts for any more than a small minority are out of the question.
There are, though, certain movements. The system of social security 50% "bonus" for "discontinuo" employees has been extended to now include February as well as March and November, as has been the case for three years. Is it in fact this labour modification which is leading to more hotel opening in Mallorca in these low-season months? And if it is, then why not extend it further? "Discontinuo" may not be perfect but it can be made to work better.
Thursday, April 02, 2015
Unbeatable Palma
Grupo Inversor Hesperia is a tourism company you probably won't have heard of. Iberostar, on the other hand, you will know: it is one of Mallorca's big-four chains. Hesperia isn't Mallorcan but it is important. It owns and operates hotels. It is one of the main shareholders in NH Hotels, which, together with Iberostar and the rest of the big-four, is right at the top of the Spanish hotel industry tree. Its hotels were integrated with those of NH, and while this integration has not gone as well as had been hoped and while Hesperia has also experienced some financial problems, it is still an important player.
This is just by way of background, as the Hesperia story is not really what interests us here. What does is what its CEO, Javier Illa, had to say the other day and what Rodrigo Moscardó, the CEO for Iberostar Hotels and Resorts in Europe and the Mediterranean, also observed.
You will recall - you could hardly not have noticed or have already forgotten - that Palma was bigged up by "The Sunday Times" recently. But this praise came only in the form of a journalist's opinion. It was very fine publicity, and it is being milked for what it is worth, but will opinion of people right in the industry - as in running hotel companies - capture the publicity machine-making imagination as much? Sr. Illa was speaking at a conference to mark the tenth anniversary of Magma Hospitality Consulting that focused on urban tourist destinations - cities, in other words. He said that Mallorca has an "enviable location ... with good temperatures all year" and, with reference to Palma, that the city has an "unbeatable future". Sr. Moscardó added that Iberostar was "betting 100%" on a "strategic location that is seeing the entrance of other types of products, such as small boutique hotels in the city centre".
If Palma is truly unbeatable, then it is a virtue to be shouted from the rooftop of the city's Cort, just as the number-one-city-to-live-in is, but the context in which Sr. Illa was speaking was that of "secondary cities". Palma is not a Barcelona or a Madrid and never will be. Yet it can and should compete, as will other Spanish secondary cities such as Seville and Malaga for which there are enormous opportunities now that economic recovery has set in. The observations of Hesperia and Iberostar underline what is a discernible movement and trend from which Palma and Mallorca should or could benefit. But there will be one obstacle to such ambitions. Palma is also not Malaga. It doesn't receive the volume of international flights in winter that the Costa del Sol does. Herein, as ever, lies the rub.
Demand in the off-season isn't there we are told, yet demand for Palma and other parts of the island was confirmed at another gathering, one of tour operators and airlines at Palma Aquarium which was organised by Germany's premier travel magazine "FVW". As an example, Alltours now has seven of its seventeen hotels in Mallorca open during the winter. But then Alltours, and its hotel chain Allsun, can rely on far better winter air links with Germany than the UK and other parts of Europe. The demand that the meeting was referring to was, therefore, principally German.
The overall message from this particular meeting was that Mallorca has the capacity to generate more winter tourism (which we already knew), but that more needs to be done to improve hotel stock - getting it up to at least four-star (four-star in Mallorcan terms, that is) and improving aspects of the non-hotel offer, including gastronomy. (The need for greater quality here may come as a surprise to many, but there are those close to the island's gastronomy industry who will confirm that it isn't quite as good as it is sometimes claimed.) General levels of quality have to be upped in order to compete with Turkey, Egypt and Greece; this was another message to come out of the meeting.
Still, this was precisely the sort of gathering which, for once, made sense in that it brought together players who matter - leaders of hotel groups, airlines and tour operators. Maybe a similar type of conference should be arranged for players from the UK market.
This is just by way of background, as the Hesperia story is not really what interests us here. What does is what its CEO, Javier Illa, had to say the other day and what Rodrigo Moscardó, the CEO for Iberostar Hotels and Resorts in Europe and the Mediterranean, also observed.
You will recall - you could hardly not have noticed or have already forgotten - that Palma was bigged up by "The Sunday Times" recently. But this praise came only in the form of a journalist's opinion. It was very fine publicity, and it is being milked for what it is worth, but will opinion of people right in the industry - as in running hotel companies - capture the publicity machine-making imagination as much? Sr. Illa was speaking at a conference to mark the tenth anniversary of Magma Hospitality Consulting that focused on urban tourist destinations - cities, in other words. He said that Mallorca has an "enviable location ... with good temperatures all year" and, with reference to Palma, that the city has an "unbeatable future". Sr. Moscardó added that Iberostar was "betting 100%" on a "strategic location that is seeing the entrance of other types of products, such as small boutique hotels in the city centre".
If Palma is truly unbeatable, then it is a virtue to be shouted from the rooftop of the city's Cort, just as the number-one-city-to-live-in is, but the context in which Sr. Illa was speaking was that of "secondary cities". Palma is not a Barcelona or a Madrid and never will be. Yet it can and should compete, as will other Spanish secondary cities such as Seville and Malaga for which there are enormous opportunities now that economic recovery has set in. The observations of Hesperia and Iberostar underline what is a discernible movement and trend from which Palma and Mallorca should or could benefit. But there will be one obstacle to such ambitions. Palma is also not Malaga. It doesn't receive the volume of international flights in winter that the Costa del Sol does. Herein, as ever, lies the rub.
Demand in the off-season isn't there we are told, yet demand for Palma and other parts of the island was confirmed at another gathering, one of tour operators and airlines at Palma Aquarium which was organised by Germany's premier travel magazine "FVW". As an example, Alltours now has seven of its seventeen hotels in Mallorca open during the winter. But then Alltours, and its hotel chain Allsun, can rely on far better winter air links with Germany than the UK and other parts of Europe. The demand that the meeting was referring to was, therefore, principally German.
The overall message from this particular meeting was that Mallorca has the capacity to generate more winter tourism (which we already knew), but that more needs to be done to improve hotel stock - getting it up to at least four-star (four-star in Mallorcan terms, that is) and improving aspects of the non-hotel offer, including gastronomy. (The need for greater quality here may come as a surprise to many, but there are those close to the island's gastronomy industry who will confirm that it isn't quite as good as it is sometimes claimed.) General levels of quality have to be upped in order to compete with Turkey, Egypt and Greece; this was another message to come out of the meeting.
Still, this was precisely the sort of gathering which, for once, made sense in that it brought together players who matter - leaders of hotel groups, airlines and tour operators. Maybe a similar type of conference should be arranged for players from the UK market.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Talking Shop: Tourism forum
The great and good of Mallorcan tourism gathered this week to talk about tourism. Talking shop at this talking shop at the Nixe Palace were, among others, senior representatives of Air Berlin, Globalia, Grupotel, Garden Hotels, Soller's Jumeirah, Melía, Palma 365, Barceló, the attractions association, Festival Park, shipping companies, banks, car-hire agencies ... . The whole tourism world and its wife were in Cala Major for Foro Turismo+.
So, what did the great and good have to say for themselves? There was a fair old amount of management-marketing semantic jargon, such as the need for "paradigm shifts" in terms of market segmentation to tackle the problem of seasonality (i.e. no tourists in winter) and in how the so-called complementary offer is perceived and perceives itself. This non-hotel sector now has to think of itself as the "specialised offer". Therefore, let's say, if you are a British bar, you must become specialised. Erm, isn't specialising in serving a British market already specialised? Or am I missing something? Just as, for instance, the aquarium specialises in being an aquarium.
New technologies were high on the agenda. They can enable paradigm shifts apparently. Rather than the gobbledegook, why not simply call a tweet a tweet? Mercifully, someone did. The point was made that a tweet can have more effect than an advertising campaign. Hallelujah, and with all due immodesty, they must have read what I have been saying for an age. Social media are so much part of the game now that the continuing and lamentable inability of the tourism ministry, tourism agency and others to get their social media acts together should be something drawing serious scrutiny of those in high places in these bodies. And talking of which, I am hearing that there are more rumblings within the ministry, where internal politicking under Martínez is pushing people to seek transfers.
The tourism agency - in paradigm shift mode itself - revealed that Mallorca and the Balearics need to make clear what makes the islands different. Such difference, beyond the summer tourism of sun and beach, is essential in promoting the segments of culture, gastronomy, blah, blah. Again, sorry, I've said this myself on many an occasion. These guys can talk to each other and state the bleeding obvious, but when and how are they going to effect this "difference"? The rest of the Med is pitching for the same off-season market with the same off-season products. There has to be a uniqueness and a supporting marketing campaign in order to establish this difference, whatever this might be, and therein lies the rub. There may well not be any difference.
The future, if there is one, for off-season tourism lies with sports. This is how Thomas Cook sees things at any rate. It has had success with its Ironman sponsorship, and this points a way forward. Possibly it does, but neither of the Ironmans in Alcúdia takes place in the off-season. They couldn't do because there wouldn't be the flights available. Or the hotels open. And were they to, it might unfortunately turn out to be the case that the weather decides to play tricks, churning up the sea or blowing a gale and rain into the faces of runners and cyclists. Nevertheless, off-season sports tourism requires, among other things, more golf courses. Again, maybe it does, but more golf courses run up against innumerable obstacles. Think Son Bacó in Campos (now being spoken about for the first time in some years), Son Bosc in Muro or Son Saletes in Sencelles. The fingers of doom belonging to GOB, to environmental reports, to island planning laws, to the impossibilities of political consensus point at each of them and are wagged with a telling "no".
Talking shop is a wonderful thing. One day they might just find that the shop is closed for business for good.
Index for October 2014
Airplane history in Mallorca - 30 October 2014
Airport privatisation - 17 October 2014
Alcúdia Fair - 4 October 2014
Balearics and state budget - 5 October 2014
Caja Madrid black cards - 16 October 2014
Calvia con Futuro - 19 October 2014
Can Picafort - 1 October 2014
Coronation Street in Mallorca - 13 October 2014
Croatia 365 vs. Palma 365 - 7 October 2014
Geographic centre of Mallorca - 14 October 2014
Halloween - 26 October 2014
Henry Waring and Albufera - 21 October 2014
Holiday lets: easing of regulations - 24 October 2014
Inca fairs - 18 October 2014
Insults - 25 October 2014
Mallorca's history in Catalan - 23 October 2014
Masonry - 28 October 2014
Operación Púnica and PP corruption - 29 October 2014
Podemos and future uncertainty - 6 October 2014
Podemos and UKIP - 15 October 2014
Processionary caterpillar spraying - 8 October 2014
Son Castelló industrial estate - 27 October 2014
Torrente 5 and Bert films - 2 October 2014
Tourism forum - 31 October 2014
Tourism organisation pre-regional government - 9 October 2014
Tourism planning and improvisation - 22 October 2014
Tourism promotion transferred to island councils - 20 October 2014
Transhotel - 10 October 2014
Trilingual teaching - 12 October 2014
Velodromes in Mallorca - 11 October 2014
Winter flights - 3 October 2014
So, what did the great and good have to say for themselves? There was a fair old amount of management-marketing semantic jargon, such as the need for "paradigm shifts" in terms of market segmentation to tackle the problem of seasonality (i.e. no tourists in winter) and in how the so-called complementary offer is perceived and perceives itself. This non-hotel sector now has to think of itself as the "specialised offer". Therefore, let's say, if you are a British bar, you must become specialised. Erm, isn't specialising in serving a British market already specialised? Or am I missing something? Just as, for instance, the aquarium specialises in being an aquarium.
New technologies were high on the agenda. They can enable paradigm shifts apparently. Rather than the gobbledegook, why not simply call a tweet a tweet? Mercifully, someone did. The point was made that a tweet can have more effect than an advertising campaign. Hallelujah, and with all due immodesty, they must have read what I have been saying for an age. Social media are so much part of the game now that the continuing and lamentable inability of the tourism ministry, tourism agency and others to get their social media acts together should be something drawing serious scrutiny of those in high places in these bodies. And talking of which, I am hearing that there are more rumblings within the ministry, where internal politicking under Martínez is pushing people to seek transfers.
The tourism agency - in paradigm shift mode itself - revealed that Mallorca and the Balearics need to make clear what makes the islands different. Such difference, beyond the summer tourism of sun and beach, is essential in promoting the segments of culture, gastronomy, blah, blah. Again, sorry, I've said this myself on many an occasion. These guys can talk to each other and state the bleeding obvious, but when and how are they going to effect this "difference"? The rest of the Med is pitching for the same off-season market with the same off-season products. There has to be a uniqueness and a supporting marketing campaign in order to establish this difference, whatever this might be, and therein lies the rub. There may well not be any difference.
The future, if there is one, for off-season tourism lies with sports. This is how Thomas Cook sees things at any rate. It has had success with its Ironman sponsorship, and this points a way forward. Possibly it does, but neither of the Ironmans in Alcúdia takes place in the off-season. They couldn't do because there wouldn't be the flights available. Or the hotels open. And were they to, it might unfortunately turn out to be the case that the weather decides to play tricks, churning up the sea or blowing a gale and rain into the faces of runners and cyclists. Nevertheless, off-season sports tourism requires, among other things, more golf courses. Again, maybe it does, but more golf courses run up against innumerable obstacles. Think Son Bacó in Campos (now being spoken about for the first time in some years), Son Bosc in Muro or Son Saletes in Sencelles. The fingers of doom belonging to GOB, to environmental reports, to island planning laws, to the impossibilities of political consensus point at each of them and are wagged with a telling "no".
Talking shop is a wonderful thing. One day they might just find that the shop is closed for business for good.
Index for October 2014
Airplane history in Mallorca - 30 October 2014
Airport privatisation - 17 October 2014
Alcúdia Fair - 4 October 2014
Balearics and state budget - 5 October 2014
Caja Madrid black cards - 16 October 2014
Calvia con Futuro - 19 October 2014
Can Picafort - 1 October 2014
Coronation Street in Mallorca - 13 October 2014
Croatia 365 vs. Palma 365 - 7 October 2014
Geographic centre of Mallorca - 14 October 2014
Halloween - 26 October 2014
Henry Waring and Albufera - 21 October 2014
Holiday lets: easing of regulations - 24 October 2014
Inca fairs - 18 October 2014
Insults - 25 October 2014
Mallorca's history in Catalan - 23 October 2014
Masonry - 28 October 2014
Operación Púnica and PP corruption - 29 October 2014
Podemos and future uncertainty - 6 October 2014
Podemos and UKIP - 15 October 2014
Processionary caterpillar spraying - 8 October 2014
Son Castelló industrial estate - 27 October 2014
Torrente 5 and Bert films - 2 October 2014
Tourism forum - 31 October 2014
Tourism organisation pre-regional government - 9 October 2014
Tourism planning and improvisation - 22 October 2014
Tourism promotion transferred to island councils - 20 October 2014
Transhotel - 10 October 2014
Trilingual teaching - 12 October 2014
Velodromes in Mallorca - 11 October 2014
Winter flights - 3 October 2014
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Bad Thursdays: Mallorca's November weather
The largest fair to be held in Mallorca is Inca's Dijous Bo. It is always held on the same Thursday (dijous) in November, one that falls more or less in the middle of the month. "Bo" means good. Almost inevitably though, the weather for Dijous Bo is less than good. It always appear to be grey when it takes place, and sometimes the weather is worse.
In 2001, Dijous Bo, which should have been held on 15 November, was cancelled. Some indoor events went ahead but the outdoor events - most of the fair therefore - were impossible. On the front cover of the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" for that day, there was a headline which simply said: "Freezing". The island was on emergency footing after a forecast for freak weather had been issued. The emergency meant no Dijous Bo. It was a bad Thursday, and a photo of heavy snow in the mountains the day before showed just how bad things were.
In the paper for that day before, a report said that wind, rain and snow were to return. The report was accurate. On the same page as this report was a headline which read: "Balearics ask Madrid to declare the region a disaster zone". And yet, the freezing weather hadn't yet caused the havoc that it was going to on that Wednesday. So why would the Balearics have been looking for the region to have been declared a disaster zone?
That was because of what had happened a few days before. On the Sunday (11 November), the headline informed us that the Balearics had been battered by biting winds and torrential rain. There was more to come on that Sunday. Mallorca was living through what has gone down in the island's weather legend as the big storm or the hurricane of 2001. Snow, high winds, flooding, trees uprooted, roofs torn off, roads impassable and subsequently in need of repair, two people dead. And when it looked as though the worst of the weather was over, on the Wednesday came the freezing conditions and even more snow.
If you read through the report on Sunday, 11 November, you will note that it says: "hard to believe that this time last week people were on the beaches and even in the sea". It is a report which will sound very familiar. Mallorca hasn't been battered by quite the same weather as it was in November 2001, but in November 2013, the sudden transformation from summer conditions to dreadful conditions has been similar to what happened in 2001. Dijous Bo, for which the weather this year was rainy, went ahead without any problem. Had it been a day later, things might have been different. The rain was torrential, while in the mountains, where the temperatures are lower, the snow fell.
One of the more remarkable aspects about the bad weather that Mallorca has just been suffering is the amount of surprise that has been expressed. It does perhaps show the power of social media that photos of snow in the mountains have been met with incredulity and even suggestions that the photos were fake. Those who are unfamiliar with Mallorca's weather probably would find the photos hard to comprehend. But were they to consult weather records, they would comprehend an awful lot more.
The rainfall data for the Albufera weather station gives you an idea. These data are from 1987 to the current time. The average rainfall in November makes it the second wettest month of the year. October is wetter, but its slightly higher average is skewed by what occurred in 1990 - the great flood. Nearly 400mm of rain fell in October 1990. The second wettest (1994) registered 277mm, also in October.
When the records for this November are totted up, it may well prove to have been the wettest November since 1987. It will therefore top 2011 and 2012, which are in positions one and two in terms of rainfall, and in both years, when colder weather pushed in as well, in the mountains there was snow in November.
The exceptionally warm weather of more than a week ago created something of a false impression. With highs nudging the 30 degrees mark, these were far from normal. In the past few years, from 2005, the highest temperatures had been in 2009 and 2006 (26 degrees), and, astonishingly enough, in 2006 this was on 25 November. A year later, on 18 November 2007, there was a record low of 1.5C.
All this goes to show, as if of course we needed any reminding, that weather is unpredictable, and November in Mallorca can be very unpredictable. The high temperatures earlier in the month had many clutching at a winter-sun-tourism straw only to find that a few days later, the straw was buried under snow or had been washed away by a deluge of quite biblical proportions. It is this unpredictability which is at the heart of why the season ends when it does end. We should all admit that this is why it ends when it does end, and if we can't admit this, then we should take a look at the weather data, and if we still need some more convincing we should look at those reports from 2001.
In 2001, Dijous Bo, which should have been held on 15 November, was cancelled. Some indoor events went ahead but the outdoor events - most of the fair therefore - were impossible. On the front cover of the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" for that day, there was a headline which simply said: "Freezing". The island was on emergency footing after a forecast for freak weather had been issued. The emergency meant no Dijous Bo. It was a bad Thursday, and a photo of heavy snow in the mountains the day before showed just how bad things were.
In the paper for that day before, a report said that wind, rain and snow were to return. The report was accurate. On the same page as this report was a headline which read: "Balearics ask Madrid to declare the region a disaster zone". And yet, the freezing weather hadn't yet caused the havoc that it was going to on that Wednesday. So why would the Balearics have been looking for the region to have been declared a disaster zone?
That was because of what had happened a few days before. On the Sunday (11 November), the headline informed us that the Balearics had been battered by biting winds and torrential rain. There was more to come on that Sunday. Mallorca was living through what has gone down in the island's weather legend as the big storm or the hurricane of 2001. Snow, high winds, flooding, trees uprooted, roofs torn off, roads impassable and subsequently in need of repair, two people dead. And when it looked as though the worst of the weather was over, on the Wednesday came the freezing conditions and even more snow.
If you read through the report on Sunday, 11 November, you will note that it says: "hard to believe that this time last week people were on the beaches and even in the sea". It is a report which will sound very familiar. Mallorca hasn't been battered by quite the same weather as it was in November 2001, but in November 2013, the sudden transformation from summer conditions to dreadful conditions has been similar to what happened in 2001. Dijous Bo, for which the weather this year was rainy, went ahead without any problem. Had it been a day later, things might have been different. The rain was torrential, while in the mountains, where the temperatures are lower, the snow fell.
One of the more remarkable aspects about the bad weather that Mallorca has just been suffering is the amount of surprise that has been expressed. It does perhaps show the power of social media that photos of snow in the mountains have been met with incredulity and even suggestions that the photos were fake. Those who are unfamiliar with Mallorca's weather probably would find the photos hard to comprehend. But were they to consult weather records, they would comprehend an awful lot more.
The rainfall data for the Albufera weather station gives you an idea. These data are from 1987 to the current time. The average rainfall in November makes it the second wettest month of the year. October is wetter, but its slightly higher average is skewed by what occurred in 1990 - the great flood. Nearly 400mm of rain fell in October 1990. The second wettest (1994) registered 277mm, also in October.
When the records for this November are totted up, it may well prove to have been the wettest November since 1987. It will therefore top 2011 and 2012, which are in positions one and two in terms of rainfall, and in both years, when colder weather pushed in as well, in the mountains there was snow in November.
The exceptionally warm weather of more than a week ago created something of a false impression. With highs nudging the 30 degrees mark, these were far from normal. In the past few years, from 2005, the highest temperatures had been in 2009 and 2006 (26 degrees), and, astonishingly enough, in 2006 this was on 25 November. A year later, on 18 November 2007, there was a record low of 1.5C.
All this goes to show, as if of course we needed any reminding, that weather is unpredictable, and November in Mallorca can be very unpredictable. The high temperatures earlier in the month had many clutching at a winter-sun-tourism straw only to find that a few days later, the straw was buried under snow or had been washed away by a deluge of quite biblical proportions. It is this unpredictability which is at the heart of why the season ends when it does end. We should all admit that this is why it ends when it does end, and if we can't admit this, then we should take a look at the weather data, and if we still need some more convincing we should look at those reports from 2001.
Thursday, November 07, 2013
Walking In A Winter Wonted Land
In Calas de Mallorca the promotional effort there goes under a web portal title of the "window on nature". In Puerto Pollensa they may or may not promote birdwatching routes as a way of enticing the winter tourist.
Birdwatching, walking, nature, cycling. How familiar these all are. And to these, one can add other old chestnuts, such as meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) tourism and even a spot of messing-around-on-water nautical tourism in the off-season (though mainly not when the season is off). Calvia town hall, in a burst of activity, has been putting forward its ideas "of MICE and sailing men" and indeed for something known as a "European winter". All good stuff no doubt and all good stuff that hasn't been heard many times before, except, that is, a European winter, whatever this might be.
Go back over the years and you will find similar initiatives. Alcúdia has certainly had its. Walking, cycling, some good nosh, you know the sort of thing I mean by now. And knowing the sort of thing is of course part of the problem. Everyone has similar ideas and everyone seeks to promote similar things. Where's the difference? The answer is that there isn't any.
Take a look around at what other parts of Spain are doing and you will find much of the same. Even Tenerife, winter sun destination that it is, has its walking, culture, nature and all the rest. Sad to report for Mallorca that Tenerife manages to beat Mallorca both in winter sun terms and its natural environment. It has a serious mountain not a piddling one which is no higher than Ben Nevis; it is the volcanic Mount Teide, the tallest summit on Spanish territory.
Mallorca's summer, sun-and-beach tourism is not, in truth, something which demands massive marketing effort. Because Mallorca and sun-and-beach are all but synonymous and because this association has existed for as long as it has, and in such a reliable way, then the island more or less promotes itself. There may not be a great deal of difference, if any, with the sun or the beach in Mallorca compared with all manner of other places, but this doesn't fundamentally matter. All that does matter is the knowledge that there is sun and there is beach. There isn't a need to address tourist perceptions, because their perceptions (of the sun and the beach) are clear enough, except where there may need to be some persuasion to rid tourists of any negative perceptions that are unrelated to the core Mallorcan sun-and-beach brand.
Winter in Mallorca is the complete opposite. Mallorca isn't synonymous with anything in winter; not, that is, in a way which makes it any different to various other destinations. And within Mallorca the various resorts and towns are also not synonymous with anything in winter. If they want to be, then they have to come up with something which sets them apart, and it is an absence of a unique selling point which makes it difficult to do so and which means that they all end up touting essentially the same products.
And it is this range of products which is part of the problem when it comes to the tourism agency or town halls embarking on some marketing initiative designed to combat seasonality and to promote winter in Mallorca. They all opt to present products. When do they ever opt instead to engage in marketing which seeks to alter perceptions and to persuade? When do they ever try and get into the minds of potential winter tourists?
Because there isn't an array of mega theme parks or what have you in Mallorca, the winter tourism offer will always rely on a predictable range of products. It may be a very nice book that has been produced in Colonia Sant Jordi, but is this really going to have much of an impact? One would doubt it.
Good luck to the individual town halls and resorts for making efforts to promote themselves out of season, but what this results in is a fragmented marketing effort of essentially indistinguishable products which are merely presented to the market on a sort of take it or leave it basis. Mallorca in winter has to be marketed as one entity, and a strong identity has to be created, one that is separate to the summer identity and that marks Mallorca out from other winter destinations. Just serving up the same old products is never going to work.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Is Religion Mallorca's Alternative Tourism?
Religious tourism is the oldest form of tourism. It is not, in its original manifestations, what we would call tourism nowadays, but pilgrimages were a type of tourism. They still are, and nowhere in Spain receives more pilgrims than Santiago de Compostela. Pilgrims, though, are only one facet of religious tourism. Indeed, it is not necessary for a tourist to be a pilgrim or in any way religious in order to take part in and to enjoy religious tourism. The very word "religious" may turn many visitors off, but religious tourism embraces several different elements. Spirituality is or can be one, but there are others - history, culture, architecture, music, literature, folklore, ethnology and the weird niche known as "dark" tourism (cemeteries, atrocities and other such stuff).
On 28 March 1515 Teresa of Ávila was born. She became Saint Teresa of Jesus. She is considered an important figure in the history of the Catholic Church and in Spanish history. A national commission may be established in order to draw up events to commemorate the 500th anniversary of her birth in 2015. Meantime, the tourism minister for the region of Castile and León has already announced a tourism "product" related to Saint Teresa and one that will include collaboration with four other regions of Spain.
On 24 November 1713 Miguel Joseph Serra was born in the Mallorcan town of Petra. He became Father Junipero Serra, an important figure in Mallorcan history and in the history of California. 2013 has been Serra's "year". The climax of this year, one guesses, will be on or around the twenty-fourth of next month. One guesses, but what has really been made of the 300th anniversary of the birth of this significant person?
While the Ávila celebration would clearly be much grander in scope and would focus on a very much better known religious figure, a fear might be that a tourism product would be mainly or only religious. Similarly, one fears, it is only the religion and the missionary efforts of Father Junipero that have dominated thinking regarding his anniversary.
Increasingly, I have come to question the notion of niching tourism products which are alternatives to the Mallorcan mainstream of sun and beach. The marketing mantra is that of niching, but a problem with niching is that it establishes a limit in terms of scope and appeal. Some niches do reasonably well by concentrating on a single product. Cycling is a case in point, but far from all cyclists are interested only in cycling. There are examples of businesses in Mallorca which promote essentially niche products, including cycling, but which offer a far wider experience. And they are right to do so.
Religious tourism as a niche is not or should not be solely about religion. If it is, then it comes with an in-built limit. To take Father Junipero, it may come as a shock to some Mallorcans to know how little his name means anything outside Mallorca and California, but had there been a genuine tourism "product" built around his anniversary and to be maintained going forward, then he would be but only part of a vastly bigger product. Mallorca's religious history is far from unimportant but it is a history whose appeal lies with the island's fabulous cathedral, churches, sanctuaries and hermitages. And these fabulous buildings are to be found everywhere, in every town on the island, in every town with a different landscape and a different story to tell, in every town with varying other interests, be they wildlife, gastronomy, wine, agriculture and fiestas and fairs.
The celebration of Saint Teresa would envisage a "route" that stretches as far as Seville. It will be a most interesting route, but it will be a long route and one that may neglect more secular interests. Mallorca as a religious tourism destination has one huge advantage over such a route. It is small, compact. And within this small and compact island there is masses of religion to be seen and enjoyed alongside everything else on the island. It would not be called religious tourism because the term would be a turn-off for too many. It would be The Mallorca Experience, the collective experience of all the different niches and one that is set apart from sun and beach because in winter Mallorca cannot compete on sun and beach.
Niching has its place, of course it does, but perhaps it has dominated thinking too much. It has become marketing religion, but real religion, marketed as a collective Mallorcan whole, could form an answer to prayers to address the drought and famine of winter tourism.
Friday, October 04, 2013
Reliving Mallorca's Sea Of Experiences
Being an observer of matters Mallorcan can be potentially damaging to one's psychological well-being. One feels that one is constantly reliving a previous life or several lives. Haven't I, we, been here before? Once, twice or several times? What experiences have we had on the way that now come to be experienced once more? Can it be that we are tossed forever on a sea of experiences, washed ashore momentarily, only to be pulled back into the infinity of the sea and recycled by the waves of unrelenting repetition?
Right, well, enough of this flowery stuff. Let's get to the point. Hands up those of you who remember something called the "Sea of Experiences" (or "Mar de Experiencias" to give it its Spanish title)? You don't remember? Then let me remind you. This sea was launched in June last year. Mallorca's hoteliers were pretty pleased with it, as it was their idea. Along came the odd member of the regional government (though I'm unsure if the tourism minister was able to make it) and mayors from towns with a particular interest in tourism plus of course a whole load of hotel sorts. They all gathered at a golf club, were engrossed by the launch of the sea, had something to eat and then ... went home I suppose.
The "Sea of Experiences" is a document in which all aspects of off-season tourism activities are detailed. And it is a very detailed document, covering the usual suspects of golf, cycling, hiking, gastronomy, etc. At the time that the sea was launched, my reaction was ... "And?". I had rather hoped that the sea would contain some insights as to how it was going to break the vicious cycle of seasonality. It didn't. It was a document bursting with activities, names and addresses, routes for this and routes for that, and we are now being reminded of its existence.
The hoteliers had clearly found this document lurking in a drawer somewhere and thought it might be a good idea to bring it out in order to wave it in front of some other hoteliers and the man from Air Berlin who's now in charge of Spain and Portugal, Paul Verhagen. So, life was relived the other day. The sea of experiences was being experienced once again.
To be strictly accurate, the sea wasn't just sprung on the man from Air Berlin. He did have prior warning. So much so that Air Berlin will be participating in promoting the sea ("Ein Meer von Erfahrungen", one guesses), which is very nice of Air Berlin. It has shedloads of passengers who pore over the contents of its in-flight magazine plus further shedloads who subscribe to its e-magazine in addition to those who follow it on social media. Well over three million people, it would seem, and all of them likely targets for this array of out-of-season experiences in Mallorca.
Air Berlin may have been tinkering with its routes but it does account for some 50% of passenger traffic through Son Sant Joan in winter. It has had a special relationship with Mallorca that goes back to when it was founded in 1978 and it is the only airline which appears to be willing to make a great effort to bring people to Mallorca in winter.
Talking with the hoteliers and embarking on a campaign with them (the "Sea of Experiences") is intended, it is hoped, to address the all-too-familiar chicken and egg of airlines don't fly because hotels aren't open or hotels don't open because airlines don't fly. So the campaign would seem to be a positive step in the right direction, if only for German visitors.
The airlines do hold the key. But if they fly (and there is a wish to get other airlines on-board in a similar way to Air Berlin), they have to know that passengers will be flying to somewhere that is fully prepared to accommodate them.
The campaign sounds good, but are there not some fairly obvious points to be made? Air Berlin has been flying in winter to Mallorca for years. Yes, it has cut some of its winter routes but its flights have been and are numerous and regular. Has Air Berlin not been been promoting Mallorca previously? Where have those passengers who have been flying in winter been staying? In other words, for all the good intentions of the campaign, what will it achieve that Air Berlin hasn't already been achieving? Bring more German tourists is doubtless the answer. More but how many more? I wish them well.
Right, well, enough of this flowery stuff. Let's get to the point. Hands up those of you who remember something called the "Sea of Experiences" (or "Mar de Experiencias" to give it its Spanish title)? You don't remember? Then let me remind you. This sea was launched in June last year. Mallorca's hoteliers were pretty pleased with it, as it was their idea. Along came the odd member of the regional government (though I'm unsure if the tourism minister was able to make it) and mayors from towns with a particular interest in tourism plus of course a whole load of hotel sorts. They all gathered at a golf club, were engrossed by the launch of the sea, had something to eat and then ... went home I suppose.
The "Sea of Experiences" is a document in which all aspects of off-season tourism activities are detailed. And it is a very detailed document, covering the usual suspects of golf, cycling, hiking, gastronomy, etc. At the time that the sea was launched, my reaction was ... "And?". I had rather hoped that the sea would contain some insights as to how it was going to break the vicious cycle of seasonality. It didn't. It was a document bursting with activities, names and addresses, routes for this and routes for that, and we are now being reminded of its existence.
The hoteliers had clearly found this document lurking in a drawer somewhere and thought it might be a good idea to bring it out in order to wave it in front of some other hoteliers and the man from Air Berlin who's now in charge of Spain and Portugal, Paul Verhagen. So, life was relived the other day. The sea of experiences was being experienced once again.
To be strictly accurate, the sea wasn't just sprung on the man from Air Berlin. He did have prior warning. So much so that Air Berlin will be participating in promoting the sea ("Ein Meer von Erfahrungen", one guesses), which is very nice of Air Berlin. It has shedloads of passengers who pore over the contents of its in-flight magazine plus further shedloads who subscribe to its e-magazine in addition to those who follow it on social media. Well over three million people, it would seem, and all of them likely targets for this array of out-of-season experiences in Mallorca.
Air Berlin may have been tinkering with its routes but it does account for some 50% of passenger traffic through Son Sant Joan in winter. It has had a special relationship with Mallorca that goes back to when it was founded in 1978 and it is the only airline which appears to be willing to make a great effort to bring people to Mallorca in winter.
Talking with the hoteliers and embarking on a campaign with them (the "Sea of Experiences") is intended, it is hoped, to address the all-too-familiar chicken and egg of airlines don't fly because hotels aren't open or hotels don't open because airlines don't fly. So the campaign would seem to be a positive step in the right direction, if only for German visitors.
The airlines do hold the key. But if they fly (and there is a wish to get other airlines on-board in a similar way to Air Berlin), they have to know that passengers will be flying to somewhere that is fully prepared to accommodate them.
The campaign sounds good, but are there not some fairly obvious points to be made? Air Berlin has been flying in winter to Mallorca for years. Yes, it has cut some of its winter routes but its flights have been and are numerous and regular. Has Air Berlin not been been promoting Mallorca previously? Where have those passengers who have been flying in winter been staying? In other words, for all the good intentions of the campaign, what will it achieve that Air Berlin hasn't already been achieving? Bring more German tourists is doubtless the answer. More but how many more? I wish them well.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Ghosts Of Tourism Past: Adapt to survive
You know those little tubs of butter you get, the ones that might typically be served with a full or less-than-full English and which are, if only just out of the fridge, rock hard and cause your toast to crumble as you desperately struggle to spread their solid but very mini mass. Do you know how much they cost? Not to you as a punter but to a bar owner? It would probably depend upon supplier and probably also on any "arrangements" that exist, but the regular cost is eight centimos. Only a few years ago, seven or eight years ago perhaps, the cost was less. The little tubs then cost two centimos.
Fortunately, not all costs have risen as dramatically as the little tubs of butter have. But the increase in their cost acts as a reminder of the saying that if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves. For the bar owner, the added six centimos over the past few years, multiplied by the number of little tubs that have found themselves on the ends of knives of customers trying hard to extract their content, will amount to a pretty penny or several.
The increased cost will be factored in and either absorbed or added to the price of the breakfast, and if it is the latter, then the mumblings begin. Things aren't as cheap as they used to be. The bar owner, however, has to look after the pennies (or the centimos). Were he not to, then the pounds (or the euros) would not look after themselves.
Strangely enough, things aren't as cheap as they used to be, but things not being as cheap as they once were or as cheap as some might wish them to be is of course one of the regularly voiced reasons for why there is a malaise that afflicts Mallorca's tourism.
Despite the headlining good news, or apparent good news, that comes from the summer's high occupancy rates and high air passenger numbers, there is a refusal to believe the good news, and one reason for not believing it is that tourists don't spend as they did because everything is so expensive, a perception that does really require defining, as being expensive (or cheap) is all relative.
The only thing that needs to be known is that everything did indeed used to be cheaper. Had everything not been cheap, then there would not now be the tourism that Mallorca has. It was tourism founded on low cost, on dirt cheapness. It allowed there to be what there is today.
Looking to the past is instructive in explaining how we get to a position in the present, but the constant reflection on the past gets us only so far. The standard complaints about how Mallorca's tourism model operates today have been with us for years; these complaints being prices, low spend, shorter summer seasons, lack of winter tourism, all-inclusives. Yet somehow the past suggests that they are all relatively new phenomena, when none of them are. The past conjures up some golden age, the vision of which has to be tempered by, among other things, the fact that total tourism was significantly lower. (It should be noted, for example, that between 1993 and 2008 the total number of tourists arriving in Mallorca rose by 85%.)
There are occasions when I feel as though I am winter-tourismed-out, all-inclusived-out, lower-spent-out. Just on all-inclusives, and as an example, over seven years ago (in July 2006), I concluded an article on all-inclusives by saying: "The AI has changed the nature of the market. It is for the market to make an adjustment to it. Ultimately, if the AI and other factors (such as lower spend) cause a fall in demand, then the supply (of out-of-hotel facilities) has to alter. If this means less, then so be it. This is a harsh appraisal, but I think it is a realistic one."
The image of a tourism past keeps getting in the way. It is one in which there were no all-inclusives (and there weren't - not as we know them - until the '90s) and in which everywhere was supposedly packed, but with very many fewer tourists than today. Tourism's present is not like its past and nor will its future be like its past. Though obstacles to remedies are great, there may be remedies to alleviate the absence of current winter tourism, one which, in sheer numbers, has been greater this century than in the mythical golden age. But otherwise tourism present and tourism future has to forget the past and to adapt. The day before I was told about the cost of the little tubs of butter, I spoke with a partner in a tourist business which has had a highly successful summer. The reasons why? Many, but key are marketing, service and listening to the customer and changing accordingly.
Fortunately, not all costs have risen as dramatically as the little tubs of butter have. But the increase in their cost acts as a reminder of the saying that if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves. For the bar owner, the added six centimos over the past few years, multiplied by the number of little tubs that have found themselves on the ends of knives of customers trying hard to extract their content, will amount to a pretty penny or several.
The increased cost will be factored in and either absorbed or added to the price of the breakfast, and if it is the latter, then the mumblings begin. Things aren't as cheap as they used to be. The bar owner, however, has to look after the pennies (or the centimos). Were he not to, then the pounds (or the euros) would not look after themselves.
Strangely enough, things aren't as cheap as they used to be, but things not being as cheap as they once were or as cheap as some might wish them to be is of course one of the regularly voiced reasons for why there is a malaise that afflicts Mallorca's tourism.
Despite the headlining good news, or apparent good news, that comes from the summer's high occupancy rates and high air passenger numbers, there is a refusal to believe the good news, and one reason for not believing it is that tourists don't spend as they did because everything is so expensive, a perception that does really require defining, as being expensive (or cheap) is all relative.
The only thing that needs to be known is that everything did indeed used to be cheaper. Had everything not been cheap, then there would not now be the tourism that Mallorca has. It was tourism founded on low cost, on dirt cheapness. It allowed there to be what there is today.
Looking to the past is instructive in explaining how we get to a position in the present, but the constant reflection on the past gets us only so far. The standard complaints about how Mallorca's tourism model operates today have been with us for years; these complaints being prices, low spend, shorter summer seasons, lack of winter tourism, all-inclusives. Yet somehow the past suggests that they are all relatively new phenomena, when none of them are. The past conjures up some golden age, the vision of which has to be tempered by, among other things, the fact that total tourism was significantly lower. (It should be noted, for example, that between 1993 and 2008 the total number of tourists arriving in Mallorca rose by 85%.)
There are occasions when I feel as though I am winter-tourismed-out, all-inclusived-out, lower-spent-out. Just on all-inclusives, and as an example, over seven years ago (in July 2006), I concluded an article on all-inclusives by saying: "The AI has changed the nature of the market. It is for the market to make an adjustment to it. Ultimately, if the AI and other factors (such as lower spend) cause a fall in demand, then the supply (of out-of-hotel facilities) has to alter. If this means less, then so be it. This is a harsh appraisal, but I think it is a realistic one."
The image of a tourism past keeps getting in the way. It is one in which there were no all-inclusives (and there weren't - not as we know them - until the '90s) and in which everywhere was supposedly packed, but with very many fewer tourists than today. Tourism's present is not like its past and nor will its future be like its past. Though obstacles to remedies are great, there may be remedies to alleviate the absence of current winter tourism, one which, in sheer numbers, has been greater this century than in the mythical golden age. But otherwise tourism present and tourism future has to forget the past and to adapt. The day before I was told about the cost of the little tubs of butter, I spoke with a partner in a tourist business which has had a highly successful summer. The reasons why? Many, but key are marketing, service and listening to the customer and changing accordingly.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
The Population Element In Winter Tourism
Today being the 21st of September, one would expect summer to have finished and autumn to have begun. Apparently though, autumn will actually begin tomorrow evening as this is when the equinox actually occurs. Be this as it may, autumn isn't a season of great consequence in Mallorca. It happens, of course it happens. There is a fall, there is a rapid shortening of days, there are mists, there are dewy morns, but Mallorca's seasons are divided into two - summer and winter. The summer tourism season and the winter tourism season. One that is vibrant and the other which is anything but.
The deathly winter tourism season, which begins when the summer season finishes at the end of October and so coincides with the celebration of the dead at the beginning of November, has long been a matter that has inspired a great wailing in the land. Go back to the late 1960s and there were efforts to get the summer season to extend as far as the end of September. It was a different time then of course, one when air travel was in far from the liberalised state that it now is and when there was typically only ever one holiday a year. The season was short.
Though there are recollections of busy winter tourism, the facts don't really back these up. In the seventies and eighties for example, the volume of total tourism was much lower than at present. It was more spread out, but the fact is that there have in the very recent past been more tourists in winter than there ever have been. More so certainly than in the 1980s, a decade when the first regional government and first tourism ministry addressed what it saw as the problem of winter tourism and seasonality.
The plan the first government introduced was far from a success. A measure of its lack of success can be understood when one considers that remedies for addressing seasonality are much as they were in the '80s - golf, cycling, and what have you. Though many would dispute the fact that there is now greater winter tourism, they do so by considering primarily British hotel-based tourism. Nowadays, as so few hotels are open, the winter tourism is based on private accommodation in ways that existed only minimally in the 1980s. There are hotels open, but a goodly amount of Mallorca's winter tourism is now residential and also German.
Regardless of these facts, it is undeniably the case that mostly all resorts in Mallorca close down. Whether British, German or other nationality tourism, the resorts are mostly stripped of their visitors, especially those who would stay in hotels. The winter tourism debate, therefore, centres on this resort absence and on the vast amount of hotel real estate which is empty and unproductive for so much of the year.
The debate has been going on for years. It has been going on but it never moves on. The regional government believes it now has a plan to address seasonality, but it hasn't been totally clear as to what it entails. It has said that we must wait a couple of years to see the benefits. Few people are holding their breath.
The "Majorca Daily Bulletin" wants to initiate a campaign to activate this dormant winter state of affairs. Through Facebook it has initiated considerable discussion regarding the winter malaise and what might be done to address it. Though sceptical as to whether anything meaningful can be done (and by meaningful outcome I would suggest a doubling of current numbers of winter tourists over a ten-year period), I back this and have done so in the paper.
But there is one aspect in the winter tourism debate which I fear is overlooked. It is that to do with the size of the British resident population on Mallorca. Though figures differ, the official one - that of the regional government - calculates this population as being around 16,000 or 17,000. A question asked about Mallorca's lack of winter tourism is why somewhere such as Benidorm can perform better in winter. I fancy that British resident population has something to do with this. The Alicante region, of which Benidorm is a part, has a British resident population at least twice the size of Mallorca's. For airlines, therefore, there is a base market to be served, one on which tourists can piggyback. Alicante airport receives more flights from Britain in the winter than Palma does.
On the Costa del Sol the British population is greater still, approximately six or seven times the size of Mallorca's. Malaga airport benefits from even more flights than Alicante.
It might be a simplistic way of looking at the issue, but airlines make decisions based on established markets. Residents are established, tourists are not. If Mallorca wants to attract more winter tourists (from Britain or indeed elsewhere), it needs established markets that will persuade airlines. Mallorca's lack of winter tourism isn't a tourism issue per se. It is one to do with populations.
The deathly winter tourism season, which begins when the summer season finishes at the end of October and so coincides with the celebration of the dead at the beginning of November, has long been a matter that has inspired a great wailing in the land. Go back to the late 1960s and there were efforts to get the summer season to extend as far as the end of September. It was a different time then of course, one when air travel was in far from the liberalised state that it now is and when there was typically only ever one holiday a year. The season was short.
Though there are recollections of busy winter tourism, the facts don't really back these up. In the seventies and eighties for example, the volume of total tourism was much lower than at present. It was more spread out, but the fact is that there have in the very recent past been more tourists in winter than there ever have been. More so certainly than in the 1980s, a decade when the first regional government and first tourism ministry addressed what it saw as the problem of winter tourism and seasonality.
The plan the first government introduced was far from a success. A measure of its lack of success can be understood when one considers that remedies for addressing seasonality are much as they were in the '80s - golf, cycling, and what have you. Though many would dispute the fact that there is now greater winter tourism, they do so by considering primarily British hotel-based tourism. Nowadays, as so few hotels are open, the winter tourism is based on private accommodation in ways that existed only minimally in the 1980s. There are hotels open, but a goodly amount of Mallorca's winter tourism is now residential and also German.
Regardless of these facts, it is undeniably the case that mostly all resorts in Mallorca close down. Whether British, German or other nationality tourism, the resorts are mostly stripped of their visitors, especially those who would stay in hotels. The winter tourism debate, therefore, centres on this resort absence and on the vast amount of hotel real estate which is empty and unproductive for so much of the year.
The debate has been going on for years. It has been going on but it never moves on. The regional government believes it now has a plan to address seasonality, but it hasn't been totally clear as to what it entails. It has said that we must wait a couple of years to see the benefits. Few people are holding their breath.
The "Majorca Daily Bulletin" wants to initiate a campaign to activate this dormant winter state of affairs. Through Facebook it has initiated considerable discussion regarding the winter malaise and what might be done to address it. Though sceptical as to whether anything meaningful can be done (and by meaningful outcome I would suggest a doubling of current numbers of winter tourists over a ten-year period), I back this and have done so in the paper.
But there is one aspect in the winter tourism debate which I fear is overlooked. It is that to do with the size of the British resident population on Mallorca. Though figures differ, the official one - that of the regional government - calculates this population as being around 16,000 or 17,000. A question asked about Mallorca's lack of winter tourism is why somewhere such as Benidorm can perform better in winter. I fancy that British resident population has something to do with this. The Alicante region, of which Benidorm is a part, has a British resident population at least twice the size of Mallorca's. For airlines, therefore, there is a base market to be served, one on which tourists can piggyback. Alicante airport receives more flights from Britain in the winter than Palma does.
On the Costa del Sol the British population is greater still, approximately six or seven times the size of Mallorca's. Malaga airport benefits from even more flights than Alicante.
It might be a simplistic way of looking at the issue, but airlines make decisions based on established markets. Residents are established, tourists are not. If Mallorca wants to attract more winter tourists (from Britain or indeed elsewhere), it needs established markets that will persuade airlines. Mallorca's lack of winter tourism isn't a tourism issue per se. It is one to do with populations.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Neither One Thing Nor The Other: Winter tourism
Did you know that Mallorca is a "ni-ni" destination? Not a "no-no" but a "ni-ni", pronounced knee-knee. "Ni" is Spanish for neither and for nor, as in neither one thing nor the other. Mallorca is "ni-ni" because from autumn to spring it has neither flights nor hotels open.
This is a slight exaggeration, one of licence being taken with the "ni" word. You do have to be careful in Mallorca when it comes to exaggerated negatives, even if they are intended to be in jest, as Sid Lowe can testify to, having once suggested that Real Mallorca had no fans. So there will be those who doubtless take umbrage at the "ni-ni" negativity and point to all the "sí-sí" that flows through Mallorca's wintry tourism veins. Let's just settle, shall we, for the fact that there are neither sufficient numbers of flights nor sufficient numbers of hotels open in the off-season. And also settle, therefore, for the fact that neither (or "ni") are there sufficient numbers of tourists.
The degrees of seasonality and of tourist concentration into the three months of July to September have been reported on by the national Institute for Touristic Studies (IET). It has revealed that, in 2012, the Balearic Islands received over half of all their annual number of tourists during these key summer months: 52.5%, if you want precision. This percentage shows that seasonality is far more acute in the Balearics than any other essentially tourist region of Spain. You may be unsurprised to learn this, but you will probably be shocked by just how acute the seasonality is. By contrast, for example, the Canaries receive only 23.6% of those islands' annual tourists between July and September. Nationally, Spain plays host to 39.5% of its yearly tourist visitors in the summer, a figure that Andalusia's summer tourism corresponds with. In the Balearics, the figure is, therefore, 13% above the national average.
Seasonality in the Balearics does obscure the complete picture of the islands' tourism. The archipelago ranks second behind Catalonia in terms of total annual tourism, slightly above the Canaries, where the annual figure just edges over the 10 million mark; the Balearics received 10.4 million tourists in 2012. But when more than five million of these tourists are coming over a three-month period, you get what we all know exists, a highly unbalanced tourism economy.
The Balearics are certainly not alone in facing a problem with seasonality and with facing issues pertaining to flights. In the Canaries, and this might sound strange, the lack of flights is in fact more of an issue in summer. Each of the main tourism regions of Spain has its own specific requirements and in the Balearics, each of the islands has its own specific problems. In Ibiza, for instance, one of its issues is that its summer tourism is so heavily skewed towards a youthful market; the island craves more of the family market that Mallorca can draw on.
Inevitably, whenever the S-word rears its ugly head, there is a casting around for villains to blame and for suggested solutions which, equally inevitably, are never acted upon. "Hosteltur" Magazine recently listed its own seven strategies for tackling seasonality. This magnificent seven included ones specific to the Balearics, one of them - conversion and modernisation of hotels, such as is occurring in Magalluf - which will come to nothing unless there are more winter flights. Calvià's mayor admits as much. So does the president of the Balearics hotel chains association. Others include a concentration on the German market, because the Germans are apparently the only ones who will travel at times other than the summer, a conclusion that may have something to do with the fact that the German market is far better served by flights in winter than other markets, begging the question as to whether this willingness to travel in the off-season is a chicken or an egg.
A further strategy, one advocated most strongly in Menorca, is to make it possible for social-security payments on behalf of employees taken on out of season to be reclaimed. It is a variant on a theme of tax breaks that has been advanced for as long as the seasonality problem has been recognised. It seems so obvious that it is staggering that it has never been tried. As the Menorcan hoteliers point out, the loss of governmental revenue would be offset by reductions to unemployment benefit payments and by increased revenue from IVA.
The seemingly simple solution of incentives, be they through social security or through AENA suspending landing charges for the winter season, is surely one worth giving a go. If not, Mallorca will continue to be "ni-ni" and no-no-no. No flights. No hotels open. No tourists.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
This is a slight exaggeration, one of licence being taken with the "ni" word. You do have to be careful in Mallorca when it comes to exaggerated negatives, even if they are intended to be in jest, as Sid Lowe can testify to, having once suggested that Real Mallorca had no fans. So there will be those who doubtless take umbrage at the "ni-ni" negativity and point to all the "sí-sí" that flows through Mallorca's wintry tourism veins. Let's just settle, shall we, for the fact that there are neither sufficient numbers of flights nor sufficient numbers of hotels open in the off-season. And also settle, therefore, for the fact that neither (or "ni") are there sufficient numbers of tourists.
The degrees of seasonality and of tourist concentration into the three months of July to September have been reported on by the national Institute for Touristic Studies (IET). It has revealed that, in 2012, the Balearic Islands received over half of all their annual number of tourists during these key summer months: 52.5%, if you want precision. This percentage shows that seasonality is far more acute in the Balearics than any other essentially tourist region of Spain. You may be unsurprised to learn this, but you will probably be shocked by just how acute the seasonality is. By contrast, for example, the Canaries receive only 23.6% of those islands' annual tourists between July and September. Nationally, Spain plays host to 39.5% of its yearly tourist visitors in the summer, a figure that Andalusia's summer tourism corresponds with. In the Balearics, the figure is, therefore, 13% above the national average.
Seasonality in the Balearics does obscure the complete picture of the islands' tourism. The archipelago ranks second behind Catalonia in terms of total annual tourism, slightly above the Canaries, where the annual figure just edges over the 10 million mark; the Balearics received 10.4 million tourists in 2012. But when more than five million of these tourists are coming over a three-month period, you get what we all know exists, a highly unbalanced tourism economy.
The Balearics are certainly not alone in facing a problem with seasonality and with facing issues pertaining to flights. In the Canaries, and this might sound strange, the lack of flights is in fact more of an issue in summer. Each of the main tourism regions of Spain has its own specific requirements and in the Balearics, each of the islands has its own specific problems. In Ibiza, for instance, one of its issues is that its summer tourism is so heavily skewed towards a youthful market; the island craves more of the family market that Mallorca can draw on.
Inevitably, whenever the S-word rears its ugly head, there is a casting around for villains to blame and for suggested solutions which, equally inevitably, are never acted upon. "Hosteltur" Magazine recently listed its own seven strategies for tackling seasonality. This magnificent seven included ones specific to the Balearics, one of them - conversion and modernisation of hotels, such as is occurring in Magalluf - which will come to nothing unless there are more winter flights. Calvià's mayor admits as much. So does the president of the Balearics hotel chains association. Others include a concentration on the German market, because the Germans are apparently the only ones who will travel at times other than the summer, a conclusion that may have something to do with the fact that the German market is far better served by flights in winter than other markets, begging the question as to whether this willingness to travel in the off-season is a chicken or an egg.
A further strategy, one advocated most strongly in Menorca, is to make it possible for social-security payments on behalf of employees taken on out of season to be reclaimed. It is a variant on a theme of tax breaks that has been advanced for as long as the seasonality problem has been recognised. It seems so obvious that it is staggering that it has never been tried. As the Menorcan hoteliers point out, the loss of governmental revenue would be offset by reductions to unemployment benefit payments and by increased revenue from IVA.
The seemingly simple solution of incentives, be they through social security or through AENA suspending landing charges for the winter season, is surely one worth giving a go. If not, Mallorca will continue to be "ni-ni" and no-no-no. No flights. No hotels open. No tourists.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, April 08, 2013
A Plan For Seasonality, At Last
You will know those ten-best lists that are the stock-in-trade of every newspaper. They are easy enough to put together and so to fill some space; just do a bit of Googling and in no time you have your ten for this and your ten for that.
The miserable weather in Britain provoked "The Guardian" (as much of an offender as any other newspaper when it comes to the ten-bests) into offering its "top ten sun spots to escape Britain's endless winter". It's travel journalism for old rope, to be honest. Google a map of the Med, a map of the Middle East and the Atlantic, get some tour operator or other business to maybe offer a few quid to get a link or a namecheck and off you go. And where are the top ten sun spots? Morocco, Cyprus, Malta, Tenerife ... yea, yea, yea. Where isn't a top ten sun spot? Where do you think?
The "Hosteltur" magazine has recently published a report entitled "Seasonality, Spanish tourism's cancer". Reflecting the absences in the top ten from "The Guardian", the report pointed out that, with the exception of the Canaries, all of Spain's main summer tourism centres are suffering as a consequence of the seasonality. Actually, "The Guardian", ignoring Mallorca but advocating Tenerife and Gran Canaria, did also recommend Alicante, not for Benidorm, you wouldn't expect "The Guardian" to do that, but for the Marjal Costa Blanca Resort, an eco-camping resort; Mallorca doesn't have such a thing, which is probably why it fails to register with "The Guardian".
The report makes it clear that the problem of seasonality has been exacerbated in recent years. It goes on to pay a good deal of attention to Mallorca, starting out by looking at all the developments in Magalluf and at the hope that these developments will lengthen the season to nine months of the year rather than seven. There are those who would challenge Calvià mayor's assertion that there are seven months of the season (it is he that the report quotes), but even if there were, how does he envisage extending the season to nine months? Well, he doesn't, other than to say that it's all the fault of the airlines that all this brand spanking new real estate that has required colossal amounts of investment will sit empty during the winter.
The president of the Balearics Hotel Chains Group, Margalida Ramis of Grupotel, is then quoted as saying that there have been greater losses over the 2012/2013 winter because of cuts to air connections. So, there we have it. It's no one else's fault; just the airlines. They say, however, that there isn't a "tourist offer" to make routes worth their while. And we all say, in response to what Calviá's mayor reckons, to what Margalida Ramis states and to the airlines' justification, that we have heard it all over and over and over. For years and years and years.
Though winter business was of a level sufficient enough in the 1990s to justify tour operators retaining tour reps through the winter (for parts of Mallorca), it was this decade that witnessed a tailing-off of what had never, despite what some might say, been huge winter tourism business. The problem of seasonality is almost as old as Mallorca's tourism industry since the boom of the 1960s. It has, as a consultant in the "Hosteltur" report points out, been a problem that has been spoken about for at least 40 years. He, Eulogio Bordas, president of THR (Turismo, Hotelería y Recreación), says that all the talk over all these years has amounted to nothing because of the absence of coherent plans and quantifiable objectives.
Bordas has a plan, and so he must be all but unique in this regard. The plan would apply to Spain, as opposed to just Mallorca, though it could, were there anyone with the vision to take it on, be applied specifically to Mallorca. What he envisages is the setting of specific goals in terms of increasing the number of winter tourists. Two million is the amount he would start out with. Crucial to doing this, he says, is not all the publicity that gets chucked around (hallelujah) but sales promotion. And this sales promotion would be designed to getting tourists to break with well-established habits. i.e. they would holiday in winter and not in the summer. In order to get them to change their routine, there would have to be all sorts of incentives, including, for example, free entrances (to some attractions).
To implement such a plan, an organisation would need to be established that comprises all the various relevant parties - from hotels, to theme parks, to restaurants, to town halls, to you name it - and absolutely critical would be the obtaining of concessions from the airports authority, AENA. Tax-free landing, for example.
One drawback with this scheme might be that if routines were changed and tourists started coming in winter, wouldn't this leave a hole in summer tourism? Not necessarily. The new markets like Russia that are coming on-stream have to be accommodated in summer. Moving some of the summer market to winter would actually be a benefit.
It is an ambitious plan (and I have only sketched part of it). It might appear impractical, though I don't think so, and at least it is a plan, something that, like Mallorca's absence from the top ten sun spots, has been conspicuous by its absence for at least 40 years.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The miserable weather in Britain provoked "The Guardian" (as much of an offender as any other newspaper when it comes to the ten-bests) into offering its "top ten sun spots to escape Britain's endless winter". It's travel journalism for old rope, to be honest. Google a map of the Med, a map of the Middle East and the Atlantic, get some tour operator or other business to maybe offer a few quid to get a link or a namecheck and off you go. And where are the top ten sun spots? Morocco, Cyprus, Malta, Tenerife ... yea, yea, yea. Where isn't a top ten sun spot? Where do you think?
The "Hosteltur" magazine has recently published a report entitled "Seasonality, Spanish tourism's cancer". Reflecting the absences in the top ten from "The Guardian", the report pointed out that, with the exception of the Canaries, all of Spain's main summer tourism centres are suffering as a consequence of the seasonality. Actually, "The Guardian", ignoring Mallorca but advocating Tenerife and Gran Canaria, did also recommend Alicante, not for Benidorm, you wouldn't expect "The Guardian" to do that, but for the Marjal Costa Blanca Resort, an eco-camping resort; Mallorca doesn't have such a thing, which is probably why it fails to register with "The Guardian".
The report makes it clear that the problem of seasonality has been exacerbated in recent years. It goes on to pay a good deal of attention to Mallorca, starting out by looking at all the developments in Magalluf and at the hope that these developments will lengthen the season to nine months of the year rather than seven. There are those who would challenge Calvià mayor's assertion that there are seven months of the season (it is he that the report quotes), but even if there were, how does he envisage extending the season to nine months? Well, he doesn't, other than to say that it's all the fault of the airlines that all this brand spanking new real estate that has required colossal amounts of investment will sit empty during the winter.
The president of the Balearics Hotel Chains Group, Margalida Ramis of Grupotel, is then quoted as saying that there have been greater losses over the 2012/2013 winter because of cuts to air connections. So, there we have it. It's no one else's fault; just the airlines. They say, however, that there isn't a "tourist offer" to make routes worth their while. And we all say, in response to what Calviá's mayor reckons, to what Margalida Ramis states and to the airlines' justification, that we have heard it all over and over and over. For years and years and years.
Though winter business was of a level sufficient enough in the 1990s to justify tour operators retaining tour reps through the winter (for parts of Mallorca), it was this decade that witnessed a tailing-off of what had never, despite what some might say, been huge winter tourism business. The problem of seasonality is almost as old as Mallorca's tourism industry since the boom of the 1960s. It has, as a consultant in the "Hosteltur" report points out, been a problem that has been spoken about for at least 40 years. He, Eulogio Bordas, president of THR (Turismo, Hotelería y Recreación), says that all the talk over all these years has amounted to nothing because of the absence of coherent plans and quantifiable objectives.
Bordas has a plan, and so he must be all but unique in this regard. The plan would apply to Spain, as opposed to just Mallorca, though it could, were there anyone with the vision to take it on, be applied specifically to Mallorca. What he envisages is the setting of specific goals in terms of increasing the number of winter tourists. Two million is the amount he would start out with. Crucial to doing this, he says, is not all the publicity that gets chucked around (hallelujah) but sales promotion. And this sales promotion would be designed to getting tourists to break with well-established habits. i.e. they would holiday in winter and not in the summer. In order to get them to change their routine, there would have to be all sorts of incentives, including, for example, free entrances (to some attractions).
To implement such a plan, an organisation would need to be established that comprises all the various relevant parties - from hotels, to theme parks, to restaurants, to town halls, to you name it - and absolutely critical would be the obtaining of concessions from the airports authority, AENA. Tax-free landing, for example.
One drawback with this scheme might be that if routines were changed and tourists started coming in winter, wouldn't this leave a hole in summer tourism? Not necessarily. The new markets like Russia that are coming on-stream have to be accommodated in summer. Moving some of the summer market to winter would actually be a benefit.
It is an ambitious plan (and I have only sketched part of it). It might appear impractical, though I don't think so, and at least it is a plan, something that, like Mallorca's absence from the top ten sun spots, has been conspicuous by its absence for at least 40 years.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Resigned To Fate: Mallorca in winter
Driving through Playa de Muro one evening last week, I saw something unusual. Lights on. A few people milling around. The next day, I understood why. Pantechnicons and other vehicles for the Russian Katusha cycling team were parked in front of an Iberostar hotel. This hotel normally opens early for cycling teams, but this year it has opened particularly early.
Iberostar had previously announced that it was making inroads into the death of the resort during winter by having the hotel open for almost ten months. We now know what the company meant. Good for the hotel, some employees and some suppliers, not much good for anyone else. Professional cyclists won't be paying a great deal of attention to the rest of the resort, which is just as well. A couple of cafés and restaurants open at times but not one other hotel open. Not a single shop open. Even the little supermarket is closed.
This winter has been worse than ever: in Playa de Muro, in any resort on Mallorca. According to the hoteliers federation, a mere 17.5% of hotel places are actually available in January. It isn't only Mallorca, though. As an example, comparisons with Benidorm neglect the fact that, while Benidorm unquestionably attracts far more visitors in winter than any resort on Mallorca, it has been experiencing a downward trend for some years. In the Alicante province as a whole, hotel winter closures have risen by ten percentage points in the past two years. As a further example, on the Costa del Sol, that part of mainland Spain which benefits from the best winter weather, the hotel closure rate is up by around 5%. This still means that some 65% of hotels are open (oh that Mallorca could say the same), but even the Costa del Sol is not immune to the decline caused by seasonality.
Neither the Costa Blanca nor the Costa del Sol have quite the same disadvantage as Mallorca in terms of winter flight schedules. Their falls are attributed less to the logistics of travel and more to economic hard times in Europe as a whole and especially in Spain. Benidorm, regardless of the image conveyed by the Garveys and The Oracle, is every bit as much a Spanish resort as it is British (or any other nationality). It may, therefore, enjoy a bounce when or if the Spanish economy recovers, though even this might be questionable; the downward trend has existed for longer than economic crisis has.
Nevertheless, there is this domestic market which can come to the aid of the Costas in a way that it doesn't come, to anything like the same degree, to Mallorca's aid. The winter Spanish "pensionista" market may have been undermined by lack of subvention, but in truth it doesn't contribute hugely, and apart from this, the Spanish winter market is relatively small and generally confined to Palma and some agrotourism.
Pinning hopes on a revival in the domestic market is, however, a diversion, be this in Mallorca or on the Costas. Indeed, pinning hopes on anything is increasingly looking like a diversion. The Mallorca hoteliers federation, in lamenting the dire situation with hotel openings this winter, has announced that "we (in Mallorca) need to position Mallorca as a destination for the low and medium seasons". Well, who would ever have thought that this might be the need?
It is desperate that the hoteliers federation can be making such a statement, as it is one that has been a familiar annual cry for years. The Balearic Government may have come up with a "plan" for tackling seasonality, but this plan is little more than a re-working of equally familiar solutions and prescriptions, ones that have had minimal impact.
Mallorca is far from alone in seeking solutions to its winter malaise. The Costas advance similar solutions, as do destinations elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Only where heat is far more guaranteed is there a solution, and it is the same as that which drives summer tourism. Mallorca, therefore, will continue to beat the drum for its winter alternatives while coming up against the same drumbeats from other destinations hoping to break the cycle of seasonality and almost certainly failing because there is no differentiation and nothing that is unique or of sufficient incentive to create winter tourism over and above the very small scale.
You don't just give up, but does Mallorca have to resign itself to a fate that there is never going to be a winter season? Perhaps it would be wise if the delusion that there will be was dispensed with once and for all. Only then, might minds be exercised sufficiently in seeking solutions other than the piecemeal of some cycling and some cooking. Solutions beyond tourism.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Iberostar had previously announced that it was making inroads into the death of the resort during winter by having the hotel open for almost ten months. We now know what the company meant. Good for the hotel, some employees and some suppliers, not much good for anyone else. Professional cyclists won't be paying a great deal of attention to the rest of the resort, which is just as well. A couple of cafés and restaurants open at times but not one other hotel open. Not a single shop open. Even the little supermarket is closed.
This winter has been worse than ever: in Playa de Muro, in any resort on Mallorca. According to the hoteliers federation, a mere 17.5% of hotel places are actually available in January. It isn't only Mallorca, though. As an example, comparisons with Benidorm neglect the fact that, while Benidorm unquestionably attracts far more visitors in winter than any resort on Mallorca, it has been experiencing a downward trend for some years. In the Alicante province as a whole, hotel winter closures have risen by ten percentage points in the past two years. As a further example, on the Costa del Sol, that part of mainland Spain which benefits from the best winter weather, the hotel closure rate is up by around 5%. This still means that some 65% of hotels are open (oh that Mallorca could say the same), but even the Costa del Sol is not immune to the decline caused by seasonality.
Neither the Costa Blanca nor the Costa del Sol have quite the same disadvantage as Mallorca in terms of winter flight schedules. Their falls are attributed less to the logistics of travel and more to economic hard times in Europe as a whole and especially in Spain. Benidorm, regardless of the image conveyed by the Garveys and The Oracle, is every bit as much a Spanish resort as it is British (or any other nationality). It may, therefore, enjoy a bounce when or if the Spanish economy recovers, though even this might be questionable; the downward trend has existed for longer than economic crisis has.
Nevertheless, there is this domestic market which can come to the aid of the Costas in a way that it doesn't come, to anything like the same degree, to Mallorca's aid. The winter Spanish "pensionista" market may have been undermined by lack of subvention, but in truth it doesn't contribute hugely, and apart from this, the Spanish winter market is relatively small and generally confined to Palma and some agrotourism.
Pinning hopes on a revival in the domestic market is, however, a diversion, be this in Mallorca or on the Costas. Indeed, pinning hopes on anything is increasingly looking like a diversion. The Mallorca hoteliers federation, in lamenting the dire situation with hotel openings this winter, has announced that "we (in Mallorca) need to position Mallorca as a destination for the low and medium seasons". Well, who would ever have thought that this might be the need?
It is desperate that the hoteliers federation can be making such a statement, as it is one that has been a familiar annual cry for years. The Balearic Government may have come up with a "plan" for tackling seasonality, but this plan is little more than a re-working of equally familiar solutions and prescriptions, ones that have had minimal impact.
Mallorca is far from alone in seeking solutions to its winter malaise. The Costas advance similar solutions, as do destinations elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Only where heat is far more guaranteed is there a solution, and it is the same as that which drives summer tourism. Mallorca, therefore, will continue to beat the drum for its winter alternatives while coming up against the same drumbeats from other destinations hoping to break the cycle of seasonality and almost certainly failing because there is no differentiation and nothing that is unique or of sufficient incentive to create winter tourism over and above the very small scale.
You don't just give up, but does Mallorca have to resign itself to a fate that there is never going to be a winter season? Perhaps it would be wise if the delusion that there will be was dispensed with once and for all. Only then, might minds be exercised sufficiently in seeking solutions other than the piecemeal of some cycling and some cooking. Solutions beyond tourism.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, January 06, 2013
A Mallorcan Winter Climate Of Distrust
Benidorm and comparisons with Mallorca have found their way into the pages of the Bulletin over the past few days. Firstly, there were Ian Morrison's photos (3 January) showing an empty Magalluf and a busy Benidorm in December. Secondly, there was the letter by Elizabeth Dobson (5 January) which contrasted levels of customer care in Mallorca with those in Benidorm.
From the photos, one could see that while Benidorm is open for business in winter, Magalluf (for which one can also read Mallorca as a whole) is closed. Why is this? It isn't the weather, or only marginally if it is. Benidorm is fractionally further south than Magalluf, but the comparative latitudes make little or no difference to temperatures. The weather can be iffy in both places. Or it can be glorious as it was on Friday when I was in Magalluf and when there were few people around and fewer still bars open in which one could have a coffee.
Because the weather offers no clue as to why Benidorm and not Magalluf (Mallorca), other clues need to be found. And there is one very big clue. People.
We are fed some nonsense about the size of the British expatriate population on Mallorca. A 50,000 figure for the Balearics would suggest that there must be some 40,000 Brits residents on Mallorca. The figure is plain wrong. It is around 16,000. In the Alicante province, of which Benidorm is a part, the official number of UK residents (as of a couple of years ago) is just short of 130,000. The land area of Alicante is 37% greater than Mallorca. Even if one were to factor this in, the British expat population of the island would climb to only 22,000.
One really needs to look no further than this wide difference in populations to understand why, as an example, Ryanair can, over a week in January, fly daily to Alicante from Stansted but can't to Palma.
It isn't only the comparative British populations that have an impact. According to benidormallyearround.com (and yes, it is all year round), Benidorm attracts tourists from the likes of Madrid over the festive season. The number who drive to the resort explains, so the website says, the lack of parking that is available. And note that they drive. They don't need to fly.
It would be too simple and indeed simplistic to use population statistics as the sole explanation as to why Benidorm and not Magalluf, but when airlines have a greater potential pool of demand to supply then they will supply, and from this supply other things follow, like those visiting the expatriates, tourists availing themselves of flights and hotels and bars staying open.
Then there is the contrast in customer care. Ms. Dobson's letter was, to say the least, heartfelt. It also had more than the superficiality of the pure anecdote about it in castigating Mallorcan attitudes and levels of care and in comparing them unfavourably with the mainland and Benidorm in particular. Doubtless there will be those who rush to the anecdote to either challenge her conclusions or support them, but anecdotes and personal experiences amount to only so much.
It is possible to measure how people feel about customer care, and recent tourist satisfaction surveys have shown falls in the level of satisfaction where some aspects of Mallorca are concerned. Generally, though, they don't dig into how people feel they are treated, and it is this that Ms. Dobson was referring to.
Whatever one personally thinks about Ms. Dobson's criticisms, there is one source - a Mallorcan one - that tends to lend support to the argument that tourists (and foreigners in general) are treated less than well. Guy de Forestier's "Beloved Majorcans" has been one of the very attempts to get inside the Mallorcan character, and the book refers variously to a "climate of distrust", always being "on the defensive, extremely prudent, wary and reserved" and "the unsociable nature of the Majorcan".
The letter does offer some harsh comments, ones that cut to the bone: the honeypot having dried up; the island being beautiful on the outside but not being beautiful on the inside. This latter one is a damning observation.
To put the letter into the context of the contrast between Benidorm and Magalluf in winter, perhaps there is, therefore, a reason other than populations. It is all a question of attitude. In Mallorca, tourists are tolerated in summer because of what they can bring in filling the honeypot. But if this tolerance is indeed reluctant, one based on de Forestier's distrust, then not needing or not wishing to extend the tolerance beyond the summer would begin to explain a lot.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
From the photos, one could see that while Benidorm is open for business in winter, Magalluf (for which one can also read Mallorca as a whole) is closed. Why is this? It isn't the weather, or only marginally if it is. Benidorm is fractionally further south than Magalluf, but the comparative latitudes make little or no difference to temperatures. The weather can be iffy in both places. Or it can be glorious as it was on Friday when I was in Magalluf and when there were few people around and fewer still bars open in which one could have a coffee.
Because the weather offers no clue as to why Benidorm and not Magalluf (Mallorca), other clues need to be found. And there is one very big clue. People.
We are fed some nonsense about the size of the British expatriate population on Mallorca. A 50,000 figure for the Balearics would suggest that there must be some 40,000 Brits residents on Mallorca. The figure is plain wrong. It is around 16,000. In the Alicante province, of which Benidorm is a part, the official number of UK residents (as of a couple of years ago) is just short of 130,000. The land area of Alicante is 37% greater than Mallorca. Even if one were to factor this in, the British expat population of the island would climb to only 22,000.
One really needs to look no further than this wide difference in populations to understand why, as an example, Ryanair can, over a week in January, fly daily to Alicante from Stansted but can't to Palma.
It isn't only the comparative British populations that have an impact. According to benidormallyearround.com (and yes, it is all year round), Benidorm attracts tourists from the likes of Madrid over the festive season. The number who drive to the resort explains, so the website says, the lack of parking that is available. And note that they drive. They don't need to fly.
It would be too simple and indeed simplistic to use population statistics as the sole explanation as to why Benidorm and not Magalluf, but when airlines have a greater potential pool of demand to supply then they will supply, and from this supply other things follow, like those visiting the expatriates, tourists availing themselves of flights and hotels and bars staying open.
Then there is the contrast in customer care. Ms. Dobson's letter was, to say the least, heartfelt. It also had more than the superficiality of the pure anecdote about it in castigating Mallorcan attitudes and levels of care and in comparing them unfavourably with the mainland and Benidorm in particular. Doubtless there will be those who rush to the anecdote to either challenge her conclusions or support them, but anecdotes and personal experiences amount to only so much.
It is possible to measure how people feel about customer care, and recent tourist satisfaction surveys have shown falls in the level of satisfaction where some aspects of Mallorca are concerned. Generally, though, they don't dig into how people feel they are treated, and it is this that Ms. Dobson was referring to.
Whatever one personally thinks about Ms. Dobson's criticisms, there is one source - a Mallorcan one - that tends to lend support to the argument that tourists (and foreigners in general) are treated less than well. Guy de Forestier's "Beloved Majorcans" has been one of the very attempts to get inside the Mallorcan character, and the book refers variously to a "climate of distrust", always being "on the defensive, extremely prudent, wary and reserved" and "the unsociable nature of the Majorcan".
The letter does offer some harsh comments, ones that cut to the bone: the honeypot having dried up; the island being beautiful on the outside but not being beautiful on the inside. This latter one is a damning observation.
To put the letter into the context of the contrast between Benidorm and Magalluf in winter, perhaps there is, therefore, a reason other than populations. It is all a question of attitude. In Mallorca, tourists are tolerated in summer because of what they can bring in filling the honeypot. But if this tolerance is indeed reluctant, one based on de Forestier's distrust, then not needing or not wishing to extend the tolerance beyond the summer would begin to explain a lot.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
All The Fun Of The Travel Fair
When Carlos Delgado became tourism minister he took a good-sized hunting knife to the budget for travel trade fairs. So much did he hack off that in Berlin last time round the Balearics stand comprised no more than a flip-chart, a fold-down camping table as a reception desk and a sign saying Balearic Islands that had been scrawled with a marker pen on a sheet someone had nicked from the two-star hostel where the fair's contingent had been forced to slum it. Embarrassing, some said. And worse still was that Carlos had forbidden that there be any "fun" in the form of jolly displays of ball de bot and the handing around of free glasses of hierbas and plates of frito. Travel fairs are for working, not for having fun, he commanded.
In 2013 there is to be more working at travel fairs. More than ever, or so it would seem. The great annual tourism promotion plan has been unveiled and the Balearics will be attending 17 general travel fairs and 28 specialised fairs. 45 fairs in all. I trust that you are impressed. You certainly should be impressed by the fact that the overall number of promotional "actions" - 107, 45 of which are fairs - will cost on average 80% less than in 2009 but will represent an increase of 78% on that year. 80%, 78%, whatever, my how they love trotting out these percentages. They are designed to impress, and yes, we are impressed.
More with less, this is the great tourism promotional mantra at present. So 80% less but 78% more sounds very much like more with less. The only worry is that a different mantra could be used. New for old. New travel fairs, same old message.
Carlos has been at pains to point out that all this gadding around travel fairs will help to reinvigorate winter tourism (isn't the "re" part rather redundant?). He has also been pointing out that the lack of winter tourism isn't the current government's fault, which is fair enough I suppose but shouldn't be taken as singling out the last PSOE administration alone for winter promotional inertia. In fact, I don't know how much any government over the past 25 years can truly be blamed. Successive administrations have come out with their own winter tourism solution, and it has been the same as was first conceived under the Cladera tourism plan in the 1980s and bears an uncanny resemblance to what the current government is proposing. New for old.
Just look at what these additional travel fairs will be promoting. Golf, cycling, nature ... . Do any of you notice anything familiar with any of these? What's new is that there are more places to go and stage fairs, so having failed to attract Brits and Germans for the past however many years with the delights of trekking across the Tramuntana in a howling winter gale, Carlos will be despatching the tourism ministry's one-man-band promotional task force with his all-in-one promotional kit to Moscow in order to entice Russians away from the competing attraction of basking in 25 degrees or more of sun by the Red Sea in winter.
Always assuming that this more with less, new for old message has some effect, it won't be an effect that will be witnessed in the next one or two years. "I would be lying if I were to say this," Carlos has said. Not lying, so therefore being honest. Well, there's a thing. The government will be improving things progressively every winter, which means little tiny bits of improvement until the next governmental upheaval in three years, when everything will change again.
To be fair, the government is trying, or at least seems to be. But when Delgado says, as he has, that the current reduction in flights and hotels being open in winter is all the consequence of a lack of demand, will the creation of what he claims to be the first "planned" winter tourism product really solve anything? He needs to flesh out precisely what this planned product is, other than attending more travel fairs and shoving information up on the internet.
It isn't really true to say that there haven't been previous "plans". They may not have been good plans and they may not have worked, but the winter tourism message has remained unaltered for years, save for the occasional strange innovation, like Nordic walking. So what's to say this new one will make any real difference? I hope it does, but far better would be just to hand over the cash to Melià or other hotel groups and have them construct a few whacking great, all-weather, all-year theme, entertainment, sports, fun complexes. Go on, Carlos, you know it makes sense.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
In 2013 there is to be more working at travel fairs. More than ever, or so it would seem. The great annual tourism promotion plan has been unveiled and the Balearics will be attending 17 general travel fairs and 28 specialised fairs. 45 fairs in all. I trust that you are impressed. You certainly should be impressed by the fact that the overall number of promotional "actions" - 107, 45 of which are fairs - will cost on average 80% less than in 2009 but will represent an increase of 78% on that year. 80%, 78%, whatever, my how they love trotting out these percentages. They are designed to impress, and yes, we are impressed.
More with less, this is the great tourism promotional mantra at present. So 80% less but 78% more sounds very much like more with less. The only worry is that a different mantra could be used. New for old. New travel fairs, same old message.
Carlos has been at pains to point out that all this gadding around travel fairs will help to reinvigorate winter tourism (isn't the "re" part rather redundant?). He has also been pointing out that the lack of winter tourism isn't the current government's fault, which is fair enough I suppose but shouldn't be taken as singling out the last PSOE administration alone for winter promotional inertia. In fact, I don't know how much any government over the past 25 years can truly be blamed. Successive administrations have come out with their own winter tourism solution, and it has been the same as was first conceived under the Cladera tourism plan in the 1980s and bears an uncanny resemblance to what the current government is proposing. New for old.
Just look at what these additional travel fairs will be promoting. Golf, cycling, nature ... . Do any of you notice anything familiar with any of these? What's new is that there are more places to go and stage fairs, so having failed to attract Brits and Germans for the past however many years with the delights of trekking across the Tramuntana in a howling winter gale, Carlos will be despatching the tourism ministry's one-man-band promotional task force with his all-in-one promotional kit to Moscow in order to entice Russians away from the competing attraction of basking in 25 degrees or more of sun by the Red Sea in winter.
Always assuming that this more with less, new for old message has some effect, it won't be an effect that will be witnessed in the next one or two years. "I would be lying if I were to say this," Carlos has said. Not lying, so therefore being honest. Well, there's a thing. The government will be improving things progressively every winter, which means little tiny bits of improvement until the next governmental upheaval in three years, when everything will change again.
To be fair, the government is trying, or at least seems to be. But when Delgado says, as he has, that the current reduction in flights and hotels being open in winter is all the consequence of a lack of demand, will the creation of what he claims to be the first "planned" winter tourism product really solve anything? He needs to flesh out precisely what this planned product is, other than attending more travel fairs and shoving information up on the internet.
It isn't really true to say that there haven't been previous "plans". They may not have been good plans and they may not have worked, but the winter tourism message has remained unaltered for years, save for the occasional strange innovation, like Nordic walking. So what's to say this new one will make any real difference? I hope it does, but far better would be just to hand over the cash to Melià or other hotel groups and have them construct a few whacking great, all-weather, all-year theme, entertainment, sports, fun complexes. Go on, Carlos, you know it makes sense.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
The Seasonality Code: Muro's cycling
Anyone trying to move around Playa de Muro by motor vehicle yesterday would have been inconvenienced. There was yet another cycling event. The Mallorca Masters. It was the final day of the event. As Playa de Muro is at the epicentre of cycling tourism in the north of Mallorca, it falls to the resort to host the climax of the week.
The groups of cyclists, the Trafico outriders, the cars with bikes on their roofs, the queues of traffic were all the obvious signs of what went into the Masters, but hidden away in a Playa de Muro hotel was a different event. It was in the form of a kind of speed-dating networking exercise for companies engaged in activities with winter tourism in mind; cycling obviously, but not exclusively.
This networking exercise, aka workshop, was indicative of what we are told is the "secret" of cracking the seasonality code in the north of Mallorca; indeed, the impression is given that the code has been cracked. A report of the workshop may well have been written by PR people. Given my intimate knowledge of Playa de Muro, it didn't paint a picture with which I am terribly familiar.
There has undoubtedly been some progress in cutting into the barren winter months, primarily because of cycling, but the report would have us believe that progress has been far greater than it has in fact been. "Some hotels" are now open for ten months of the year. Some? Or should that be one? Ten months? Only if you're stretching things a tad.
The secret of the seasonality code has been no more cracked in Playa de Muro than in other parts of the island where there are concentrations of cycling tourists. In fact, it has probably been cracked to less an extent in Playa de Muro. If it really had been cracked, then there would be more than the handful (and it pretty much is a handful) of businesses outside of the hotels (hotel) that are open in February; and this handful is greater than the number open in, say, December.
The head of the hoteliers association in the resort says that hotel profitability cannot be sustained by summer business alone. Well, no you wouldn't have thought that it could be, but there are plenty of hotels in Playa de Muro (32 of them in all) that have maintained the appearance of having been able to sustain profitability through summer business alone for years. In all these years, not one has actually stayed open right through the winter, and even now there is only the one that comes close to that ten months mark.
But things have caught up with some of the hotels. Those operated by the wealthy chains (and Iberostar is the chain which has the hotel open for the ten months) have the wealthy chains to support them. Not all are operated by wealthy chains, though. Hence the sale of two Eden hotels, one in Playa de Muro and one just by the boundary, to Alltours.
The resort is pinning its hopes on cycling and other winter activities, such as hiking. It's the same old offer. It's nothing new. The workshop apparently attracted 20 businesses from eight countries that were seeking to sell themselves (cycling, hiking tours, it would seem) as well as 20 local businesses, mainly hotels, seeking to sell themselves. Such representation was something but it hardly equates to a great leap forward in cracking the seasonality code.
Even if there were some movement forward, it would surely never be more than a small step as opposed to a leap. 32 hotels, many of them substantial both in terms of the amount of land they occupy and the number of places they offer; but how many would it ever be viable to open out of season? The long hoped-for golf course, about which nothing is being said at present, wouldn't make a huge difference, and it would make even less of a difference it were to now go ahead with a dedicated hotel of its own (as has been hinted that it might).
Cycling does offer some business in winter and Playa de Muro's share of the cycling market has grown. But business for whom exactly? Playa de Muro was built as a summer resort. The beach is its main purpose. The name itself is a giveaway. There will never be more than a handful of businesses, other than the odd hotel, that can justify opening in the winter.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The groups of cyclists, the Trafico outriders, the cars with bikes on their roofs, the queues of traffic were all the obvious signs of what went into the Masters, but hidden away in a Playa de Muro hotel was a different event. It was in the form of a kind of speed-dating networking exercise for companies engaged in activities with winter tourism in mind; cycling obviously, but not exclusively.
This networking exercise, aka workshop, was indicative of what we are told is the "secret" of cracking the seasonality code in the north of Mallorca; indeed, the impression is given that the code has been cracked. A report of the workshop may well have been written by PR people. Given my intimate knowledge of Playa de Muro, it didn't paint a picture with which I am terribly familiar.
There has undoubtedly been some progress in cutting into the barren winter months, primarily because of cycling, but the report would have us believe that progress has been far greater than it has in fact been. "Some hotels" are now open for ten months of the year. Some? Or should that be one? Ten months? Only if you're stretching things a tad.
The secret of the seasonality code has been no more cracked in Playa de Muro than in other parts of the island where there are concentrations of cycling tourists. In fact, it has probably been cracked to less an extent in Playa de Muro. If it really had been cracked, then there would be more than the handful (and it pretty much is a handful) of businesses outside of the hotels (hotel) that are open in February; and this handful is greater than the number open in, say, December.
The head of the hoteliers association in the resort says that hotel profitability cannot be sustained by summer business alone. Well, no you wouldn't have thought that it could be, but there are plenty of hotels in Playa de Muro (32 of them in all) that have maintained the appearance of having been able to sustain profitability through summer business alone for years. In all these years, not one has actually stayed open right through the winter, and even now there is only the one that comes close to that ten months mark.
But things have caught up with some of the hotels. Those operated by the wealthy chains (and Iberostar is the chain which has the hotel open for the ten months) have the wealthy chains to support them. Not all are operated by wealthy chains, though. Hence the sale of two Eden hotels, one in Playa de Muro and one just by the boundary, to Alltours.
The resort is pinning its hopes on cycling and other winter activities, such as hiking. It's the same old offer. It's nothing new. The workshop apparently attracted 20 businesses from eight countries that were seeking to sell themselves (cycling, hiking tours, it would seem) as well as 20 local businesses, mainly hotels, seeking to sell themselves. Such representation was something but it hardly equates to a great leap forward in cracking the seasonality code.
Even if there were some movement forward, it would surely never be more than a small step as opposed to a leap. 32 hotels, many of them substantial both in terms of the amount of land they occupy and the number of places they offer; but how many would it ever be viable to open out of season? The long hoped-for golf course, about which nothing is being said at present, wouldn't make a huge difference, and it would make even less of a difference it were to now go ahead with a dedicated hotel of its own (as has been hinted that it might).
Cycling does offer some business in winter and Playa de Muro's share of the cycling market has grown. But business for whom exactly? Playa de Muro was built as a summer resort. The beach is its main purpose. The name itself is a giveaway. There will never be more than a handful of businesses, other than the odd hotel, that can justify opening in the winter.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Survey Reservations: Hotels and modernisation
If you are a commercial website, there are a number of things you can do in order to attract more interest in and traffic to your site. I'm not referring to the jiggery-pokery of optimisation or rankings, but to simple publicity, and one way of getting publicity is to do a survey and, more importantly, get the press to mention it and write up the findings.
Such surveys come out with regular frequency, monotony even. Some can be quite useful, but one does always have to be slightly wary. Generally speaking, the methodology behind the surveys isn't revealed. Their rigour cannot, therefore, be verified. The headlining findings are what attract the press, always eager for free copy to fill a space or several, and they are presented without comment or question.
There is a Spanish hotel-bookings site called reservahoteles.com. It has conducted a survey, the findings of which have duly found their way into the media. They make good copy for the press as the subject of the survey, Spanish hotels, is found to be lacking in making attempts at modernisation. It is good copy with which to knock the hotels, therefore.
What is this survey, however? It is in fact one of travel agencies, 22 in all. One of the main findings is that more than 50% of Spanish hotels aren't bothered with investing in "fundamental aspects" of their offer which should now be more or less standard, such as providing leisure and entertainment services and activities or attracting the business and incentives market.
The travel agencies are probably in a reasonable position to judge, but the survey smacks a bit of the monkey and the organ grinder. If you really want to know about hotels' attitudes, what they might be planning and what they provide, wouldn't it make more sense to ask them and not the travel agencies?
Nevertheless, let's be kind to the survey, as it does rather reinforce an image of some hotels. A lack of modernisation in Mallorca is an aspect that the Balearic Government's new tourism law is seeking to address, and there are unquestionably hotels that are so past their sell-by dates that no amount of investment, short of pulling them down and starting again, will ever bring them adequately into the modern world. On the other hand, there are plenty of hotels which are very much of the modern day and which do everything the survey suggests they don't; the Iberostar chain is just one.
The survey suggests that a lack of investment can be explained by a concentration on sun-and-beach tourism and on sun-and-beach tourism alone. It's a reasonable point, but, and this applies to most hotels in most Mallorcan resorts, you run up against the inevitable problem of pursuing business that isn't sun and beach, primarily that of the off-season when everywhere, including the hotels, is shut.
When the survey draws attention to a lack of marketing and a lack of internet presence on behalf of many hotels, it again has a point. However, for many hotels, this hasn't been necessary, as they have been used to others doing it all for them, such as travel agencies and tour operators, while contracts with tour operators make more direct marketing irrelevant and indeed potentially open to allegations of breaches of contract.
If the hotels are contracted, if they know there is little or no business when they are not contracted during the dead winter season, then why should they bother making the sorts of investment in marketing or in attempting to attract business when they know full well it won't be forthcoming? Except of course, they should bother, if for no other reason than that hotels are massively under-utilised and totally unproductive for six months of the year. We've reached a point where, if anything is going to happen to resolve problems of the dead season, someone has to make the first move and not just blame everyone else; perhaps that someone should be the hotels.
But on the issue of the travel agencies criticising hotels for a lack of internet presence, the fact is that the wherewithal does exist for hotels to advertise and market directly and bypass the travel agencies completely. Google's different services, Travelzoo, what Microsoft probably has in mind with its global tourism hub all can leave the traditional travel distribution chain minus one of its core constituents, the travel agents: they should be careful who they criticise and what they wish for.
And there are always of course specific websites through which hotels can market themselves. Hotel reservation? Reservahoteles.com. Survey, anyone?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Such surveys come out with regular frequency, monotony even. Some can be quite useful, but one does always have to be slightly wary. Generally speaking, the methodology behind the surveys isn't revealed. Their rigour cannot, therefore, be verified. The headlining findings are what attract the press, always eager for free copy to fill a space or several, and they are presented without comment or question.
There is a Spanish hotel-bookings site called reservahoteles.com. It has conducted a survey, the findings of which have duly found their way into the media. They make good copy for the press as the subject of the survey, Spanish hotels, is found to be lacking in making attempts at modernisation. It is good copy with which to knock the hotels, therefore.
What is this survey, however? It is in fact one of travel agencies, 22 in all. One of the main findings is that more than 50% of Spanish hotels aren't bothered with investing in "fundamental aspects" of their offer which should now be more or less standard, such as providing leisure and entertainment services and activities or attracting the business and incentives market.
The travel agencies are probably in a reasonable position to judge, but the survey smacks a bit of the monkey and the organ grinder. If you really want to know about hotels' attitudes, what they might be planning and what they provide, wouldn't it make more sense to ask them and not the travel agencies?
Nevertheless, let's be kind to the survey, as it does rather reinforce an image of some hotels. A lack of modernisation in Mallorca is an aspect that the Balearic Government's new tourism law is seeking to address, and there are unquestionably hotels that are so past their sell-by dates that no amount of investment, short of pulling them down and starting again, will ever bring them adequately into the modern world. On the other hand, there are plenty of hotels which are very much of the modern day and which do everything the survey suggests they don't; the Iberostar chain is just one.
The survey suggests that a lack of investment can be explained by a concentration on sun-and-beach tourism and on sun-and-beach tourism alone. It's a reasonable point, but, and this applies to most hotels in most Mallorcan resorts, you run up against the inevitable problem of pursuing business that isn't sun and beach, primarily that of the off-season when everywhere, including the hotels, is shut.
When the survey draws attention to a lack of marketing and a lack of internet presence on behalf of many hotels, it again has a point. However, for many hotels, this hasn't been necessary, as they have been used to others doing it all for them, such as travel agencies and tour operators, while contracts with tour operators make more direct marketing irrelevant and indeed potentially open to allegations of breaches of contract.
If the hotels are contracted, if they know there is little or no business when they are not contracted during the dead winter season, then why should they bother making the sorts of investment in marketing or in attempting to attract business when they know full well it won't be forthcoming? Except of course, they should bother, if for no other reason than that hotels are massively under-utilised and totally unproductive for six months of the year. We've reached a point where, if anything is going to happen to resolve problems of the dead season, someone has to make the first move and not just blame everyone else; perhaps that someone should be the hotels.
But on the issue of the travel agencies criticising hotels for a lack of internet presence, the fact is that the wherewithal does exist for hotels to advertise and market directly and bypass the travel agencies completely. Google's different services, Travelzoo, what Microsoft probably has in mind with its global tourism hub all can leave the traditional travel distribution chain minus one of its core constituents, the travel agents: they should be careful who they criticise and what they wish for.
And there are always of course specific websites through which hotels can market themselves. Hotel reservation? Reservahoteles.com. Survey, anyone?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, November 03, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - British airlines call for lower airport taxes
Tour operators and airlines from the UK met yesterday with regional president Bauzá and tourism minister Delgado to discuss the need for lower airport taxes in order to stimulate more flights into Palma in the low season. Notwithstanding this, the airlines also pointed out that more needed to be done to ensure that establishments on Mallorca were open in winter.
Friday, October 14, 2011
The Three Degrees: Mallorca's winter tourism
I was dreaming of a less-than-white Christmas. No rubbish weather for me. Bronzed, golden brown. I was dreaming and then I was told to stop. By the BBC website home page. Make it real. Make what real? Make a holiday in the Canaries real, courtesy of Iberostar. I clicked the link. Dreams can come true.
You're given no false impression as to why you would wish to make it real in the Canaries. Off you go with the family, one of whom is the child with the snorkel kit who greets you as you click from the BBC site. And why is he wearing snorkel kit? Because he wants to go snorkelling of course. In the sea. Departing from a beach. In the sun. Sun and beach. In winter.
This is a promotion by the same Iberostar which grew rich on the back of Mallorcan tourism - Mallorcan summer tourism. Once you have scrolled down the list of the 13 four or five-star hotels on the four main Canary islands - all available with special offers to the end of November, for booking through the winter to the end of April - you come to a footnote. It is under "most popular destinations". Hotels in Majorca. Click.
Well, having clicked, you can probably guess. The red squares on the calendar mean the hotels are closed. All of them. Until April. Mallorca is "most popular", when it is open. But who can blame Iberostar for flogging the Canaries? They're doing what has long been one half of the mainstay of winter tourism promoted by tour operators, travel agents and now hotels. What do they all promote? Either snow or winter sun.
Summer tourism means sun and the movement of millions in its pursuit; winter tourism means snow or sun and the movement of millions more. But you move the millions to where you can pretty much guarantee good coverings of snow or good amounts of sun in temperatures of at least 20 degrees.
Sorry, Mallorca, but you fail the 20-degree test. By three degrees. It may not seem much, but the average temperature for the six months of the off-season is only 17. The psychological barrier is 20 degrees (minimum). Tenerife, by comparison and despite having almost as many days of rain if not as much rain as Mallorca (10 millimetres less on average), comes in at 21.9 degrees (which also happens to break the 70 Fahrenheit barrier). This is why the boy has his snorkel kit on, this is why dreams can be made real - in the Canaries - and this is why Iberostar makes them real there, and not in Mallorca.
Weather does matter. In fact, it is all that matters.
Mallorca's winter tourism. Discuss. Culture, gastronomy, bird-watching, hiking, Nordic walking, cycling, golf, senior tourism. There is much which is available and promoted; it combines to create an under-mass of winter tourism approximately one-tenth the size of that which comes in summer. Unless there were real incentives, such as major, and one means major, attractions, the ratio is unlikely to ever alter fundamentally. And it's all down to those missing three degrees.
There is a great deal of what one might call apologism for Mallorca in winter. And it is apologism that entails preaching to oneself or the converted. It is apologism that can cover all the list above and more that bring about the around one million off-season visitors. But it can only ever get the apologists so far, because something's missing. Three degrees' worth. At least.
This all said, it's a nonsense when you think about it. A nonsense, not that Iberostar or any other hotel chain, airline or tour operator would choose Tenerife over Mallorca, but that Iberostar and all the other hotel chains are sitting on colossal amounts of prime real estate in Mallorca which sit idle for six months of the year. All that asset being unproductive, being wasted; an asset and an investment that have contributed to the cost of land in Mallorca for everyone else, largely deprived of their own productiveness for twelve months of the year.
The tourism industry in Mallorca would probably like to believe that it is efficient. It isn't. It is massively inefficient. Inefficient in terms of asset and resources and inefficient in having been singularly incapable of arriving at solutions to make these resources more efficient, twelve months of the year. But then, what can it do about the weather? Not much. It makes efficient use of one resource - the sun - for six months, and that's it. In the Canaries, on the other hand ... .
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
You're given no false impression as to why you would wish to make it real in the Canaries. Off you go with the family, one of whom is the child with the snorkel kit who greets you as you click from the BBC site. And why is he wearing snorkel kit? Because he wants to go snorkelling of course. In the sea. Departing from a beach. In the sun. Sun and beach. In winter.
This is a promotion by the same Iberostar which grew rich on the back of Mallorcan tourism - Mallorcan summer tourism. Once you have scrolled down the list of the 13 four or five-star hotels on the four main Canary islands - all available with special offers to the end of November, for booking through the winter to the end of April - you come to a footnote. It is under "most popular destinations". Hotels in Majorca. Click.
Well, having clicked, you can probably guess. The red squares on the calendar mean the hotels are closed. All of them. Until April. Mallorca is "most popular", when it is open. But who can blame Iberostar for flogging the Canaries? They're doing what has long been one half of the mainstay of winter tourism promoted by tour operators, travel agents and now hotels. What do they all promote? Either snow or winter sun.
Summer tourism means sun and the movement of millions in its pursuit; winter tourism means snow or sun and the movement of millions more. But you move the millions to where you can pretty much guarantee good coverings of snow or good amounts of sun in temperatures of at least 20 degrees.
Sorry, Mallorca, but you fail the 20-degree test. By three degrees. It may not seem much, but the average temperature for the six months of the off-season is only 17. The psychological barrier is 20 degrees (minimum). Tenerife, by comparison and despite having almost as many days of rain if not as much rain as Mallorca (10 millimetres less on average), comes in at 21.9 degrees (which also happens to break the 70 Fahrenheit barrier). This is why the boy has his snorkel kit on, this is why dreams can be made real - in the Canaries - and this is why Iberostar makes them real there, and not in Mallorca.
Weather does matter. In fact, it is all that matters.
Mallorca's winter tourism. Discuss. Culture, gastronomy, bird-watching, hiking, Nordic walking, cycling, golf, senior tourism. There is much which is available and promoted; it combines to create an under-mass of winter tourism approximately one-tenth the size of that which comes in summer. Unless there were real incentives, such as major, and one means major, attractions, the ratio is unlikely to ever alter fundamentally. And it's all down to those missing three degrees.
There is a great deal of what one might call apologism for Mallorca in winter. And it is apologism that entails preaching to oneself or the converted. It is apologism that can cover all the list above and more that bring about the around one million off-season visitors. But it can only ever get the apologists so far, because something's missing. Three degrees' worth. At least.
This all said, it's a nonsense when you think about it. A nonsense, not that Iberostar or any other hotel chain, airline or tour operator would choose Tenerife over Mallorca, but that Iberostar and all the other hotel chains are sitting on colossal amounts of prime real estate in Mallorca which sit idle for six months of the year. All that asset being unproductive, being wasted; an asset and an investment that have contributed to the cost of land in Mallorca for everyone else, largely deprived of their own productiveness for twelve months of the year.
The tourism industry in Mallorca would probably like to believe that it is efficient. It isn't. It is massively inefficient. Inefficient in terms of asset and resources and inefficient in having been singularly incapable of arriving at solutions to make these resources more efficient, twelve months of the year. But then, what can it do about the weather? Not much. It makes efficient use of one resource - the sun - for six months, and that's it. In the Canaries, on the other hand ... .
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, September 12, 2011
The Golden Age Of Winter Tourism
Round and round and round we go in ever-decreasing circles of repetition. The main season is coming towards its end, and so it is time for the new season to begin, that of the wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding the winter season. Or rather, what winter season?
The repetition has already begun, partly thanks to Pedro Iriondo, the head of the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorca Tourist Board). Bars, restaurants, shops closed in winter; how can anyone be expected to sell winter tourism if they are all closed?
Sr. Iriondo is someone of a bygone era who, on assuming the presidency of the board, reminisced about a time when everyone in Mallorca was happy, there were parties on the beach and, not that he said this, it cost less than a quid to get absolutely blotto.
Ah yes, this bygone era, when the beaches and hotels were packed to the gunwales in summer and when winter tourists also flocked to the island. There is just one problem with this. The bit about winter tourism. There never was a Golden Age of winter tourism in Mallorca. It is a total myth.
Hardened veterans will insist that the Age did exist and will say, endlessly and repetitiously, that it can be re-created by, amongst other things, opening a few more shops up and keeping some hotels open. However, you can't re-create something that wasn't there.
In 2003 the Chamber of Commerce and the Economy Circle of Mallorca (a group of leading businesspeople) produced a report entitled: "The current situation of and perspectives on tourism in the Balearic Islands". It was partly an historical document and partly one that looked forward.
In it, there was a table which showed the percentage of tourists (to the Balearics) who came in the main season (defined as April to October). In 1981 this percentage was 90%. It had gone down to 85% in 1991 and back up again to 88% by 2001. From other information, it had crept back to 90% in 2008.
If the Golden Age of winter tourism ever existed, therefore, it was in the eighties, but in relative terms the level of out-of-season tourism rose only slightly. While there may well have been and were parts of Mallorca which did reasonably well in winter in the eighties, there are factors to take into account. One is that the whole debate about winter tourism, among the British, is seen through British eyes. This is a not unimportant factor.
During the eighties, the overall level of British tourism rose staggeringly (by 250% between 1981 and 1988). This followed a period of significant decline in British tourism on the back of economic difficulties in the seventies. The growth in eighties tourism was also helped by an extremely favourable exchange rate.
Dealing in percentages doesn't give the whole story. The actual numbers do. In the mid-eighties, the number of tourists per year to the Balearics was around 5 million. The number of winter tourists, peaking at 15% of the total, could never have been greater than 750,000. If this was the Golden Age of winter tourism, then what do we have now? Well, in 2008, for example, over 11 million tourists came to the Balearics, a million or more of them in winter. The Golden Age is now, not then.
How can this be, you ask. Well, partly it's the British perspective again. In 2003 the Chamber of Commerce referred to air connections from Germany in respect of winter tourism. It made no mention of those from the UK and would be even less likely to now. It has been German tourism that has been largely responsible for Mallorca's winter tourism. Which is bad news in a way, as Air Berlin is planning to cut some of its routes this winter. Its boss in Spain and Portugal, Álvaro Middelmann, blames hotels for not opening, obsolete and overpriced bars and restaurants and even the airport authority AENA for its inadequate service.
Mallorca's winter tourism is not something to be re-created but to be created. There are plenty of ideas as to how, and they can be dealt with another time. But we might hope that the Balearics Tourism Agency, augmented by the inclusion of all manner of interested parties, including the Mallorca Tourist Board and airlines, can, for once, get to grips with winter tourism. Not that you should bank on it. In thirty years time the same debate will still be had, and commentators will look back at a Golden Age of winter tourism - in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The repetition has already begun, partly thanks to Pedro Iriondo, the head of the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorca Tourist Board). Bars, restaurants, shops closed in winter; how can anyone be expected to sell winter tourism if they are all closed?
Sr. Iriondo is someone of a bygone era who, on assuming the presidency of the board, reminisced about a time when everyone in Mallorca was happy, there were parties on the beach and, not that he said this, it cost less than a quid to get absolutely blotto.
Ah yes, this bygone era, when the beaches and hotels were packed to the gunwales in summer and when winter tourists also flocked to the island. There is just one problem with this. The bit about winter tourism. There never was a Golden Age of winter tourism in Mallorca. It is a total myth.
Hardened veterans will insist that the Age did exist and will say, endlessly and repetitiously, that it can be re-created by, amongst other things, opening a few more shops up and keeping some hotels open. However, you can't re-create something that wasn't there.
In 2003 the Chamber of Commerce and the Economy Circle of Mallorca (a group of leading businesspeople) produced a report entitled: "The current situation of and perspectives on tourism in the Balearic Islands". It was partly an historical document and partly one that looked forward.
In it, there was a table which showed the percentage of tourists (to the Balearics) who came in the main season (defined as April to October). In 1981 this percentage was 90%. It had gone down to 85% in 1991 and back up again to 88% by 2001. From other information, it had crept back to 90% in 2008.
If the Golden Age of winter tourism ever existed, therefore, it was in the eighties, but in relative terms the level of out-of-season tourism rose only slightly. While there may well have been and were parts of Mallorca which did reasonably well in winter in the eighties, there are factors to take into account. One is that the whole debate about winter tourism, among the British, is seen through British eyes. This is a not unimportant factor.
During the eighties, the overall level of British tourism rose staggeringly (by 250% between 1981 and 1988). This followed a period of significant decline in British tourism on the back of economic difficulties in the seventies. The growth in eighties tourism was also helped by an extremely favourable exchange rate.
Dealing in percentages doesn't give the whole story. The actual numbers do. In the mid-eighties, the number of tourists per year to the Balearics was around 5 million. The number of winter tourists, peaking at 15% of the total, could never have been greater than 750,000. If this was the Golden Age of winter tourism, then what do we have now? Well, in 2008, for example, over 11 million tourists came to the Balearics, a million or more of them in winter. The Golden Age is now, not then.
How can this be, you ask. Well, partly it's the British perspective again. In 2003 the Chamber of Commerce referred to air connections from Germany in respect of winter tourism. It made no mention of those from the UK and would be even less likely to now. It has been German tourism that has been largely responsible for Mallorca's winter tourism. Which is bad news in a way, as Air Berlin is planning to cut some of its routes this winter. Its boss in Spain and Portugal, Álvaro Middelmann, blames hotels for not opening, obsolete and overpriced bars and restaurants and even the airport authority AENA for its inadequate service.
Mallorca's winter tourism is not something to be re-created but to be created. There are plenty of ideas as to how, and they can be dealt with another time. But we might hope that the Balearics Tourism Agency, augmented by the inclusion of all manner of interested parties, including the Mallorca Tourist Board and airlines, can, for once, get to grips with winter tourism. Not that you should bank on it. In thirty years time the same debate will still be had, and commentators will look back at a Golden Age of winter tourism - in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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