I have an aversion to the cliché, to lexicological laziness, to the presumption of a jocular shared value inherent to the oft-repeated "bon mot". One such has assumed diffusion and usage that is so widespread, it might deserve a place in the Oxford English collection of idioms.
Yet I despair of the pixiated fracturing of "health". Its elfin corruption into "elf", with its postfixation of "and safety", is meant as a whimsy of word play. It succeeds insofar as it has passed into common usage as a means of encapsulating a collective appreciation of excessive or unnecessary resort to legislation or jobsworthing intervention. But when usage becomes common, the joke, such as it ever was, loses any force it may once have been able to lay claim to. It becomes tired, worn-out: enervated expressionism.
"Elf and safety", and its lifeless fellow-travelling quasi-maxims of "the whole world's gone made" and "you couldn't make it up, could you", are designed to create maximum indignation with a minimum of originality. And no, you couldn't make it up, because someone else did. A long, long time ago.
For all this, however, invoking the "elf" expression has a certain appositeness of otherworldliness when applied to demons, beasties and other semi-beings that go bump and bang in the night. It is one limited to an association of the mythological and mysterious. Or should be. Inevitably, though, it is limply spirited into the real world as the flat little gag that contrasts Anglo-Saxon and Brusselian obsession with corporeal protection with a Mallorcan disregard for life, limb and being lit up.
Two years ago, almost to the day, 150 assorted mayors, other politicians, businesspeople, artists and union representatives all had an away day or two or three to Brussels paid for by the local government. Their mission: to stop any interference with the tradition of the fire-run and with the birthright of every Mallorcan child to be set fire to during such a run.
Europe duly ignored them and passed its directive on pyrotechnics. I say ignored, but this directive, all-embracing in covering issues such as the transportation of fireworks as well as events that featured pyrotechnics, was quite clear in recognising that local traditions which might require someone suffering third-degree burns should be allowed to continue.
The main implication for the fire fiestas, as covered by the directive, was the participation of minors. It was never the intention that the fire-runs should be outlawed, and yet this was how it was portrayed, a Palma councillor threatening legal action at the whole world (well, Brussels) going mad. The elfin propaganda-ists failed to even bother reading the directive (understandable enough, admittedly; have you ever tried reading one?), but they should have known that, regardless of the directive being adopted by the Spanish Government (which it was), no one would take a blind bit of notice (which they didn't).
If you had, for example, attended the Sant Antoni fire-runs, you would have seen minors being showered by firefalls. Remarkable it may be that A&E and burns units are not packed out on the nights of fire fiestas, but they aren't. Accidents, despite all the fire-related events in Mallorca, are uncommon. There was the poor chap, one of the island's leading fireworks display organisers, who blew himself up during the Petra fiestas last summer, but if you must do such organising for a living, you have to expect the possibility of not living.
The vague threat that children's involvement in the fire-runs might actually be stopped has now been addressed by the regional government. It has agreed to recognise the "correfocs" as something of religious, cultural and traditional character (which is pretty much what the directive allowed for). It comes with certain conditions attached, but the tradition has been secured along with the youthful exuberance that sees kids jumping around with maniacal and pagan abandon under the demons' trident wands of fire.
There will be those who consider this a triumph of risk-taking over the risk-aversion of the compliance-choked legislation of Europe that is typically and slavishly adhered to in the UK. There will be those who will continue, on witnessing the fire-runs, to resort to the elf expression in suggesting that the elf movement will put a stop to the demons. But they will neglect the fact that the matter has been dealt with and that Europe did not and does not obsess about the fire-runs. There will continue to be those who say that the elf movement would never allow such things in the UK, and they'd be right up to a point. The difference, though, is that, unlike the UK, Mallorca has never forgotten that there are such things as traditions. It is collective forgetfulness which allows mischievously compulsive, law-amending elves to flourish as the sprites of statute-making, but not in Mallorca, where the elves will not stop the demons.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Bearded Wonders And Robot Presidents
President Zapatero, he of the many nicknames, is often referred to as ZP. It makes him sound like a micro-chip, which is about right seeing as how he is the first fully automated political leader in western Europe. The ZP has been inserted into his motherboard, so he has now become Z-3PO, waving its arms around and screaming "reformas, reformas, reformas". The Z-3PO was recently interviewed by the "Financial Times". In the video, one can see it beaming. The original model always beamed a lot, more in confusion than simple affability. The robotic, automated version, now sensing an end to its political career, is beaming at the prospect of retirement, receiving its ex-presidential salary and writing its memoirs.
There is another reason for all the beaming. Astonishingly enough, Spain is groping its way out of recession, and Zapatero is getting the plaudits. The German "iron lady", Angela Merkel, has been praising his efforts, thus also bolstering her fellow countrymen who do, after all, either own much of Spain or wish to sell even more of it to even more of these fellow countrymen. When pressed on quite how this miracle of recovery has come to pass, the Z-3PO is plugged in, beams a lot, and goes off on the "reformas" chant that has been programmed into its circuits.
The Z-3PO is driven by an operating system known as "New Labour". This makes it and the party it heads, the PSOE new model non-ideologues, lean ever further away from any socialist roots. The Z-3PO, fashioned after Tony, smooth-faced, grinning, exaggerated hand movements and any policy it fancies, has taken the party so far towards the centre or in the opposite direction to that which it historically had, that it has been able to more or less tame the ogres of the unions. It may not have been a Scargill or a Clause 4 moment, but the air-traffic controllers' strike was something of a turning-point. Even the barely reconstructed Commies of the CCOO union disapproved of their action (though admittedly they didn't much care for the packet that the controllers were receiving.)
Taming the unions and changing labour law are crucial elements to all the "reformas". And remarkably the unions seem prepared to go along with them, given that they have been cast, for the purposes of public consumption, in the role of pantomime villains, as opposed to those in the banking and finance sectors who should be.
The Z-3PO is quite happy with this. It will be de-commissioned in 2012, which will be something of a pity as it is at least the embodiment, as it were, of a modern political leader: wires and circuit-boards in the right place and increasingly further to the right, a clone of Blair and no facial hair. And this last bit is important.
The leadership of the new model PSOE is likely to pass to one Alfredo Rubalcaba, the beardy vice-president who bears an unnerving resemblance to Solzhenitsyn. He will be up against another beardy, the Partido Popular's Mariano Rajoy - Mr. Grey - who succeeds in making the normally uncharismatic world of Spanish politics seem positively magnetic. Even the robotic Zapatero is full of life by comparison. What a choice faces Spain. Mr. Grey or the Gulag.
Despite having a massive lead in the polls, the Partido Popular faces a problem. Mr. Grey. We have WikiLeaks to thank for knowing that his predecessor, the little accountant José Maria Aznar, had reservations about Rajoy. A lot of people did, and still do. It seems no coincidence that, at what has been a critical period for Spain, Rajoy has been hardly anywhere to be seen. But Aznar has. He has re-emerged, minus, in proper contemporary manner, his old moustache and with his hair even darker than it became during his time as president, so much so that his head is like a Bertie Bassett's, with a thick layer of liquorice on top.
The re-appearance of the lush Aznar barnet is a reminder of a time when a Spanish leader did command some international kudos. Zapatero has just about managed to acquire some of his own. He may have performed an almost complete about-turn on most things, except his praiseworthy and liberal social reforms, but he seems to be restoring some Spanish credibility. It may have all required him being re-programmed, but he has retained, amidst all the "reformas", an affability. It is not one that could be said to be shared by Rajoy, the likely next president, a zomboid, and bearded, Borg.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There is another reason for all the beaming. Astonishingly enough, Spain is groping its way out of recession, and Zapatero is getting the plaudits. The German "iron lady", Angela Merkel, has been praising his efforts, thus also bolstering her fellow countrymen who do, after all, either own much of Spain or wish to sell even more of it to even more of these fellow countrymen. When pressed on quite how this miracle of recovery has come to pass, the Z-3PO is plugged in, beams a lot, and goes off on the "reformas" chant that has been programmed into its circuits.
The Z-3PO is driven by an operating system known as "New Labour". This makes it and the party it heads, the PSOE new model non-ideologues, lean ever further away from any socialist roots. The Z-3PO, fashioned after Tony, smooth-faced, grinning, exaggerated hand movements and any policy it fancies, has taken the party so far towards the centre or in the opposite direction to that which it historically had, that it has been able to more or less tame the ogres of the unions. It may not have been a Scargill or a Clause 4 moment, but the air-traffic controllers' strike was something of a turning-point. Even the barely reconstructed Commies of the CCOO union disapproved of their action (though admittedly they didn't much care for the packet that the controllers were receiving.)
Taming the unions and changing labour law are crucial elements to all the "reformas". And remarkably the unions seem prepared to go along with them, given that they have been cast, for the purposes of public consumption, in the role of pantomime villains, as opposed to those in the banking and finance sectors who should be.
The Z-3PO is quite happy with this. It will be de-commissioned in 2012, which will be something of a pity as it is at least the embodiment, as it were, of a modern political leader: wires and circuit-boards in the right place and increasingly further to the right, a clone of Blair and no facial hair. And this last bit is important.
The leadership of the new model PSOE is likely to pass to one Alfredo Rubalcaba, the beardy vice-president who bears an unnerving resemblance to Solzhenitsyn. He will be up against another beardy, the Partido Popular's Mariano Rajoy - Mr. Grey - who succeeds in making the normally uncharismatic world of Spanish politics seem positively magnetic. Even the robotic Zapatero is full of life by comparison. What a choice faces Spain. Mr. Grey or the Gulag.
Despite having a massive lead in the polls, the Partido Popular faces a problem. Mr. Grey. We have WikiLeaks to thank for knowing that his predecessor, the little accountant José Maria Aznar, had reservations about Rajoy. A lot of people did, and still do. It seems no coincidence that, at what has been a critical period for Spain, Rajoy has been hardly anywhere to be seen. But Aznar has. He has re-emerged, minus, in proper contemporary manner, his old moustache and with his hair even darker than it became during his time as president, so much so that his head is like a Bertie Bassett's, with a thick layer of liquorice on top.
The re-appearance of the lush Aznar barnet is a reminder of a time when a Spanish leader did command some international kudos. Zapatero has just about managed to acquire some of his own. He may have performed an almost complete about-turn on most things, except his praiseworthy and liberal social reforms, but he seems to be restoring some Spanish credibility. It may have all required him being re-programmed, but he has retained, amidst all the "reformas", an affability. It is not one that could be said to be shared by Rajoy, the likely next president, a zomboid, and bearded, Borg.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Where A Hole Don't Belong
Something distinctly odd has occurred in Puerto Pollensa. The town hall has sent some chaps along to talk to the residents and to get their views as to where it should make some holes. Having spent the entire period of its current administration digging a hole for itself, the town hall has sought to repair the damage by digging some more holes, but filling them with the opinions of the locals. Spring and elections are in the air, so is the rarity of consultation.
So anyway, these holes. Where to put them, that's the question. And what, you may well ask, will go into these holes? Rubbish. Rubbish containers. In an act of catch-up, Pollensa is following the lead of its neighbour Alcúdia, where there exists a town hall which does resemble one that knows what it is doing, and making less unsightly the unsightly. But things are never straightforward. "Oi, mate, you can't put a hole here. You'll have to put it over there. You can't put a hole where a hole don't belong."
All good consultative stuff, but Pollensa town hall would not be Pollensa town hall if it weren't putting holes where holes certainly don't belong and full of stuff that belongs as far away as possible from the town. The remains of the beetle-stricken palm trees. Still not having quite cottoned on to the fact that these remains should be taken away and shoved in some ruddy great ovens, the town hall is re-enacting the Somme by digging trenches and presiding over the burial of fallen palms. Ashes to ashes. Well no, because it hasn't burnt them. Though some it did, in the fields, which it shouldn't have done.
There is now a part of Pollensa which has been declared a biological contamination site. The agit-propagandists of Pollensa who have been taking the town hall to task over its efforts to stem the spread of the beetle had already started referring to Puerto Pollensa as "ground zero". The town hall seems to be taking them at their word and has created its own. Here's something new and innovative for this season's tourists. Spray them with decontaminant as they enter and leave the resort, or issue them with space suits and tell them to stay indoors with the shutters firmly shut. Do not, under any circumstance, venture out! Curfews are in place!
But getting back to the other holes, the ones for the rubbish, the great works to create these holes and various other ones that are needed to upgrade water supplies and what have you are now about underway. With the usual great sense of timing, edging towards the season, holes, any number of them, will appear. I read the news today, 4,000 holes in Puerto Pollensa.
"How long are all these holes going to take, mate?" "Hmm, can't say. Three, four months." "Er, won't this take us into the tourist season?" "Emm, could do." "But aren't you supposed to stop building work when the season starts?" "Er, are we?"
Great stuff, let's hope that come 1 May, the hole-makers will down tools, swap their workmen bibs for waiters' white and black, and leave all the holes where the holes don't belong. Great for tourists. Mind you, not that it will matter, because they'll all be shut away in their space suits and drinking overpriced coffees through straws.
There is quite some discussion down Puerto Pollensa way as to what actually these holes are going to produce in the resort's church (aka market) square. The town hall had shown the plans, again in an act of hitherto-unknown communication, but there was one thing missing. It didn't say what one particular hole will be for, or what it should be in an ideal world of fantasy.
It will be mayor Cerdà's gift. His very own "Clochemerle". Le Pissoir Cerdà. The pièce de résistance of all the satire that his town hall has ushered forth. What does any small town need? Of course, a public urinal. Right in the middle of the square. This'll put one up the noses of those in Alcúdia who reckon it's an altogether better-run authority. Alcúdia won't have one of its own. But as with Clochemerle, jealous "alcudiencs" will arrive one night and blow it up. Riots will ensue, great passions will be aroused, until... . Until there is an almighty great thunderstorm that will cool everyone down. And then we'll know why all the holes. Rain.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
So anyway, these holes. Where to put them, that's the question. And what, you may well ask, will go into these holes? Rubbish. Rubbish containers. In an act of catch-up, Pollensa is following the lead of its neighbour Alcúdia, where there exists a town hall which does resemble one that knows what it is doing, and making less unsightly the unsightly. But things are never straightforward. "Oi, mate, you can't put a hole here. You'll have to put it over there. You can't put a hole where a hole don't belong."
All good consultative stuff, but Pollensa town hall would not be Pollensa town hall if it weren't putting holes where holes certainly don't belong and full of stuff that belongs as far away as possible from the town. The remains of the beetle-stricken palm trees. Still not having quite cottoned on to the fact that these remains should be taken away and shoved in some ruddy great ovens, the town hall is re-enacting the Somme by digging trenches and presiding over the burial of fallen palms. Ashes to ashes. Well no, because it hasn't burnt them. Though some it did, in the fields, which it shouldn't have done.
There is now a part of Pollensa which has been declared a biological contamination site. The agit-propagandists of Pollensa who have been taking the town hall to task over its efforts to stem the spread of the beetle had already started referring to Puerto Pollensa as "ground zero". The town hall seems to be taking them at their word and has created its own. Here's something new and innovative for this season's tourists. Spray them with decontaminant as they enter and leave the resort, or issue them with space suits and tell them to stay indoors with the shutters firmly shut. Do not, under any circumstance, venture out! Curfews are in place!
But getting back to the other holes, the ones for the rubbish, the great works to create these holes and various other ones that are needed to upgrade water supplies and what have you are now about underway. With the usual great sense of timing, edging towards the season, holes, any number of them, will appear. I read the news today, 4,000 holes in Puerto Pollensa.
"How long are all these holes going to take, mate?" "Hmm, can't say. Three, four months." "Er, won't this take us into the tourist season?" "Emm, could do." "But aren't you supposed to stop building work when the season starts?" "Er, are we?"
Great stuff, let's hope that come 1 May, the hole-makers will down tools, swap their workmen bibs for waiters' white and black, and leave all the holes where the holes don't belong. Great for tourists. Mind you, not that it will matter, because they'll all be shut away in their space suits and drinking overpriced coffees through straws.
There is quite some discussion down Puerto Pollensa way as to what actually these holes are going to produce in the resort's church (aka market) square. The town hall had shown the plans, again in an act of hitherto-unknown communication, but there was one thing missing. It didn't say what one particular hole will be for, or what it should be in an ideal world of fantasy.
It will be mayor Cerdà's gift. His very own "Clochemerle". Le Pissoir Cerdà. The pièce de résistance of all the satire that his town hall has ushered forth. What does any small town need? Of course, a public urinal. Right in the middle of the square. This'll put one up the noses of those in Alcúdia who reckon it's an altogether better-run authority. Alcúdia won't have one of its own. But as with Clochemerle, jealous "alcudiencs" will arrive one night and blow it up. Riots will ensue, great passions will be aroused, until... . Until there is an almighty great thunderstorm that will cool everyone down. And then we'll know why all the holes. Rain.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Same Old Rot: Tourism in the off-season
Easter is late this year. Easter Sunday is the 24th of April, three weeks later than 2010, and a week before the real season kicks in on 1 May. An earlier Easter makes life awkward for businesses. Open, and they face the inevitable hiatus of the phoney season before the May lift-off. This year is not quite so awkward.
Nevertheless, many hotels will not be opening for Easter. In Alcúdia, 26 establishments will remain closed. It seems perverse. At a time when Mallorca is reaping the benefits of north African disturbances, should all hotels not be taking the plunge and opening that one week earlier?
This is the headline-grabber. Hotels not opening for Easter, a late Easter at that. This is the headline-grabber that inspires rumblings as to the state of the tourism market, the tourism industry not trying hard enough, and all the other rot that goes with it.
It is rot. What the headline fails to tell you is that 24 hotels will be open at Easter. I make that roughly the same number that will not be open. So what's the problem? Answer? There isn't one. Demand, with or without Egyptian uprisings, is not so high that all hotels need to be open at Easter. Moreover, most of the hotels form parts of chains. One, two maybe, are sufficient. All of them? Of course not.
There is also the smell of a rat with the hotel-opening and hotel-not-opening figures. It is one that comes from their source, the local hotel association in Alcúdia. Not all hotels in Alcúdia are listed by the association on its website, as not all hotels are members. One very large complex that isn't listed is Bellevue. One whole chain, GC, which typically does open its hotels either early or through the winter, is similarly not present.
The point is that when you are fed stories about hotels and consequently the state of the tourism market, you don't always get a complete picture, while it is easier to be convinced as to the rotten state of the market by the fact of non-opening hotels than to be convinced as to a reasonable state of the market by the fact of a similar number which are open.
But let's get real. Out of season, only a few hotels being open can be viable. Of the 24 hotels in Alcúdia open by Easter, only six will have opened by the start of March (plus others that are not members of the local association). The Alcúdia hotel association, in releasing the figures as to non-opening hotels, has taken the opportunity to also state that the situation with winter tourism is very bad. Yes, I think we know this, and it applies not only to Alcúdia and the north of the island, but also to the whole of Mallorca. So what's new?
Well, there are some things that are new. Two different and more positive opportunities to lengthen the season and to make the off-version less "very bad". One is the "bienestar activo" concept of activities, the other, the "estación náutica" branding of Alcúdia as a watersports resort. The association supports both these initiatives.
It is hopeful that the activities included in "bienestar" (hiking, Nordic walking and so on) will reap some reward this coming season, that the results from this "strategy" and its promotion will bear fruit. But these activities are essentially non-summer activities. What difference are they likely to make in summer? Very little, I would suggest.
Far more important is that this so-called strategy should be aimed at the winter market, but what actually is the strategy? And where is this promotion? Not on the association's website, as far as I can see, unless you count the absurdly passive question - "have you been to our new Nordic walking park yet?" A word in the association's shell-like. Do not ask a closed question, the answer to which may well be "no" and which inspires no further interest or action. It's known in the trade as motivational copy. Or in the association's case, non-motivational.
The establishment of the "estación náutica" concept, an element of which is an obligation to have hotels open in the off-season (at least from March and to the end of November), presents the opportunity for the hotels to ensure that they are open before Easter. It will also test their resolve. Will they open? And will they make sufficient effort to promote this concept to ensure that it is sensible for them to open?
Here are two initiatives which in theory can lengthen the season and which can reduce the whingeing about the winter season being "very bad". The theory is one thing; the practice is quite another. Will they really mean that more hotels open earlier? It is very doubtful. How many watersports enthusiasts or Nordic walkers might be expected? Not enough to fill more than a handful of hotels. Around the same number that will be open during this "very bad" off-season, hotel association figures or otherwise.
Rot? You'd better believe it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Nevertheless, many hotels will not be opening for Easter. In Alcúdia, 26 establishments will remain closed. It seems perverse. At a time when Mallorca is reaping the benefits of north African disturbances, should all hotels not be taking the plunge and opening that one week earlier?
This is the headline-grabber. Hotels not opening for Easter, a late Easter at that. This is the headline-grabber that inspires rumblings as to the state of the tourism market, the tourism industry not trying hard enough, and all the other rot that goes with it.
It is rot. What the headline fails to tell you is that 24 hotels will be open at Easter. I make that roughly the same number that will not be open. So what's the problem? Answer? There isn't one. Demand, with or without Egyptian uprisings, is not so high that all hotels need to be open at Easter. Moreover, most of the hotels form parts of chains. One, two maybe, are sufficient. All of them? Of course not.
There is also the smell of a rat with the hotel-opening and hotel-not-opening figures. It is one that comes from their source, the local hotel association in Alcúdia. Not all hotels in Alcúdia are listed by the association on its website, as not all hotels are members. One very large complex that isn't listed is Bellevue. One whole chain, GC, which typically does open its hotels either early or through the winter, is similarly not present.
The point is that when you are fed stories about hotels and consequently the state of the tourism market, you don't always get a complete picture, while it is easier to be convinced as to the rotten state of the market by the fact of non-opening hotels than to be convinced as to a reasonable state of the market by the fact of a similar number which are open.
But let's get real. Out of season, only a few hotels being open can be viable. Of the 24 hotels in Alcúdia open by Easter, only six will have opened by the start of March (plus others that are not members of the local association). The Alcúdia hotel association, in releasing the figures as to non-opening hotels, has taken the opportunity to also state that the situation with winter tourism is very bad. Yes, I think we know this, and it applies not only to Alcúdia and the north of the island, but also to the whole of Mallorca. So what's new?
Well, there are some things that are new. Two different and more positive opportunities to lengthen the season and to make the off-version less "very bad". One is the "bienestar activo" concept of activities, the other, the "estación náutica" branding of Alcúdia as a watersports resort. The association supports both these initiatives.
It is hopeful that the activities included in "bienestar" (hiking, Nordic walking and so on) will reap some reward this coming season, that the results from this "strategy" and its promotion will bear fruit. But these activities are essentially non-summer activities. What difference are they likely to make in summer? Very little, I would suggest.
Far more important is that this so-called strategy should be aimed at the winter market, but what actually is the strategy? And where is this promotion? Not on the association's website, as far as I can see, unless you count the absurdly passive question - "have you been to our new Nordic walking park yet?" A word in the association's shell-like. Do not ask a closed question, the answer to which may well be "no" and which inspires no further interest or action. It's known in the trade as motivational copy. Or in the association's case, non-motivational.
The establishment of the "estación náutica" concept, an element of which is an obligation to have hotels open in the off-season (at least from March and to the end of November), presents the opportunity for the hotels to ensure that they are open before Easter. It will also test their resolve. Will they open? And will they make sufficient effort to promote this concept to ensure that it is sensible for them to open?
Here are two initiatives which in theory can lengthen the season and which can reduce the whingeing about the winter season being "very bad". The theory is one thing; the practice is quite another. Will they really mean that more hotels open earlier? It is very doubtful. How many watersports enthusiasts or Nordic walkers might be expected? Not enough to fill more than a handful of hotels. Around the same number that will be open during this "very bad" off-season, hotel association figures or otherwise.
Rot? You'd better believe it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
I'll Be Watching You
Watch out! I'm watching you. I'm watching you in a bar. I'll be coming but you won't know me. I'll be sitting there, watching. I am the eyes of the government, the tax office, the social security, employment. I'll be in your bar.
The tax office, along with the other departments, is stepping up its efforts. "An aggressive plan" against the black economy, the absence of papers or the papers not quite right. More inspections. Checking on those claiming dole, but receiving a wage. Checking on everything, including the importing of goods from Asia and elsewhere.
When the money's tight, the government does what it can to ensure its revenue stream. Quite reasonably so. But when money's tight, the propensity for rule-bending increases. It is the vicious circle of crisis.
The checks are not out of the ordinary. They happen all the time. Just that they're going to be increased. That "aggressive plan". Watching and waiting.
The watching happens in different ways. There's the watching on the internet. For some time, websites with accommodation to rent have been paid particular attention to, especially websites of British origin. The tourism ministry has netted some apartments in Calvia. The fines can be as high as 30,000 euros. The ministry's inspectors paid a visit to one apartment, all perfectly well turned out, cleaned, with the use of pool and garden. 4,500 euros to rent. Except it wasn't quite legal. Others offer even more, such as transfer to and from the airport. Who's doing the transferring?
This watching of websites and of accommodation intensified a couple of years ago. The checking of apartments and villas for quality, safety and tax was not new, just that the level of effort increased and the technology was made greater use of. You wondered whether it would have much effect. It would appear that it has. There is the vicious circle of renting, though. The hoops and obstacles of trying to be legit, only to come up against the impossible barriers. Not everyone wants to do it improperly. But not everyone can do it properly. So the watching continues and becomes more intense.
There's the watching on the roads. The director-general of Tráfico was in Palma not so long ago. More controls are planned. More promotion of the risks of speed and of being distracted, but more potential for revenue, you would have to imagine. Again, not unreasonably though. And then there is also the automated watching. The new radars. They're not watching. Not yet. More investment is needed to make them work.
They need to step up the controls, not just to stop speed, drink-driving and "distractions" (playing with mobiles, sat-navs etc.) but also to compensate for the loss of revenue during what was something of a work-to-rule by traffic police last summer. The number of fines fell by 15% along with a reduction in the number of vehicles that were stopped, albeit, however, that during the first half of last year as a whole the number of drivers caught for drink-driving went up by a staggering 114%.
Watching employees, watching the number of chairs on terraces, watching the needle on a music limiter, watching the PRs, watching the space occupied by sunbeds on a beach. Now watching the smokers. Maybe there are even detectives watching the detectives.
All this watching has its value. Calvia, when setting its budget for this year, placed an amount on what it anticipates coining in through fines. Maybe local authorities all do this, wherever they are. Maybe it is a part of "good" public financial management. I confess it had never occurred to me that local government or any other government income might actually take into account what comes in by way of fines.
Revenue from fines, you might think, would simply be the jam on the other revenue. The bonus. It would seem not. But by formalising the outcomes of all the watching, giving it a number in the accounts, it is as though it institutionalises wrong-doing. The expectation is to break the law. Human nature being what it is, then maybe this is a pragmatic approach. Yet it is a system which appears set up for social failure as it undermines the psychological contract of reciprocity between authority and citizen, the latter afforded the role of the unscrupulous, whoever the citizen might be.
And all the while, the citizen does his or her own watching. That of the politicians and others in positions of authority or in positions within businesses with close connections to these authority figures doing their own fiddling.
The whole world's watching. Each other. In Mallorca, at any rate.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The tax office, along with the other departments, is stepping up its efforts. "An aggressive plan" against the black economy, the absence of papers or the papers not quite right. More inspections. Checking on those claiming dole, but receiving a wage. Checking on everything, including the importing of goods from Asia and elsewhere.
When the money's tight, the government does what it can to ensure its revenue stream. Quite reasonably so. But when money's tight, the propensity for rule-bending increases. It is the vicious circle of crisis.
The checks are not out of the ordinary. They happen all the time. Just that they're going to be increased. That "aggressive plan". Watching and waiting.
The watching happens in different ways. There's the watching on the internet. For some time, websites with accommodation to rent have been paid particular attention to, especially websites of British origin. The tourism ministry has netted some apartments in Calvia. The fines can be as high as 30,000 euros. The ministry's inspectors paid a visit to one apartment, all perfectly well turned out, cleaned, with the use of pool and garden. 4,500 euros to rent. Except it wasn't quite legal. Others offer even more, such as transfer to and from the airport. Who's doing the transferring?
This watching of websites and of accommodation intensified a couple of years ago. The checking of apartments and villas for quality, safety and tax was not new, just that the level of effort increased and the technology was made greater use of. You wondered whether it would have much effect. It would appear that it has. There is the vicious circle of renting, though. The hoops and obstacles of trying to be legit, only to come up against the impossible barriers. Not everyone wants to do it improperly. But not everyone can do it properly. So the watching continues and becomes more intense.
There's the watching on the roads. The director-general of Tráfico was in Palma not so long ago. More controls are planned. More promotion of the risks of speed and of being distracted, but more potential for revenue, you would have to imagine. Again, not unreasonably though. And then there is also the automated watching. The new radars. They're not watching. Not yet. More investment is needed to make them work.
They need to step up the controls, not just to stop speed, drink-driving and "distractions" (playing with mobiles, sat-navs etc.) but also to compensate for the loss of revenue during what was something of a work-to-rule by traffic police last summer. The number of fines fell by 15% along with a reduction in the number of vehicles that were stopped, albeit, however, that during the first half of last year as a whole the number of drivers caught for drink-driving went up by a staggering 114%.
Watching employees, watching the number of chairs on terraces, watching the needle on a music limiter, watching the PRs, watching the space occupied by sunbeds on a beach. Now watching the smokers. Maybe there are even detectives watching the detectives.
All this watching has its value. Calvia, when setting its budget for this year, placed an amount on what it anticipates coining in through fines. Maybe local authorities all do this, wherever they are. Maybe it is a part of "good" public financial management. I confess it had never occurred to me that local government or any other government income might actually take into account what comes in by way of fines.
Revenue from fines, you might think, would simply be the jam on the other revenue. The bonus. It would seem not. But by formalising the outcomes of all the watching, giving it a number in the accounts, it is as though it institutionalises wrong-doing. The expectation is to break the law. Human nature being what it is, then maybe this is a pragmatic approach. Yet it is a system which appears set up for social failure as it undermines the psychological contract of reciprocity between authority and citizen, the latter afforded the role of the unscrupulous, whoever the citizen might be.
And all the while, the citizen does his or her own watching. That of the politicians and others in positions of authority or in positions within businesses with close connections to these authority figures doing their own fiddling.
The whole world's watching. Each other. In Mallorca, at any rate.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Nights On The Tiles
The truth that dare not speak its name.
A survey - yes, another one - finds that 80% of Brits between the ages of 16 and 35 come to Mallorca for one reason: nightlife. Well, not just one reason. There's also the matter of cheap booze. Two reasons then. You can add the other ones; they're not so difficult to figure out. Three reasons. No, four. Four reasons. No one expects the Spanish immoderation.
The same survey discovers, disquietingly, that 22% of Brits (female, one assumes) have in some way been sexually accosted while on holiday in Mallorca. I make no comment, other than that it comes as no surprise. Nor does the revelation that 71% are drunk for half the time, albeit that this seems on the low side.
You feel that behind these findings there is the unstated sound of self-deflecting and holier-than-thou disgust. You wonder quite what motivates Spanish surveys into the behaviour of British (and also, it must be added, German) youth. It's as though a Philistine pursuit of hedonistic nightlifing, too much alcohol and sex are reserved for the marauding hordes of northern Europe. It is, of course, far from the truth.
Barely audible but barely undisguised though this disgust may be, it is highly vocal compared with the truth that dare not be spoken. It is the truth that, for Brit and German youth - and older others whom tourism grandees might prefer to think have other things on their minds - going out at night and drinking are very important.
Getting off their faces and getting laid may be more the preserve of the younger end of the tourism masses - the younger end formerly known as the 18-30 crowd, now younger and older - but there was another survey, one that came out last summer, which found something very similar to this latest one. Of 3,000 tourists - of different ages - this reported that 80% of Brits (the good old 80% again) go to a night bar, club or disco on five or more nights during their stay. Nightlife is not just for the young, and that survey proved the point.
The truth that dare not speak its name is that for the great majority of tourists the priority is not figuring out which damn cell Chopin did or didn't live in; it is not admiring the interior of Palma Cathedral; it is not scrutinising some dust and bits of old stone at the excavations of Alcúdia's Roman town. It is going out. On the razz. On the lash. On the tiles. It is karaoke, trib acts. End of. It is into the wee small hours with a thumping musical accompaniment and next morning's thumping head. End of. Culture is the trip to the market. Excursions are to Pirates. End of. The priority is enjoying yourself. Having fun. It is what, for many, many tourists, holidays are about.
I said the other day that a mistake is made in referring to the "tourism market", as though it were one unified body of humanity. The other mistake is in referring to tourists as tourists. They are holidaymakers. There is a difference in terms of emphasis. One implies going out and having a good time, having a laugh, having some bevvies. I leave you to conclude which one.
The truth that dare not speak its name is that Mallorca has forgotten that people come on holiday. Consequently, the mindset, when it comes, for example, to promotion, is one quite removed from the experiences, the wishes, the motivations of great numbers of holidaymakers, the hoi polloi of the current-day Hi-de-Hi transported to the sun. And this isn't just the "yoof". Anything but.
This survey will be used as a stick with which to beat the drunkard Brit generation, as though such a thing had not previously existed. I can testify to the fact that it did. But it should be looked at more objectively. Combined with the other survey, it says much about what Mallorca represents. This may not be what tourism officialdom would like to think it represents, but it is. This may not be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth where Mallorca's tourism is concerned, but it is a truth nevertheless. Just that they don't want to speak it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
A survey - yes, another one - finds that 80% of Brits between the ages of 16 and 35 come to Mallorca for one reason: nightlife. Well, not just one reason. There's also the matter of cheap booze. Two reasons then. You can add the other ones; they're not so difficult to figure out. Three reasons. No, four. Four reasons. No one expects the Spanish immoderation.
The same survey discovers, disquietingly, that 22% of Brits (female, one assumes) have in some way been sexually accosted while on holiday in Mallorca. I make no comment, other than that it comes as no surprise. Nor does the revelation that 71% are drunk for half the time, albeit that this seems on the low side.
You feel that behind these findings there is the unstated sound of self-deflecting and holier-than-thou disgust. You wonder quite what motivates Spanish surveys into the behaviour of British (and also, it must be added, German) youth. It's as though a Philistine pursuit of hedonistic nightlifing, too much alcohol and sex are reserved for the marauding hordes of northern Europe. It is, of course, far from the truth.
Barely audible but barely undisguised though this disgust may be, it is highly vocal compared with the truth that dare not be spoken. It is the truth that, for Brit and German youth - and older others whom tourism grandees might prefer to think have other things on their minds - going out at night and drinking are very important.
Getting off their faces and getting laid may be more the preserve of the younger end of the tourism masses - the younger end formerly known as the 18-30 crowd, now younger and older - but there was another survey, one that came out last summer, which found something very similar to this latest one. Of 3,000 tourists - of different ages - this reported that 80% of Brits (the good old 80% again) go to a night bar, club or disco on five or more nights during their stay. Nightlife is not just for the young, and that survey proved the point.
The truth that dare not speak its name is that for the great majority of tourists the priority is not figuring out which damn cell Chopin did or didn't live in; it is not admiring the interior of Palma Cathedral; it is not scrutinising some dust and bits of old stone at the excavations of Alcúdia's Roman town. It is going out. On the razz. On the lash. On the tiles. It is karaoke, trib acts. End of. It is into the wee small hours with a thumping musical accompaniment and next morning's thumping head. End of. Culture is the trip to the market. Excursions are to Pirates. End of. The priority is enjoying yourself. Having fun. It is what, for many, many tourists, holidays are about.
I said the other day that a mistake is made in referring to the "tourism market", as though it were one unified body of humanity. The other mistake is in referring to tourists as tourists. They are holidaymakers. There is a difference in terms of emphasis. One implies going out and having a good time, having a laugh, having some bevvies. I leave you to conclude which one.
The truth that dare not speak its name is that Mallorca has forgotten that people come on holiday. Consequently, the mindset, when it comes, for example, to promotion, is one quite removed from the experiences, the wishes, the motivations of great numbers of holidaymakers, the hoi polloi of the current-day Hi-de-Hi transported to the sun. And this isn't just the "yoof". Anything but.
This survey will be used as a stick with which to beat the drunkard Brit generation, as though such a thing had not previously existed. I can testify to the fact that it did. But it should be looked at more objectively. Combined with the other survey, it says much about what Mallorca represents. This may not be what tourism officialdom would like to think it represents, but it is. This may not be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth where Mallorca's tourism is concerned, but it is a truth nevertheless. Just that they don't want to speak it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, February 07, 2011
The Return Of The Jedi: Spain's census
In March the UK will conduct its decennial census. In September Spain will conduct its own. Both are in line with the recommendation of the United Nations that censuses should be undertaken every ten years. The two are, otherwise, different. In the UK the census covers everyone. In Spain it does not. The Spanish census this year will be conducted in a different way to previous ones. In a bid to save money, the Spanish national statistics office (INE) will ask only 10% of the population to answer its questionnaire.
The UN's "bible" for conducting censuses stretches to 442 pages. I got about as far as page 10. One of the key principles is that of "individual enumeration", i.e. capturing information about everyone. How does the Spanish approach conform with this principle?
The statistics office believes that the 10% will give the same sort of information as to what was previously a system of making house-to-house visits, while costing 25% less. It's an ambitious claim when you consider that the statistics office also intends to use electoral roll information.
Censuses are not foolproof. Despite the UK's legal requirement for everyone to fill out a form, people slip through the net, either because they object to the capturing of information or because they don't want to reveal themselves. In Spain it would be hard to put a figure on quite how many might not want their existence to be known or how many would simply fall under the radar because they are neither registered as resident nor registered to vote. And the latest figures for foreigners who have registered to vote in the forthcoming local elections confirm that there is a vast number who, either because of inertia and apathy or for some other reason, are not registered.
The Spanish census will, even without electoral roll information, be a sample. Presumably, the statistics office has some statistical wizardry that will enable it to extrapolate data that will give a complete picture, but you might not be so confident that it does, given the record of some other exercises in statistics, tourism spend for example. Fundamentally though, it is difficult to see how this approach conforms with how a census should be conducted.
Does it matter? Perhaps it doesn't. In terms of core population data, this is pretty much available as it is, birth records adding to the information that is held on everyone through their ID cards or residency and NIE certificates, assuming they have one. Every year a report on population, by municipality, is issued. But population is only part of the census story.
In the 2001 census in the UK and other English-speaking countries, a great practical joke was played on the census compilers enquiring after religious inclination: the fourth-largest religious group in England and Wales was Jedi, as in Jedi Knight. With the emergence of social media to inspire them, what tricks might be played this time round?
The UK census has also captured information on such issues as whether a home has central heating and educational qualifications. The last Spanish census in 2001 wanted to know about matters as diverse as migration, type of home and, of all things, fertility.
The census does, therefore, attempt to try and get to know something about people. It may be no more than a glorified piece of market research, but the government does at least try to compile a picture of everyone, Spanish or non-Spanish. It's more than the political parties do.
Using the electoral roll in the census is doomed to fail the test of creating a Domesday, for the reasons I have noted above. It's far from surprising that there should be a damn great hole when it comes to those registered to vote. Mallorcans themselves, 68% of them, in a survey just released by Gadeso, the research organisation, consider the political situation on the island to be "bad". But being bad isn't a reason for not taking an interest, especially as Mallorcan politics has such high comedic, nay farcical, characteristics.
Apathy towards politics, regardless of whether it is British or Mallorcan, is understandable, but locally the apathy is heightened by a lack of appreciation among expats as to what the parties are and what they stand for and by any efforts by the parties to come to an appreciation of their foreign constituents.
The one and only time I have been "doorstepped" in Mallorca was when the local Partido Popular pitched up at the gate mob-handed. Five of them, grinning like religious zealots on a mission.
They were determined to tell me how good the then-to-be-built motorway extension from Inca was going to be for foreigners. It was a bizarre and somewhat patronising assertion. Though I didn't have much sympathy for the eco-warriors who had camped out to try and prevent the motorway, this opposition was a good enough pretext with which to tell the PP-ers I wouldn't be voting for them. They had made an assumption that, as a foreigner, I would be sympathetic to them.
If the political parties were serious about the foreign vote and if the census might achieve some semblance of electoral-roll completeness, then they should start by saying what they might, or would do for foreign voters. They should start by trying to understand the foreign-voter's motivation. But if they start asking about religion, they'll get one answer. I'm a Jedi.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The UN's "bible" for conducting censuses stretches to 442 pages. I got about as far as page 10. One of the key principles is that of "individual enumeration", i.e. capturing information about everyone. How does the Spanish approach conform with this principle?
The statistics office believes that the 10% will give the same sort of information as to what was previously a system of making house-to-house visits, while costing 25% less. It's an ambitious claim when you consider that the statistics office also intends to use electoral roll information.
Censuses are not foolproof. Despite the UK's legal requirement for everyone to fill out a form, people slip through the net, either because they object to the capturing of information or because they don't want to reveal themselves. In Spain it would be hard to put a figure on quite how many might not want their existence to be known or how many would simply fall under the radar because they are neither registered as resident nor registered to vote. And the latest figures for foreigners who have registered to vote in the forthcoming local elections confirm that there is a vast number who, either because of inertia and apathy or for some other reason, are not registered.
The Spanish census will, even without electoral roll information, be a sample. Presumably, the statistics office has some statistical wizardry that will enable it to extrapolate data that will give a complete picture, but you might not be so confident that it does, given the record of some other exercises in statistics, tourism spend for example. Fundamentally though, it is difficult to see how this approach conforms with how a census should be conducted.
Does it matter? Perhaps it doesn't. In terms of core population data, this is pretty much available as it is, birth records adding to the information that is held on everyone through their ID cards or residency and NIE certificates, assuming they have one. Every year a report on population, by municipality, is issued. But population is only part of the census story.
In the 2001 census in the UK and other English-speaking countries, a great practical joke was played on the census compilers enquiring after religious inclination: the fourth-largest religious group in England and Wales was Jedi, as in Jedi Knight. With the emergence of social media to inspire them, what tricks might be played this time round?
The UK census has also captured information on such issues as whether a home has central heating and educational qualifications. The last Spanish census in 2001 wanted to know about matters as diverse as migration, type of home and, of all things, fertility.
The census does, therefore, attempt to try and get to know something about people. It may be no more than a glorified piece of market research, but the government does at least try to compile a picture of everyone, Spanish or non-Spanish. It's more than the political parties do.
Using the electoral roll in the census is doomed to fail the test of creating a Domesday, for the reasons I have noted above. It's far from surprising that there should be a damn great hole when it comes to those registered to vote. Mallorcans themselves, 68% of them, in a survey just released by Gadeso, the research organisation, consider the political situation on the island to be "bad". But being bad isn't a reason for not taking an interest, especially as Mallorcan politics has such high comedic, nay farcical, characteristics.
Apathy towards politics, regardless of whether it is British or Mallorcan, is understandable, but locally the apathy is heightened by a lack of appreciation among expats as to what the parties are and what they stand for and by any efforts by the parties to come to an appreciation of their foreign constituents.
The one and only time I have been "doorstepped" in Mallorca was when the local Partido Popular pitched up at the gate mob-handed. Five of them, grinning like religious zealots on a mission.
They were determined to tell me how good the then-to-be-built motorway extension from Inca was going to be for foreigners. It was a bizarre and somewhat patronising assertion. Though I didn't have much sympathy for the eco-warriors who had camped out to try and prevent the motorway, this opposition was a good enough pretext with which to tell the PP-ers I wouldn't be voting for them. They had made an assumption that, as a foreigner, I would be sympathetic to them.
If the political parties were serious about the foreign vote and if the census might achieve some semblance of electoral-roll completeness, then they should start by saying what they might, or would do for foreign voters. They should start by trying to understand the foreign-voter's motivation. But if they start asking about religion, they'll get one answer. I'm a Jedi.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Old Fart At Play: Public decency in Mallorca
I apologise for this title. If you are offended, or have already been offended, please avert your eyes. I risk offending public decency. What follows includes references to bodily functions and nudity. Look away NOW!
One of Captain Beefheart's finest moments was entitled "Old Fart At Play". The old fart was smart, reckoned the Captain. He went on:
"Momma was flatten'n lard
With her red enamel rollin' pin
When the fishhead broke the window
Rubber eye erect 'n precisely detailed
Airholes from which breath should come
Is now closely fit
With the chatter of the old fart inside".
No, I have no idea what it's about either. But it sounds rude. Offensive to public decency. Possibly.
They know a thing or two about breaking wind and public decency in Malawi. A political row has broken out over a proposed law to ban farting in public. The Justice Minister says that the law will promote public decency. The Solicitor-General disagrees. "How any reasonable or sensible person can construe the provision to criminalising farting in public is beyond me." He might have said that it was behind him.
As far as I am aware, there are no limits as to the breaking of wind in Mallorca. This is probably as well. A diet, for some, that is rich in pulses would make any ban a physical impossibility. But otherwise, public decency is a subject of some lack of clarity and attempts at lawmaking directed at something other than flatulence.
Is it, for example, really acceptable to point Percy at the pavement? Or at a tree or grass verge? You might be tempted to think it was, given its apparent prevalence. But no, you can be fined, something I avoided on an occasion when I flouted the law. On the side of the motorway going into Palma. There was a traffic jam. I was on the point of explosion. Hazard lights on. Parked on the hard shoulder. Blessed relief. And in full view.
Town halls have tried to take measures to reduce public peeing, though they might take more were they to install public lavs. One attempt was by Pollensa town hall which asked very nicely for people not to use the streets for the purpose of relieving themselves during the Moors and Christians thrash a couple of years ago. It seemed rather inauthentic. The original event was probably full of pipework washing the streets down.
Hygiene is clearly a factor when it comes to pissoir al fresco. And so it is too with lack of clothing. Concern there was last summer in Palma as to the number of bare male upper-halves on the tourist bus or on café seats. All that sweat, you see, to say nothing of the unsightliness, depending, I suppose, on what sort of an upper-half it is. Which leads us to the delicate issue of public nudity. Public decency is more an issue of public taste rather than being offended by kit-offery in principle. And by public taste, I mean what sort of a body is sans kit.
There are degrees of public shedding of clothes, and some of it can be only partial and still cause huge offence, as with those lugging considerable amounts of bright white and blotchy pink lard (Beefheart's momma or otherwise) around with them and sporting a bra as they lumber along Alcúdia's greasy Mile. The local Eroski used to have a sign up which requested that shirts and something on feet should be worn in-store. They gave up on account of the armies of Jimmy Multi-Bellies heading for the San Miguel section.
The morally outraged Christian right, through such organisations as the Instituto de Política Familiar, has tried to get toplessness (women's, that is) on beaches and by pools banned. They may have a point in some instances. But generally, such prudishness is not given much houseroom or beach space. Indeed, you have the uncertainty as to whether the full kit-off is actually permissible or not, anywhere on a beach. It's not something I suggest you try putting to the test, but there is a view, well that of the Spanish naturist federation anyway, that au naturel is au k.
It tends to be down to individual town halls as to how they interpret public nudity. In Barcelona, so I understand, the full in-the-buff is considered to be a right, though presumably not if you're wobbling along the Ramblas.
Far safer then, that if you do wish to indulge in some potential offending of public decency, that you stick to the wind-breaking variety. But if you do, just be careful in case there are any passing Malawians who get downwind of you.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
One of Captain Beefheart's finest moments was entitled "Old Fart At Play". The old fart was smart, reckoned the Captain. He went on:
"Momma was flatten'n lard
With her red enamel rollin' pin
When the fishhead broke the window
Rubber eye erect 'n precisely detailed
Airholes from which breath should come
Is now closely fit
With the chatter of the old fart inside".
No, I have no idea what it's about either. But it sounds rude. Offensive to public decency. Possibly.
They know a thing or two about breaking wind and public decency in Malawi. A political row has broken out over a proposed law to ban farting in public. The Justice Minister says that the law will promote public decency. The Solicitor-General disagrees. "How any reasonable or sensible person can construe the provision to criminalising farting in public is beyond me." He might have said that it was behind him.
As far as I am aware, there are no limits as to the breaking of wind in Mallorca. This is probably as well. A diet, for some, that is rich in pulses would make any ban a physical impossibility. But otherwise, public decency is a subject of some lack of clarity and attempts at lawmaking directed at something other than flatulence.
Is it, for example, really acceptable to point Percy at the pavement? Or at a tree or grass verge? You might be tempted to think it was, given its apparent prevalence. But no, you can be fined, something I avoided on an occasion when I flouted the law. On the side of the motorway going into Palma. There was a traffic jam. I was on the point of explosion. Hazard lights on. Parked on the hard shoulder. Blessed relief. And in full view.
Town halls have tried to take measures to reduce public peeing, though they might take more were they to install public lavs. One attempt was by Pollensa town hall which asked very nicely for people not to use the streets for the purpose of relieving themselves during the Moors and Christians thrash a couple of years ago. It seemed rather inauthentic. The original event was probably full of pipework washing the streets down.
Hygiene is clearly a factor when it comes to pissoir al fresco. And so it is too with lack of clothing. Concern there was last summer in Palma as to the number of bare male upper-halves on the tourist bus or on café seats. All that sweat, you see, to say nothing of the unsightliness, depending, I suppose, on what sort of an upper-half it is. Which leads us to the delicate issue of public nudity. Public decency is more an issue of public taste rather than being offended by kit-offery in principle. And by public taste, I mean what sort of a body is sans kit.
There are degrees of public shedding of clothes, and some of it can be only partial and still cause huge offence, as with those lugging considerable amounts of bright white and blotchy pink lard (Beefheart's momma or otherwise) around with them and sporting a bra as they lumber along Alcúdia's greasy Mile. The local Eroski used to have a sign up which requested that shirts and something on feet should be worn in-store. They gave up on account of the armies of Jimmy Multi-Bellies heading for the San Miguel section.
The morally outraged Christian right, through such organisations as the Instituto de Política Familiar, has tried to get toplessness (women's, that is) on beaches and by pools banned. They may have a point in some instances. But generally, such prudishness is not given much houseroom or beach space. Indeed, you have the uncertainty as to whether the full kit-off is actually permissible or not, anywhere on a beach. It's not something I suggest you try putting to the test, but there is a view, well that of the Spanish naturist federation anyway, that au naturel is au k.
It tends to be down to individual town halls as to how they interpret public nudity. In Barcelona, so I understand, the full in-the-buff is considered to be a right, though presumably not if you're wobbling along the Ramblas.
Far safer then, that if you do wish to indulge in some potential offending of public decency, that you stick to the wind-breaking variety. But if you do, just be careful in case there are any passing Malawians who get downwind of you.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
The Source Of The Problem: Jaume Font and the PP
Jaume Font. James the Source. The source of much discontent within the local Partido Popular; discontent that will rumble on despite Font's departure from the party.
Jaume has not, he says, been happy with the party for some years. He became less happy last summer when he found his route to the presidency of the Council of Mallorca blocked by the party's leader, José Ramón Bauzá. Joe Ray has achieved something astonishing. What should have brought him plaudits, not nominating anyone for the forthcoming elections implicated in any scandal, has backfired.
Font was the most prominent member of the party to be so denied nomination. The accusations against him, which revolved around the so-called "caso plan territorial de Mallorca", were archived along with the whole case in November. The perceived injustices against individuals whose innocence was being questioned were just the background to the greater division that Bauzá had successfully managed to create. The left of the party has been alienated by his anti-Catalanism, his equivocal attitude towards regional autonomy and by perceptions that the real control is in the hands of the party nationally and via the puppet-mastery figure of Carlos Grytpype-Thynne, Sr. Delgado, Mr. Thin, the mayor of Calvia.
Bat duly taken home, the fountain of another party is to gush, with Font its spring. He has rejected the idea of his joining the Unió Mallorquina, unlike another ex-PP member, Miguel Munar, who has already risen to a position of high command in a party stripped of much of its leadership through scandal. Instead, there will be a party with a power base in his home town of Sa Pobla, to which, in an act of indignant snubbing, Joe Ray was not invited to the end-of-summer celebrations in September.
The support of the "poblers" alone would not get Font very far, which is why he appears to believe that a grander party, let's call it the Font Front (in fact the Lliga Regionalista Balear), should be formed. This could embrace the UM and presumably others disenchanted with the unpopular head of the "populares", Joe Ray. These might include the PP spokesperson in the local parliament, the boy on the burning and under-demolition-threat bridge of Porto Cristo, populist baldy Antoni Pastor, the mayor of Manacor. Another one of the great disaffected, Guillem Ginard, the former mayor of Campos who fell out with his UM buddies and formed his own party, +Acció, is also said to be in the frame for the Font Front.
There isn't a terrific amount of clear blue Med between the UM and the left of the PP. In many respects, they are very similar. The UM's USPs of Catalan and autonomy appear to be those also of the anti-Bauzá PP. Only a fervent attitude towards independence on behalf of the UM might be said to distinguish the two.
The danger for Font, however, is that a coalition with the UM could easily be portrayed as the union of the discredited. Though the case against him has been archived, i.e. to all intents and purposes dropped, and though the new-look UM has tried to distance itself from the corruption cases, Font was environment minister in the Jaume Matas government. Bauzá has not only sought to block nominations of those implicated in scandal, he has also sought to draw a line under the Matas regime and its corruption allegations. Font's going is not something that Bauzá will be unhappy about.
If he hadn't managed to put his foot in it so often, as with his self-confessed "mental lapse" regarding Catalan, Joe Ray's cleaning up of the PP would by now, you would have thought, have placed him in a position of far greater strength and have also afforded him greater popularity. But he has underestimated the "Mallorcan-ness" of much of his local party, thus bringing about the division that he now faces. In November he had to meet with PP mayors from across the island, alarmed by the friction, with Font and Pastor firmly lined up against Bauzá.
Though there may be a possibility that others will jump ship from the PP, it would be a huge risk to any politician with his or her eye on the main chance of governmental power. There are three months until the elections, which is not long to put into place an effective party machine. However, it is being said that there are some powerful businesspeople willing to support it.
The PP should walk the coming elections, but even were it to win, how long would it take for the divisions to re-surface? They are ones largely of Bauzá's making. His apparently honourable intentions to present a "clean" PP have been undone by what one commentator has described as the "breaking of the bonds between the PP and Mallorca". There are unhappy campers on the party's left and a strident right-ist agenda would only make them unhappier. Just like Jaume Font.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Jaume has not, he says, been happy with the party for some years. He became less happy last summer when he found his route to the presidency of the Council of Mallorca blocked by the party's leader, José Ramón Bauzá. Joe Ray has achieved something astonishing. What should have brought him plaudits, not nominating anyone for the forthcoming elections implicated in any scandal, has backfired.
Font was the most prominent member of the party to be so denied nomination. The accusations against him, which revolved around the so-called "caso plan territorial de Mallorca", were archived along with the whole case in November. The perceived injustices against individuals whose innocence was being questioned were just the background to the greater division that Bauzá had successfully managed to create. The left of the party has been alienated by his anti-Catalanism, his equivocal attitude towards regional autonomy and by perceptions that the real control is in the hands of the party nationally and via the puppet-mastery figure of Carlos Grytpype-Thynne, Sr. Delgado, Mr. Thin, the mayor of Calvia.
Bat duly taken home, the fountain of another party is to gush, with Font its spring. He has rejected the idea of his joining the Unió Mallorquina, unlike another ex-PP member, Miguel Munar, who has already risen to a position of high command in a party stripped of much of its leadership through scandal. Instead, there will be a party with a power base in his home town of Sa Pobla, to which, in an act of indignant snubbing, Joe Ray was not invited to the end-of-summer celebrations in September.
The support of the "poblers" alone would not get Font very far, which is why he appears to believe that a grander party, let's call it the Font Front (in fact the Lliga Regionalista Balear), should be formed. This could embrace the UM and presumably others disenchanted with the unpopular head of the "populares", Joe Ray. These might include the PP spokesperson in the local parliament, the boy on the burning and under-demolition-threat bridge of Porto Cristo, populist baldy Antoni Pastor, the mayor of Manacor. Another one of the great disaffected, Guillem Ginard, the former mayor of Campos who fell out with his UM buddies and formed his own party, +Acció, is also said to be in the frame for the Font Front.
There isn't a terrific amount of clear blue Med between the UM and the left of the PP. In many respects, they are very similar. The UM's USPs of Catalan and autonomy appear to be those also of the anti-Bauzá PP. Only a fervent attitude towards independence on behalf of the UM might be said to distinguish the two.
The danger for Font, however, is that a coalition with the UM could easily be portrayed as the union of the discredited. Though the case against him has been archived, i.e. to all intents and purposes dropped, and though the new-look UM has tried to distance itself from the corruption cases, Font was environment minister in the Jaume Matas government. Bauzá has not only sought to block nominations of those implicated in scandal, he has also sought to draw a line under the Matas regime and its corruption allegations. Font's going is not something that Bauzá will be unhappy about.
If he hadn't managed to put his foot in it so often, as with his self-confessed "mental lapse" regarding Catalan, Joe Ray's cleaning up of the PP would by now, you would have thought, have placed him in a position of far greater strength and have also afforded him greater popularity. But he has underestimated the "Mallorcan-ness" of much of his local party, thus bringing about the division that he now faces. In November he had to meet with PP mayors from across the island, alarmed by the friction, with Font and Pastor firmly lined up against Bauzá.
Though there may be a possibility that others will jump ship from the PP, it would be a huge risk to any politician with his or her eye on the main chance of governmental power. There are three months until the elections, which is not long to put into place an effective party machine. However, it is being said that there are some powerful businesspeople willing to support it.
The PP should walk the coming elections, but even were it to win, how long would it take for the divisions to re-surface? They are ones largely of Bauzá's making. His apparently honourable intentions to present a "clean" PP have been undone by what one commentator has described as the "breaking of the bonds between the PP and Mallorca". There are unhappy campers on the party's left and a strident right-ist agenda would only make them unhappier. Just like Jaume Font.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, February 04, 2011
The Wrong Box: Chopin didn't live here
Mallorca doesn't do famous people. Or it didn't until along came the sporting trio of Moya, Nadal and Lorenzo (and only one of these is truly famous). The island does do the famous for not being famous, e.g. Ramon Llull and Fray Juniper, whose fame is known only by a knowing minority. In the absence of the genuine historically famous, Mallorca grabs whomsoever it can from elsewhere, builds them up as "adopted" sons and succeeds in getting egg on its face.
Mallorca's claim on Frederic Chopin has always smacked of opportunism. The promotional use of Chopin, given that the composer was far from enamoured of the island, has long been somewhat questionable. The fact that he endured a pretty miserable few weeks in Valldemossa (a period not even as long as the odd north European pensioner spends nowadays during the winter), was shunned by prudish locals who objected to his not having made a good woman of George Sand, and couldn't find a doctor capable of treating his TB gets rather conveniently overlooked in the Mallorcan bigging up of the Polish piano-player.
Chopin was sold a bit of a pup when it was suggested that a winter in Mallorca might be good for his lungs. Like many a contemporary visitor, he was unaware as to how cold and damp it can get. Over the years, a succession of visitors, to the Chopin-Sand accommodation in Valldemossa, has also been sold a pup. As one headline has put it: "Engaño en Do Mayor". A swindle in C Major. The Great Rock and Roll Swindle has become The Great Baroque and Pole Swindle. (Ok, Chopin was not baroque - another swindle therefore - but it sounds good.)
Swindle is a bit over the top. Chopin did reside at the charterhouse in Valldemossa, but it turns out that what is charmingly referred to as his "cell" was not number two but number four. For years, visitors have gone to number two, when they shouldn't have done. Just to make things more confusing, number four used to be number three and number two used to be number one. That there might have been a muddle as to the exact cell doesn't seem totally surprising.
The judge who has ruled that number four it was - and, yes, it takes a judge to decide such matters - has also insisted that the owners of number two correct all publicity material and take away the piano from the cell. Unfortunately, the Joanna in question was not, as has been claimed, one that Chopin used. It couldn't have been as it wasn't made until some years after Chopin's wretched short break in Valldemossa, say experts in such matters.
So, some sizeable grants later and some eighty years on from when visitors first started making the Chopin pilgrimage, visitors as from now will presumably be directed to a different cell to that which they previously were, and wherein is the piano which Chopin did use. (They in fact seem to now be being directed to both, as staff are either as confused as everyone else, are hedging their bets or have come to the conclusion, as have others, that Chopin was not a single-cell composer.)
This is all, of course, somewhat embarrassing. During 2010, the bicentenary of Chopin's birth, there was considerable hullabaloo commemorating the anniversary, and Mallorca got in on the act big time. The revelation as to the wrong box at the charterhouse does not, in itself, demean those celebrations, but there is a bit more to it.
The owners of number two are a family by the name of Capllonch. One of the family, Rosa, happens also to be the president of the Chopin Festival. To make matters slightly more embarrassing, in October last year, Sra. Capllonch, with "surprise, emotion and thanks" (said a report), was honoured by the Polish minister of culture. She received the gold medal of cultural merit, an award granted to those who protect cultural heritage. At the time of the award, Sra. Capllonch spoke of the important support and "dose of energy" it gave in the dispute surrounding the piano and the cell. Oops.
Sra. Capllonch, who will be appealing against the ruling, says that publicity has not been misleading as "no one has said that Chopin and Sand lived exclusively (in number two)". An appeal will mean that the dispute between the owners of two and four, that has already gone on for over 30 years, will continue, though if he didn't live exclusively in one or the other, then you might well ask what the fuss is all about. You might also ask, if no one has said that he lived only in one cell, quite how it ever came to be suggested that he did. Maybe he didn't live in either. The whole thing's been made up.
Number two, number four, or even number one and number three. Does it really matter? If the mix-up has an impact on visitor numbers, it does, though this is unlikely; visitors don't go just because of Chopin and Sand, which is just as well. A quarter of a million of them each year are reckoned to bring in some five million euros to Valldemossa. But the mystery as to which cell it was is nothing compared with the greater mystery as to quite how Chopin in Mallorca has ever assumed such significance. Number two, number four, number one, number three. It doesn't matter. He couldn't wait to get the hell out of his cell. Whichever one it was.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Mallorca's claim on Frederic Chopin has always smacked of opportunism. The promotional use of Chopin, given that the composer was far from enamoured of the island, has long been somewhat questionable. The fact that he endured a pretty miserable few weeks in Valldemossa (a period not even as long as the odd north European pensioner spends nowadays during the winter), was shunned by prudish locals who objected to his not having made a good woman of George Sand, and couldn't find a doctor capable of treating his TB gets rather conveniently overlooked in the Mallorcan bigging up of the Polish piano-player.
Chopin was sold a bit of a pup when it was suggested that a winter in Mallorca might be good for his lungs. Like many a contemporary visitor, he was unaware as to how cold and damp it can get. Over the years, a succession of visitors, to the Chopin-Sand accommodation in Valldemossa, has also been sold a pup. As one headline has put it: "Engaño en Do Mayor". A swindle in C Major. The Great Rock and Roll Swindle has become The Great Baroque and Pole Swindle. (Ok, Chopin was not baroque - another swindle therefore - but it sounds good.)
Swindle is a bit over the top. Chopin did reside at the charterhouse in Valldemossa, but it turns out that what is charmingly referred to as his "cell" was not number two but number four. For years, visitors have gone to number two, when they shouldn't have done. Just to make things more confusing, number four used to be number three and number two used to be number one. That there might have been a muddle as to the exact cell doesn't seem totally surprising.
The judge who has ruled that number four it was - and, yes, it takes a judge to decide such matters - has also insisted that the owners of number two correct all publicity material and take away the piano from the cell. Unfortunately, the Joanna in question was not, as has been claimed, one that Chopin used. It couldn't have been as it wasn't made until some years after Chopin's wretched short break in Valldemossa, say experts in such matters.
So, some sizeable grants later and some eighty years on from when visitors first started making the Chopin pilgrimage, visitors as from now will presumably be directed to a different cell to that which they previously were, and wherein is the piano which Chopin did use. (They in fact seem to now be being directed to both, as staff are either as confused as everyone else, are hedging their bets or have come to the conclusion, as have others, that Chopin was not a single-cell composer.)
This is all, of course, somewhat embarrassing. During 2010, the bicentenary of Chopin's birth, there was considerable hullabaloo commemorating the anniversary, and Mallorca got in on the act big time. The revelation as to the wrong box at the charterhouse does not, in itself, demean those celebrations, but there is a bit more to it.
The owners of number two are a family by the name of Capllonch. One of the family, Rosa, happens also to be the president of the Chopin Festival. To make matters slightly more embarrassing, in October last year, Sra. Capllonch, with "surprise, emotion and thanks" (said a report), was honoured by the Polish minister of culture. She received the gold medal of cultural merit, an award granted to those who protect cultural heritage. At the time of the award, Sra. Capllonch spoke of the important support and "dose of energy" it gave in the dispute surrounding the piano and the cell. Oops.
Sra. Capllonch, who will be appealing against the ruling, says that publicity has not been misleading as "no one has said that Chopin and Sand lived exclusively (in number two)". An appeal will mean that the dispute between the owners of two and four, that has already gone on for over 30 years, will continue, though if he didn't live exclusively in one or the other, then you might well ask what the fuss is all about. You might also ask, if no one has said that he lived only in one cell, quite how it ever came to be suggested that he did. Maybe he didn't live in either. The whole thing's been made up.
Number two, number four, or even number one and number three. Does it really matter? If the mix-up has an impact on visitor numbers, it does, though this is unlikely; visitors don't go just because of Chopin and Sand, which is just as well. A quarter of a million of them each year are reckoned to bring in some five million euros to Valldemossa. But the mystery as to which cell it was is nothing compared with the greater mystery as to quite how Chopin in Mallorca has ever assumed such significance. Number two, number four, number one, number three. It doesn't matter. He couldn't wait to get the hell out of his cell. Whichever one it was.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Adopting Positions: Marketing Mallorca
The director of Air Berlin in Spain and Portugal, Álvaro Middelmann, has raised the possibility of reactivating the connection between Mallorca and California. It would require going via Berlin or Düsseldorf, but there is some merit to the idea, given the association that exists because of Fray Juniper. Crew from a US navy ship were recently in Petra, just to emphasise this association.
California, the US as a whole, and other farther-flung markets across the globe have never represented much by way of tourism business for Mallorca. Which doesn't mean to say that Mallorca is not known; nor does it mean that there isn't interest. I receive emails from all over the place about Mallorca - from the States and Canada, from Australia.
An old friend from South Africa has been in contact. He'd conducted a survey about Mallorca. Responses ranged from "never considered Mallorca", "what is there to do besides the beach?", "would consider Mallorca but has no information", "perceives Mallorca to be just mass tourism".
These responses are quite revealing, albeit on what was a limited sample, but my contact went on to say that more research needs to be done as to the thought processes when a decision is made as to holiday choice. This strikes a very strong chord.
I am not about to suggest that South Africa could ever become a major market for Mallorca, but as can be seen by attempts to attract a Chinese tourist market, distance is less of a factor than it once was. Plenty of South Africans travel to Europe, and plenty of Europeans travel to South Africa. It's a small world. And in a world made smaller, diversity of market has become all important - for Mallorca and for anywhere reliant upon tourism.
Away from its mature markets, such as the UK and Germany, Mallorca faces a huge challenge in terms of getting a message across and standing out from the competition. And even with the mature markets, it faces a similar challenge of standing out.
The experience of the efforts to attract the Chinese is quite illuminating. The potential of this market may be more illusory than might be hoped, but the process of seeking it should be applauded. What has happened is that an understanding has been sought of a very different culture. It has been a process of understanding the thought processes.
But it has happened because it is clear that Chinese culture is very different. Where other markets are concerned, you wonder whether a similar effort has been made or even contemplated. If it hasn't been, you come back to the erroneous attitude towards generic marketing, generic messages and promotions. They can be successful only in a limited way, by creating awareness, but little more.
The great failure of much tourism marketing lies in the vocabulary. The very term "tourism market" implies something that is homogeneous. It is anything but. The failure, though, is in treating it as such and therefore applying a sort of one-size-fits-all approach. It doesn't work. And in Mallorca's case, what has occurred is that it tries to be all things to all people. Generic advertising, such as TV campaigns, falls into this trap. Yes, it can raise awareness, yes, it can reinforce, but it doesn't, in itself, "sell" and especially not if there isn't a strong sense of "positioning" the brand that is Mallorca.
The concept of market positioning should be fundamental in tourism marketing. Essentially, this has to do with creating an image in the potential tourist's mind, one of differentiation from competition, and also with then targeting specific markets once the right means are found to create that image. With the Chinese, this has been the process, but not with other markets. Crucially, the process appears to have been one of building up "images, benefits and differentiation (that) are solely the perception of the tourist, not the perceptions of the tourism officials or the tourism marketer" *.
Yet it is the perceptions of the tourism officials in Mallorca which generally prevail. They look upon the amorphous mass that is the tourism market with their eyes, not those of the tourist. It's the wrong way round, and so you end up with generic TV campaigns that boast of fine beaches and turquoise seas. Nothing wrong with this; they are Mallorca's core attributes. But how many other destinations have the same? How many other destinations have more culture, more of pretty much anything than Mallorca? This is the failure. The message doesn't stand out, but the belief, the wrong belief, is that generic campaigns will make it stand out. It doesn't.
To come back to Air Berlin and California, in Fray Juniper there exists the differentiation. His association is, if you like, a tourism calling-card from which all else can follow. The "position" is therefore quite different to the usual marketing of Mallorca, and so it should be for other markets. For the South Africans, it would have to be more than the beaches and the seas. It would have to be meaningful to them. It would have to be more sophisticated in understanding the thought processes that might appeal to a tourist. This is what marketing of Mallorca should be about, regardless of market, mature or new, not simply the scatter-gun chucking of money at one-size-fits-all campaigns.
* Professor Harsha Chacko, University of New Orleans, "Positioning A Tourism Destination To Gain A Competitive Edge".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
California, the US as a whole, and other farther-flung markets across the globe have never represented much by way of tourism business for Mallorca. Which doesn't mean to say that Mallorca is not known; nor does it mean that there isn't interest. I receive emails from all over the place about Mallorca - from the States and Canada, from Australia.
An old friend from South Africa has been in contact. He'd conducted a survey about Mallorca. Responses ranged from "never considered Mallorca", "what is there to do besides the beach?", "would consider Mallorca but has no information", "perceives Mallorca to be just mass tourism".
These responses are quite revealing, albeit on what was a limited sample, but my contact went on to say that more research needs to be done as to the thought processes when a decision is made as to holiday choice. This strikes a very strong chord.
I am not about to suggest that South Africa could ever become a major market for Mallorca, but as can be seen by attempts to attract a Chinese tourist market, distance is less of a factor than it once was. Plenty of South Africans travel to Europe, and plenty of Europeans travel to South Africa. It's a small world. And in a world made smaller, diversity of market has become all important - for Mallorca and for anywhere reliant upon tourism.
Away from its mature markets, such as the UK and Germany, Mallorca faces a huge challenge in terms of getting a message across and standing out from the competition. And even with the mature markets, it faces a similar challenge of standing out.
The experience of the efforts to attract the Chinese is quite illuminating. The potential of this market may be more illusory than might be hoped, but the process of seeking it should be applauded. What has happened is that an understanding has been sought of a very different culture. It has been a process of understanding the thought processes.
But it has happened because it is clear that Chinese culture is very different. Where other markets are concerned, you wonder whether a similar effort has been made or even contemplated. If it hasn't been, you come back to the erroneous attitude towards generic marketing, generic messages and promotions. They can be successful only in a limited way, by creating awareness, but little more.
The great failure of much tourism marketing lies in the vocabulary. The very term "tourism market" implies something that is homogeneous. It is anything but. The failure, though, is in treating it as such and therefore applying a sort of one-size-fits-all approach. It doesn't work. And in Mallorca's case, what has occurred is that it tries to be all things to all people. Generic advertising, such as TV campaigns, falls into this trap. Yes, it can raise awareness, yes, it can reinforce, but it doesn't, in itself, "sell" and especially not if there isn't a strong sense of "positioning" the brand that is Mallorca.
The concept of market positioning should be fundamental in tourism marketing. Essentially, this has to do with creating an image in the potential tourist's mind, one of differentiation from competition, and also with then targeting specific markets once the right means are found to create that image. With the Chinese, this has been the process, but not with other markets. Crucially, the process appears to have been one of building up "images, benefits and differentiation (that) are solely the perception of the tourist, not the perceptions of the tourism officials or the tourism marketer" *.
Yet it is the perceptions of the tourism officials in Mallorca which generally prevail. They look upon the amorphous mass that is the tourism market with their eyes, not those of the tourist. It's the wrong way round, and so you end up with generic TV campaigns that boast of fine beaches and turquoise seas. Nothing wrong with this; they are Mallorca's core attributes. But how many other destinations have the same? How many other destinations have more culture, more of pretty much anything than Mallorca? This is the failure. The message doesn't stand out, but the belief, the wrong belief, is that generic campaigns will make it stand out. It doesn't.
To come back to Air Berlin and California, in Fray Juniper there exists the differentiation. His association is, if you like, a tourism calling-card from which all else can follow. The "position" is therefore quite different to the usual marketing of Mallorca, and so it should be for other markets. For the South Africans, it would have to be more than the beaches and the seas. It would have to be meaningful to them. It would have to be more sophisticated in understanding the thought processes that might appeal to a tourist. This is what marketing of Mallorca should be about, regardless of market, mature or new, not simply the scatter-gun chucking of money at one-size-fits-all campaigns.
* Professor Harsha Chacko, University of New Orleans, "Positioning A Tourism Destination To Gain A Competitive Edge".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
What Will Be: Rosa in the rough
Those of you with a modicum of understanding of the native will know that there are two main Spanish verbs "to be". The difference between "ser" and "estar" is basically one between permanence and temporariness. Consequently, you could say, were you a politician, "soy político" (or "política" if you happen to be female). You are always a politician; that's your job. But you could also say, were you a female member of the European Parliament, "estoy eurodiputada", as in you are now, at the moment, a member but won't always be. In the future, you will become something else, on a temporary basis. "Tú estarás" ... you will be (complete as applicable).
What does the future hold for European member of parliament Rosa Estarás? What will she be? Qué será, será? Or rather, qué estará, estará?
I admit to having Andy Gray moments when it comes to female politicos who get themselves into a spot of bother. That nice Cati Julve. How could she have become embroiled in something as decayed as a waste-collection scandal? Surely not. The same with Rosa Estarás. I mean, you expect blokes to be a bit dodgy, but women? What do they know about breaking the off-limits rules of what should or shouldn't be done in public life? Allegedly.
However, there is always golf to prove that a lady can go off-limits. Should be a man's game after all. Let a lady take to the fairway and she'll go out-of-bounds. Off-limits.
Plod have been ferreting around in the long grass of the rough and the out-of-bounds at Pula golf course in Son Servera. And what they have found, they allege, is that a whole bunch of Partido Popular politicos, chums of former president Jaume Matas, stayed at the golf course's hotel without paying a centimo. In Rosa's case, the police claim that she stayed at the hotel on 29 occasions over a four-year period; stays that equate to 28,000 euros.
Rosa, who succeeded Matas as leader of the PP and who handed over to José Ramón Bauzá, reckons that she paid for her stays. She also says that they were on account of a "strong friendship" with Pula's director. She might also claim that they were all just part of the normal course of government work. Maybe they were. But the impression is given that Pula was something of a holiday camp for the PP; Pula, the course where the Mallorca Classic was held and for which 17 million euros were paid by the PP-run government each year before the current PSOE administration put a stop to it.
You have to feel a bit of sympathy for Joe Ray (well, you would do were he more of a sympathetic character). Bauzá, making much of his desire to clean up the PP and not forward any candidates tarnished by hints of scandal, has to live with the constant revelations surrounding Matas's period in office. Now another one has come along, a ruddy great wooden driver of one that hammers a stake once again into the heart of his party.
There again, maybe too much can be made of Rosa's many vacations at Pula and those of other Matas confederates. All a bit of a jolly perhaps. It is hardly unknown for politicians to avail themselves of a spot of freeloading, if indeed this is what happened. Where is the line between friendship, legitimate governmental work and taking a freebie? This weekend just gone, much of Mallorca's political establishment decamped and went to Gràcia in Barcelona, where Sa Pobla's Sant Antoni spectacular was re-enacted. All a matter of Catalan comradeship or what exactly? Did they pay for their trips or were the trips paid for?
Also at the weekend, the lady mayor of Palma was in Geneva for the sixtieth anniversary of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, whatever the hell this is, while the lady president of the Council of Mallorca was in Morocco for a meeting of the Euro-Mediterranean region (same what the hell question).
Just because they're women doesn't mean they can't be as good as men in enjoying the odd trip or two. Just as Rosa's being a woman doesn't mean she can't be as good as the blokes in enjoying some largesse, or some friendship, or some payments of her own, or some governmental work. What will be, will be. For now or for always.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
What does the future hold for European member of parliament Rosa Estarás? What will she be? Qué será, será? Or rather, qué estará, estará?
I admit to having Andy Gray moments when it comes to female politicos who get themselves into a spot of bother. That nice Cati Julve. How could she have become embroiled in something as decayed as a waste-collection scandal? Surely not. The same with Rosa Estarás. I mean, you expect blokes to be a bit dodgy, but women? What do they know about breaking the off-limits rules of what should or shouldn't be done in public life? Allegedly.
However, there is always golf to prove that a lady can go off-limits. Should be a man's game after all. Let a lady take to the fairway and she'll go out-of-bounds. Off-limits.
Plod have been ferreting around in the long grass of the rough and the out-of-bounds at Pula golf course in Son Servera. And what they have found, they allege, is that a whole bunch of Partido Popular politicos, chums of former president Jaume Matas, stayed at the golf course's hotel without paying a centimo. In Rosa's case, the police claim that she stayed at the hotel on 29 occasions over a four-year period; stays that equate to 28,000 euros.
Rosa, who succeeded Matas as leader of the PP and who handed over to José Ramón Bauzá, reckons that she paid for her stays. She also says that they were on account of a "strong friendship" with Pula's director. She might also claim that they were all just part of the normal course of government work. Maybe they were. But the impression is given that Pula was something of a holiday camp for the PP; Pula, the course where the Mallorca Classic was held and for which 17 million euros were paid by the PP-run government each year before the current PSOE administration put a stop to it.
You have to feel a bit of sympathy for Joe Ray (well, you would do were he more of a sympathetic character). Bauzá, making much of his desire to clean up the PP and not forward any candidates tarnished by hints of scandal, has to live with the constant revelations surrounding Matas's period in office. Now another one has come along, a ruddy great wooden driver of one that hammers a stake once again into the heart of his party.
There again, maybe too much can be made of Rosa's many vacations at Pula and those of other Matas confederates. All a bit of a jolly perhaps. It is hardly unknown for politicians to avail themselves of a spot of freeloading, if indeed this is what happened. Where is the line between friendship, legitimate governmental work and taking a freebie? This weekend just gone, much of Mallorca's political establishment decamped and went to Gràcia in Barcelona, where Sa Pobla's Sant Antoni spectacular was re-enacted. All a matter of Catalan comradeship or what exactly? Did they pay for their trips or were the trips paid for?
Also at the weekend, the lady mayor of Palma was in Geneva for the sixtieth anniversary of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, whatever the hell this is, while the lady president of the Council of Mallorca was in Morocco for a meeting of the Euro-Mediterranean region (same what the hell question).
Just because they're women doesn't mean they can't be as good as men in enjoying the odd trip or two. Just as Rosa's being a woman doesn't mean she can't be as good as the blokes in enjoying some largesse, or some friendship, or some payments of her own, or some governmental work. What will be, will be. For now or for always.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
The Accidental Historian
The first golf course in the Balearics was opened in 1934. This may surprise you, though any of you who might have read something I wrote for Alcúdia tourists last summer about this golf course would not be surprised.
The "revelation" of the first golf course comes from "Mallorca Magazin", the German weekly. This, in turn, is based on a study that has appeared in the "Jornades d'Estudis Locals d'Alcúdia", a dry and academic tome that is published irregularly but which is a gold mine of fascinating historical information.
I first came across this journal purely by chance. I was whiling away some hours at a printer and found it in a book case. Though all the papers were in Catalan (a pre-requisite for the inclusion of papers in the journal) and were all, in typical academic fashion, highly off-putting in terms of presentation, there was stuff within its covers that demanded a bit of perseverance.
It helps, I guess, to be both a historian by degree and to have had a previous publishing life in which I was fed a diet of heavy academic material. For many, irrespective of the language, the journal would be a complete turn-off. Understandably so. Even in English, much academic publishing might as well be presented in Klingon, for all the sense that it makes.
The copy I found, which remains the only copy I have seen, included a paper on the history of the fiestas of Sant Jaume, the patron saint of Alcúdia. It was one that transported you back to the thirteenth century and to the origins of the fiestas. It was a story that was completely new to me.
The story of the golf course was also new to me. Again, it was something I came across by accident. The article I was writing was in fact an interview with someone who has a far longer association with Alcúdia and Mallorca than I do, Graham Philips, estate agent of the parish. During the course of the interview, Graham explained that there was once a golf course in Alcúdia (and not the present one in Alcanada). It was short-lived. The Civil War led to its being converted into a landing-strip for airplanes.
Unexpected as the story was, I asked around to try and find any other recollections of the golf course. There was as much surprise as I had felt when told about it. Someone though spoke to an old man, and he confirmed the story. He could recall the planes that flew in and out of what is today the residential and tourist area that combines Alcúdia's Bellevue and Magic districts.
The golf course history comes apparently from the sixth edition of the journal. The seventh will include something on the British squadron in Alcúdia (and Pollensa) in 1924 and something else on the application of "the model of tourist enclavement" in Alcanada in 1933. Both are potentially interesting and of far wider interest than the narrow audience that an academic publication appeals to. As with the history of the golf course, the development of a tourist area in Alcúdia's Alcanada area is precisely the sort of thing that grabs tourists' interest.
One of the problems with the portrayal of Mallorca's history, and it is a problem that is compounded by the historical information that is put out by the tourism agency and town halls, is that it tends to all be pretty ancient. In Alcúdia, the default historical information is that of the founding of Pollentia by the Romans and the Moorish occupation and the consequent naming of Alcúdia from the Arabic. It's not without interest, but it isn't that relevant to most tourists who are turned on far more by recent history, such as the development of Alcúdia and the island as a tourist destination.
There is a wealth of historical information - documents, photos - that sits in archives in the town halls. Alcúdia's journal is not unique. Most towns have these studies and they come under the umbrella of the university. Yet it rarely comes to light, and when it does is in forms, the largely impenetrable language of academia and in Catalan alone, that simply do not translate to an audience which is hungry to hear about it.
And when you come across it, it is usually by chance. There's another example; the time I found the original 1936 article from "The Railway Magazine" about the planned extension of the railway to Alcúdia (which of course has still not been built). But this, the railway, is another subject with the potential to fascinate.
The point is that, for all the desire for tourism attracted by Mallorca's history and culture, far too little attention is paid to what really can excite or to what can be more understandable to a tourist market - that to do with tourists' own experiences: of tourism. This more recent history, that of tourism development and the changes brought about by tourism, exists in archives and in people's memories.
It really needs to be made available.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The "revelation" of the first golf course comes from "Mallorca Magazin", the German weekly. This, in turn, is based on a study that has appeared in the "Jornades d'Estudis Locals d'Alcúdia", a dry and academic tome that is published irregularly but which is a gold mine of fascinating historical information.
I first came across this journal purely by chance. I was whiling away some hours at a printer and found it in a book case. Though all the papers were in Catalan (a pre-requisite for the inclusion of papers in the journal) and were all, in typical academic fashion, highly off-putting in terms of presentation, there was stuff within its covers that demanded a bit of perseverance.
It helps, I guess, to be both a historian by degree and to have had a previous publishing life in which I was fed a diet of heavy academic material. For many, irrespective of the language, the journal would be a complete turn-off. Understandably so. Even in English, much academic publishing might as well be presented in Klingon, for all the sense that it makes.
The copy I found, which remains the only copy I have seen, included a paper on the history of the fiestas of Sant Jaume, the patron saint of Alcúdia. It was one that transported you back to the thirteenth century and to the origins of the fiestas. It was a story that was completely new to me.
The story of the golf course was also new to me. Again, it was something I came across by accident. The article I was writing was in fact an interview with someone who has a far longer association with Alcúdia and Mallorca than I do, Graham Philips, estate agent of the parish. During the course of the interview, Graham explained that there was once a golf course in Alcúdia (and not the present one in Alcanada). It was short-lived. The Civil War led to its being converted into a landing-strip for airplanes.
Unexpected as the story was, I asked around to try and find any other recollections of the golf course. There was as much surprise as I had felt when told about it. Someone though spoke to an old man, and he confirmed the story. He could recall the planes that flew in and out of what is today the residential and tourist area that combines Alcúdia's Bellevue and Magic districts.
The golf course history comes apparently from the sixth edition of the journal. The seventh will include something on the British squadron in Alcúdia (and Pollensa) in 1924 and something else on the application of "the model of tourist enclavement" in Alcanada in 1933. Both are potentially interesting and of far wider interest than the narrow audience that an academic publication appeals to. As with the history of the golf course, the development of a tourist area in Alcúdia's Alcanada area is precisely the sort of thing that grabs tourists' interest.
One of the problems with the portrayal of Mallorca's history, and it is a problem that is compounded by the historical information that is put out by the tourism agency and town halls, is that it tends to all be pretty ancient. In Alcúdia, the default historical information is that of the founding of Pollentia by the Romans and the Moorish occupation and the consequent naming of Alcúdia from the Arabic. It's not without interest, but it isn't that relevant to most tourists who are turned on far more by recent history, such as the development of Alcúdia and the island as a tourist destination.
There is a wealth of historical information - documents, photos - that sits in archives in the town halls. Alcúdia's journal is not unique. Most towns have these studies and they come under the umbrella of the university. Yet it rarely comes to light, and when it does is in forms, the largely impenetrable language of academia and in Catalan alone, that simply do not translate to an audience which is hungry to hear about it.
And when you come across it, it is usually by chance. There's another example; the time I found the original 1936 article from "The Railway Magazine" about the planned extension of the railway to Alcúdia (which of course has still not been built). But this, the railway, is another subject with the potential to fascinate.
The point is that, for all the desire for tourism attracted by Mallorca's history and culture, far too little attention is paid to what really can excite or to what can be more understandable to a tourist market - that to do with tourists' own experiences: of tourism. This more recent history, that of tourism development and the changes brought about by tourism, exists in archives and in people's memories.
It really needs to be made available.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Out In The Midday Sun: Mad Dogs
In Mallorcan climes there are certain times of day
When all the expats repair to switch their TVs on and conspire
It's one of those things these greatest fools obey
Because Sky is making publicity though Sky in Mallorca's not a strictly legal way
The expats fawn when the actors take to bars having finished their cuts
Because they're obviously, definitely, Nuts!
Mad Dogs for Englishmen with copies of their daily Sun
They take to the forums, pore over the press
I saw Simm, ah but I saw Max, and Glenister, he's the one
For Englishmen sights of celebrities are something with which to impress
In London town they have presented Mad Dogs in full media glare
The Mallorca tourism foundation, several thousands of euros of support, was happy to be there
The expats swoon at news of the excitement this has done
Mad Dogs for Englishmen with copies of their daily Sun
It's no surprise for the expats eyes to see
That the press will eat this hype and sycophantically treat
When the great Rupert rides, proportion there will not be
Because the simple expats are deflected from phone hacking and Richard Keys
It's the usual rot showing beautiful Mallorca off that gets trot from tourism board and press lackies too
And the expats do agree as to not do simply would not do
In Mallorca any dissenting is seldom if ever done
For it's Mad Dogs for Englishmen
With copies of their daily
Copies of their daily
Sky box strangely
Copies of their daily Sun
(With due acknowledgement to Noël Coward.)
* "Mad Dogs" will be on Sky from 10 February.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Index for January 2011
Chinese businesses - 10 January 2011
Climate change - 6 January 2011
FITUR: tourism promotion and finance - 22 January 2011
Government and local democracy, structure of - 24 January 2011
Hotels' strategy - 12 January 2011
January in Mallorca - 9 January 2011, 16 January 2011, 23 January 2011
Jaume I celebrations, violence and independence - 1 January 2011
Legumes - 5 January 2011
Luxury tourism - 19 January 2011
Mad Dogs - 31 January 2011
Mallorca in 2011 - 2 January 2011
Meetings incentives conventions and exhibitions tourism - 4 January 2011
Morality, tourism and - 30 January 2011
Operación Cloaca - 18 January 2011
Palm beetle in Puerto Pollensa - 27 January 2011
Plagiarism: Sant Sebastià poster - 14 January 2011
Population growth, Mallorca's - 7 January 2011
Porto Cristo bridge demolition - 29 January 2011
Prices in Mallorca - 26 January 2011
Prices, supply costs and - 3 January 2011
Q quality marks - 20 January 2011
Sant Antoni and Sant Sebastià: lack of promotion - 11 January 2011
Sant Antoni in Muro - 17 January 2011
Space heaters - 13 January 2011
Tourism agency director's resignation - 28 January 2011
Tourism promotion - 25 January 2011
Working day and productivity - 15 January 2011
Youth Olympics 2018 - 21 January 2011
When all the expats repair to switch their TVs on and conspire
It's one of those things these greatest fools obey
Because Sky is making publicity though Sky in Mallorca's not a strictly legal way
The expats fawn when the actors take to bars having finished their cuts
Because they're obviously, definitely, Nuts!
Mad Dogs for Englishmen with copies of their daily Sun
They take to the forums, pore over the press
I saw Simm, ah but I saw Max, and Glenister, he's the one
For Englishmen sights of celebrities are something with which to impress
In London town they have presented Mad Dogs in full media glare
The Mallorca tourism foundation, several thousands of euros of support, was happy to be there
The expats swoon at news of the excitement this has done
Mad Dogs for Englishmen with copies of their daily Sun
It's no surprise for the expats eyes to see
That the press will eat this hype and sycophantically treat
When the great Rupert rides, proportion there will not be
Because the simple expats are deflected from phone hacking and Richard Keys
It's the usual rot showing beautiful Mallorca off that gets trot from tourism board and press lackies too
And the expats do agree as to not do simply would not do
In Mallorca any dissenting is seldom if ever done
For it's Mad Dogs for Englishmen
With copies of their daily
Copies of their daily
Sky box strangely
Copies of their daily Sun
(With due acknowledgement to Noël Coward.)
* "Mad Dogs" will be on Sky from 10 February.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Index for January 2011
Chinese businesses - 10 January 2011
Climate change - 6 January 2011
FITUR: tourism promotion and finance - 22 January 2011
Government and local democracy, structure of - 24 January 2011
Hotels' strategy - 12 January 2011
January in Mallorca - 9 January 2011, 16 January 2011, 23 January 2011
Jaume I celebrations, violence and independence - 1 January 2011
Legumes - 5 January 2011
Luxury tourism - 19 January 2011
Mad Dogs - 31 January 2011
Mallorca in 2011 - 2 January 2011
Meetings incentives conventions and exhibitions tourism - 4 January 2011
Morality, tourism and - 30 January 2011
Operación Cloaca - 18 January 2011
Palm beetle in Puerto Pollensa - 27 January 2011
Plagiarism: Sant Sebastià poster - 14 January 2011
Population growth, Mallorca's - 7 January 2011
Porto Cristo bridge demolition - 29 January 2011
Prices in Mallorca - 26 January 2011
Prices, supply costs and - 3 January 2011
Q quality marks - 20 January 2011
Sant Antoni and Sant Sebastià: lack of promotion - 11 January 2011
Sant Antoni in Muro - 17 January 2011
Space heaters - 13 January 2011
Tourism agency director's resignation - 28 January 2011
Tourism promotion - 25 January 2011
Working day and productivity - 15 January 2011
Youth Olympics 2018 - 21 January 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
The Morality Of Tourism
When the uprising in Tunisia occurred, it struck me that here was an opportunity for Mallorca to spend its tourism promotion budget wisely. Rather than the odd TV campaign or cosying up to tour operators, what about spending the budget on fomenting a touch of good old dissent in rival destinations instead? Little, other than the occasional natural disaster, works better in undermining tourism than a spot of political instability, riots, civil disorder and death on the streets.
I hadn't counted on the Egyptians taking matters into their own hands. The sniggers of schadenfreude within the ranks of Mallorca's tourism industry will be suppressed, behind closed doors and never leaked in a Keys-Gray manner, but the hope of misfortune surely resides somewhere along the corridors of the industry - the hope that the gift will keep on giving, and thus giving Mallorca tourists who might otherwise have headed off to an Arab Mediterranean competitor. Tunisia, Egypt, where next? Morocco? Yes please.
You might question the morality of such a hope, but morality is not a concept that travels easily alongside tourism. Tourists themselves are not exactly beings with high moral instincts. How can taking a holiday in a country run by an unpleasant dictatorship, e.g. Egypt, be described as moral? The mere act of landing on Egyptian soil gives succour to a regime that, for most tourists, would be abhorrent in their own lands. The morality of the decision to visit such a country hardly enters the equation, if at all. What does is cost, quality of hotel, sun and plenty of it and some pleasant snorkelling, so long, that is, that there aren't too many sharks lurking in the shallows.
Tourism is the Olympic Games and the sporting prowess and achievement through which nasty countries and nasty political elites can show the world a more benign and happy face. Just as the Beijing Olympics or the Stasi-monitored steroidisation of a generation of East German athletes were morally dubious, so tourism is used to present an image that seeks to shield the realities of abuse.
An argument in favour of turning a blind eye to morality in a tourism context runs along similar lines to that which challenged sporting sanctions against apartheid South Africa. By not touring, sports teams deprived local sportspeople of the opportunity to excel or to come to international prominence. The argument was always spurious and was ultimately exposed as being totally wrong. Sanctions played a significant role in ending apartheid; they were morally correct.
Tourism, so goes the argument, brings wealth and an opening-up of societies. The argument is not without foundation, and I will come to one very good example of where it did play a major role, but if the wealth is unevenly distributed or hardly at all and if the societies remain closed or authoritarian, then how can it be said to be morally right? In Egypt, half its population lives in poverty. Wealth, not just from tourism, has been the privilege of a minority.
For developing countries, tourism plays a vital role. But even where a country operates under principles of democracy, there is an issue of morality. Take the All-Inclusive Republic, otherwise known as the Dominican Republic. This is a country that has enjoyed growth, partly the consequence of tourism. But how much of the wealth generated circulates within the population as a whole, this wealth being captured behind the security gates of the ghettoes of fine all-inclusives? How moral is it for those who might bemoan the ethics of all-inclusives elsewhere, Mallorca for instance, whilst enjoying a Dominican hotel and having their spending power end up in hands other than those of the average local?
Sometimes you want to see for yourself and sometimes you have your eyes opened by what you do see but hadn't expected. In 1973 I did the European tour. I went to Yugoslavia, then under Tito's Communist regime, and crossed the border by train into Greece, then ruled by its extreme-right military junta. I watched as a Yugoslavian student, who had been sharing my cabin and the food that I and others had packed into our rucksacks, was dragged from the train and beaten up on the platform by Greek police. I had spoken to people in Yugoslavia and then spoke also to Greeks. Always it was in hushed tones, out of earshot of other locals. I don't know that I thought much about the morality of being in either country, but what I saw and heard made me realise much about how immoral regimes work.
So it can be beneficial, this visiting of countries with unpleasant systems; beneficial in creating a greater awareness of what is going on. And there is one place, one country that benefited greatly from tourism that might otherwise have been thought immoral. Mallorca. Spain. The tourists who first came en masse were lured by cheapness and sun. They were the pawns in Franco's plan for foreign currency, economic development and legitimacy. The initial tourism in Mallorca was predicated on questionable morals, but one of the unforeseen consequences - unforeseen by the Franco regime - was that tourists brought with them not just the first trappings of wealth but also different ways of thinking.
Francoism was disintegrating in the years before the dictator's death, and tourism helped to propel this disintegration and to then, in 1975, mean that there was no future for a similar model of government. Tourism can, therefore, and despite tourists being unwitting or unknowing participants in acts of immorality, be a power for moral good.
In Egypt, it is doubtful that many, if any tourists have considered the morality of their going there. They shouldn't be blamed for not having done so, because tourism and morality are pretty much mutually exclusive. But their presence may have contributed to the dismantling of a regime, and Mallorca can sit back and reap the benefits. And you never know, Mallorca may reap further benefits, because, unlike Mallorca post-Franco, what comes next could be worse. And tourists will then not want to know.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
I hadn't counted on the Egyptians taking matters into their own hands. The sniggers of schadenfreude within the ranks of Mallorca's tourism industry will be suppressed, behind closed doors and never leaked in a Keys-Gray manner, but the hope of misfortune surely resides somewhere along the corridors of the industry - the hope that the gift will keep on giving, and thus giving Mallorca tourists who might otherwise have headed off to an Arab Mediterranean competitor. Tunisia, Egypt, where next? Morocco? Yes please.
You might question the morality of such a hope, but morality is not a concept that travels easily alongside tourism. Tourists themselves are not exactly beings with high moral instincts. How can taking a holiday in a country run by an unpleasant dictatorship, e.g. Egypt, be described as moral? The mere act of landing on Egyptian soil gives succour to a regime that, for most tourists, would be abhorrent in their own lands. The morality of the decision to visit such a country hardly enters the equation, if at all. What does is cost, quality of hotel, sun and plenty of it and some pleasant snorkelling, so long, that is, that there aren't too many sharks lurking in the shallows.
Tourism is the Olympic Games and the sporting prowess and achievement through which nasty countries and nasty political elites can show the world a more benign and happy face. Just as the Beijing Olympics or the Stasi-monitored steroidisation of a generation of East German athletes were morally dubious, so tourism is used to present an image that seeks to shield the realities of abuse.
An argument in favour of turning a blind eye to morality in a tourism context runs along similar lines to that which challenged sporting sanctions against apartheid South Africa. By not touring, sports teams deprived local sportspeople of the opportunity to excel or to come to international prominence. The argument was always spurious and was ultimately exposed as being totally wrong. Sanctions played a significant role in ending apartheid; they were morally correct.
Tourism, so goes the argument, brings wealth and an opening-up of societies. The argument is not without foundation, and I will come to one very good example of where it did play a major role, but if the wealth is unevenly distributed or hardly at all and if the societies remain closed or authoritarian, then how can it be said to be morally right? In Egypt, half its population lives in poverty. Wealth, not just from tourism, has been the privilege of a minority.
For developing countries, tourism plays a vital role. But even where a country operates under principles of democracy, there is an issue of morality. Take the All-Inclusive Republic, otherwise known as the Dominican Republic. This is a country that has enjoyed growth, partly the consequence of tourism. But how much of the wealth generated circulates within the population as a whole, this wealth being captured behind the security gates of the ghettoes of fine all-inclusives? How moral is it for those who might bemoan the ethics of all-inclusives elsewhere, Mallorca for instance, whilst enjoying a Dominican hotel and having their spending power end up in hands other than those of the average local?
Sometimes you want to see for yourself and sometimes you have your eyes opened by what you do see but hadn't expected. In 1973 I did the European tour. I went to Yugoslavia, then under Tito's Communist regime, and crossed the border by train into Greece, then ruled by its extreme-right military junta. I watched as a Yugoslavian student, who had been sharing my cabin and the food that I and others had packed into our rucksacks, was dragged from the train and beaten up on the platform by Greek police. I had spoken to people in Yugoslavia and then spoke also to Greeks. Always it was in hushed tones, out of earshot of other locals. I don't know that I thought much about the morality of being in either country, but what I saw and heard made me realise much about how immoral regimes work.
So it can be beneficial, this visiting of countries with unpleasant systems; beneficial in creating a greater awareness of what is going on. And there is one place, one country that benefited greatly from tourism that might otherwise have been thought immoral. Mallorca. Spain. The tourists who first came en masse were lured by cheapness and sun. They were the pawns in Franco's plan for foreign currency, economic development and legitimacy. The initial tourism in Mallorca was predicated on questionable morals, but one of the unforeseen consequences - unforeseen by the Franco regime - was that tourists brought with them not just the first trappings of wealth but also different ways of thinking.
Francoism was disintegrating in the years before the dictator's death, and tourism helped to propel this disintegration and to then, in 1975, mean that there was no future for a similar model of government. Tourism can, therefore, and despite tourists being unwitting or unknowing participants in acts of immorality, be a power for moral good.
In Egypt, it is doubtful that many, if any tourists have considered the morality of their going there. They shouldn't be blamed for not having done so, because tourism and morality are pretty much mutually exclusive. But their presence may have contributed to the dismantling of a regime, and Mallorca can sit back and reap the benefits. And you never know, Mallorca may reap further benefits, because, unlike Mallorca post-Franco, what comes next could be worse. And tourists will then not want to know.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
A Troubled Bridge Over Water: Porto Cristo
Manacor's mayor, Antoni Pastor, has bowed to the inevitable. The bridge in Porto Cristo, the "puente del Riuet", will come a-tumbling down. With its demolition, a chapter will close (though don't bank on it) that can be traced back to 1968 and the antecedents that led to the bridge's construction being started in 2003. Pastor, increasingly under personal pressure caused by his being fined for not complying with the order for the town hall to get on with demolishing the bridge, has fought a populist corner to keep something that not everyone in Porto Cristo will be sad to see go.
There have been protests aimed at preventing the bridge's demolition, and the publicity that these have attracted have deflected attention away from the fact that homeowners were directly affected by waking up one day to find a damn great bridge outside their windows.
These owners have had to endure noise and loss of light. They have had to pay for double glazing to try and shut out noise but have also had to keep windows shut during the summer. They have had to keep lights on all day. They have seen the value of their properties drop by some 90%. They have lived with the permanent fear that an accident might end up with a coach parked in a living-room.
The lawsuits have been many, the compensation has not been that great, the cost of pulling the thing down will run to around 900,000 euros, not much less than what it cost to put it up in the first place.
Manacor town hall, faced with footing the bill, had argued, among other things, that the bridge was not illegal, as has been deemed to be the case by the Balearics Supreme Court. It was built under an agreement between the town hall, the Council of Mallorca and the regional government, and yet it (the town hall) is expected to have to pay for it to come down.
With some justification, the town hall has a right to feel a bit miffed, not just because of the cost but also because of an absence of support from the other authorities, notably the Council of Mallorca. There is some debate as to whether the bridge is or isn't included in its plan for "carreteras". In 2009 the then director for the island's highways announced that it was. In theory, this should have put an end to the whole conflict, but now it would appear that it isn't included in the plan. The likelihood exists that a new bridge will have to be built.
The saga of the bridge is utter madness. At a combined cost of two million euros, that for building it and then knocking it down, Porto Cristo will not have a bridge, other than an old one that is inadequate for purpose. Until such a time as a new one arises, if it does, there will be congestion, and in the short term there will be chaos as the demolition work will carry on into the tourist season. And if a new bridge is built, it will cost God knows how much and be proceeded by the predictable and lengthy arguments that will themselves attract cost and delay.
What makes the bridge's demolition all the more absurd and costly is that services - water, sewage, phones and electricity - will all have to be diverted. This alone will amount to a quarter of a million euros. But the absurdity is heightened further when one considers quite why the bridge was built as it was. The result of this was, as should have been obvious, the impact on residences; an impact that led the Supreme Court to order the demolition.
One of the main reasons for the bridge being built was the traffic jams and the difficulties that coaches, heading for the Caves of Drach, had in negotiating the roads. These difficulties will return, making Porto Cristo once more a traffic nightmare in summer.
The homeowners will be pleased and so they should be. The past few years have been intolerable, but in a way, other than just because of the alleviation of traffic problems, the bridge should be allowed to stay. To stay as a monument. A monument to the stupidity that will mean it costs much the same to pull it down as it took to put it up.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There have been protests aimed at preventing the bridge's demolition, and the publicity that these have attracted have deflected attention away from the fact that homeowners were directly affected by waking up one day to find a damn great bridge outside their windows.
These owners have had to endure noise and loss of light. They have had to pay for double glazing to try and shut out noise but have also had to keep windows shut during the summer. They have had to keep lights on all day. They have seen the value of their properties drop by some 90%. They have lived with the permanent fear that an accident might end up with a coach parked in a living-room.
The lawsuits have been many, the compensation has not been that great, the cost of pulling the thing down will run to around 900,000 euros, not much less than what it cost to put it up in the first place.
Manacor town hall, faced with footing the bill, had argued, among other things, that the bridge was not illegal, as has been deemed to be the case by the Balearics Supreme Court. It was built under an agreement between the town hall, the Council of Mallorca and the regional government, and yet it (the town hall) is expected to have to pay for it to come down.
With some justification, the town hall has a right to feel a bit miffed, not just because of the cost but also because of an absence of support from the other authorities, notably the Council of Mallorca. There is some debate as to whether the bridge is or isn't included in its plan for "carreteras". In 2009 the then director for the island's highways announced that it was. In theory, this should have put an end to the whole conflict, but now it would appear that it isn't included in the plan. The likelihood exists that a new bridge will have to be built.
The saga of the bridge is utter madness. At a combined cost of two million euros, that for building it and then knocking it down, Porto Cristo will not have a bridge, other than an old one that is inadequate for purpose. Until such a time as a new one arises, if it does, there will be congestion, and in the short term there will be chaos as the demolition work will carry on into the tourist season. And if a new bridge is built, it will cost God knows how much and be proceeded by the predictable and lengthy arguments that will themselves attract cost and delay.
What makes the bridge's demolition all the more absurd and costly is that services - water, sewage, phones and electricity - will all have to be diverted. This alone will amount to a quarter of a million euros. But the absurdity is heightened further when one considers quite why the bridge was built as it was. The result of this was, as should have been obvious, the impact on residences; an impact that led the Supreme Court to order the demolition.
One of the main reasons for the bridge being built was the traffic jams and the difficulties that coaches, heading for the Caves of Drach, had in negotiating the roads. These difficulties will return, making Porto Cristo once more a traffic nightmare in summer.
The homeowners will be pleased and so they should be. The past few years have been intolerable, but in a way, other than just because of the alleviation of traffic problems, the bridge should be allowed to stay. To stay as a monument. A monument to the stupidity that will mean it costs much the same to pull it down as it took to put it up.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, January 28, 2011
The Importance Of Being Erstwhile
"To lose one director of a tourism agency, Sra. Barceló, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose a second looks like carelessness."
The tourism ministry. Home to the former, the ex, the one-time. The erstwhile. Mar Guerrero has walked away from her job as director of the ATB (the Balearics tourism agency), nine months after having replaced the erstwhile head of the erstwhile IBATUR agency. This is a real blow. Guerrero was greatly admired and liked. Her already high stock has been raised by her having done something quite unusual. She has made herself erstwhile by resigning. On a matter of principle.
She has said that she didn't like having to sell motorcycles. This might sound a rather odd thing to say, but it's a translation of a Spanish expression which means not wanting to pull the wool over people's eyes. Not wanting to deceive, if you like. This is an almost unheard of point of honour from someone in Mallorcan public life. Rather than keeping mum and pocketing her salary, she has gone. She did actually tender her resignation three months ago, but had agreed to stay on until there could be some "consensus" to explain her departure. Things obviously came to a head before that consensus could have been agreed.
Why has she gone? There seem to be several reasons. One is that the job was not the one in the brochure. She was not allowed to do what she was brought in to do. And why? Because political needs appear to have got in the way. It doesn't seem as if it was an issue over the level of funding, more one of where the funding was to go. Nevertheless, there seems also to have been a political desire to have committed to promotion, to have raised expectations without there being the credit to meet them. There was also a lack of transparency. This is the selling of the motorcycles.
It is all rather strange that just as Guerrero announces her resignation, the tourism minister Joana Barceló makes her own announcement - that of the budget for tourism promotion. It will be just short of 45 million euros, higher than last year. What is doubly strange is that this has risen from the 22 million euros that was being spoken of earlier this month and which appeared to be the limit set by the regional government's treasury minister, Carles Manera.
To add to the mystery there is the fact that an emailed document, leaked to the press some days ago, stated that the tourism ministry had no money available for developing a marketing plan this year. (It might also be remembered that the tourism ministry has been in debt to the tune of 47 million euros, now down to 39.5 million.) This email was sent from the ministry to the ATB and so was presumably seen by Guerrero and her finance director who has also resigned.
There could well be a simple explanation for the sudden discovery of this additional funding. The regional government's bond issue has been a considerable success, and, as I had suggested previously, the capital raised could quite well be made available for tourism promotion. But things don't really add up. The timing of Barceló's announcement seems opportune to say the least, a way of deflecting the bad news of the resignations. And then there is the matter of that leaked document. It was released at the same time as Barceló was saying at the FITUR fair in Madrid that there wouldn't be a lack of funding. How did the press come by it?
Of the money now being promised, nine million of it will go to the councils of the different islands, such as the Council of Mallorca, for them to engage in their own promotion. You are back again to the issue of duplication, for 6.9 million will also go directly on promotion through the ATB. Of the rest, and from the original 22 million, there is money to meet agreements previously entered into with town halls operated or then operated by the Unió Mallorquina party, Alcúdia and Pollensa being two of the four in question.
The UM, it should be recalled, ran the tourism ministry before it was booted out of the coalition; it is now having overtures made to it by the ruling PSOE socialist party to sound it out as to a possible future coalition. There is also 3.1 million euros for renovation work to be undertaken at the Pati de Sa Lluna in Menorca. This may be money well spent, but who in the regional government is from Menorca, a leading PSOE politician in Menorca and the erstwhile president of its council? Joana Barceló.
Guerrero has gone. Her departure signals more disruption within the tourism ministry, the one of which tour operators and hoteliers have asked that there be stability and continuity. Well, there is continuity. It is that of continual change. And what seems to have prompted this latest change is a political agenda, one to which she was not amenable.
Some of the erstwhile figures at the tourism ministry did not leave of their own volition. One now has. And it is important to know why. The question is whether we really do know why.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The tourism ministry. Home to the former, the ex, the one-time. The erstwhile. Mar Guerrero has walked away from her job as director of the ATB (the Balearics tourism agency), nine months after having replaced the erstwhile head of the erstwhile IBATUR agency. This is a real blow. Guerrero was greatly admired and liked. Her already high stock has been raised by her having done something quite unusual. She has made herself erstwhile by resigning. On a matter of principle.
She has said that she didn't like having to sell motorcycles. This might sound a rather odd thing to say, but it's a translation of a Spanish expression which means not wanting to pull the wool over people's eyes. Not wanting to deceive, if you like. This is an almost unheard of point of honour from someone in Mallorcan public life. Rather than keeping mum and pocketing her salary, she has gone. She did actually tender her resignation three months ago, but had agreed to stay on until there could be some "consensus" to explain her departure. Things obviously came to a head before that consensus could have been agreed.
Why has she gone? There seem to be several reasons. One is that the job was not the one in the brochure. She was not allowed to do what she was brought in to do. And why? Because political needs appear to have got in the way. It doesn't seem as if it was an issue over the level of funding, more one of where the funding was to go. Nevertheless, there seems also to have been a political desire to have committed to promotion, to have raised expectations without there being the credit to meet them. There was also a lack of transparency. This is the selling of the motorcycles.
It is all rather strange that just as Guerrero announces her resignation, the tourism minister Joana Barceló makes her own announcement - that of the budget for tourism promotion. It will be just short of 45 million euros, higher than last year. What is doubly strange is that this has risen from the 22 million euros that was being spoken of earlier this month and which appeared to be the limit set by the regional government's treasury minister, Carles Manera.
To add to the mystery there is the fact that an emailed document, leaked to the press some days ago, stated that the tourism ministry had no money available for developing a marketing plan this year. (It might also be remembered that the tourism ministry has been in debt to the tune of 47 million euros, now down to 39.5 million.) This email was sent from the ministry to the ATB and so was presumably seen by Guerrero and her finance director who has also resigned.
There could well be a simple explanation for the sudden discovery of this additional funding. The regional government's bond issue has been a considerable success, and, as I had suggested previously, the capital raised could quite well be made available for tourism promotion. But things don't really add up. The timing of Barceló's announcement seems opportune to say the least, a way of deflecting the bad news of the resignations. And then there is the matter of that leaked document. It was released at the same time as Barceló was saying at the FITUR fair in Madrid that there wouldn't be a lack of funding. How did the press come by it?
Of the money now being promised, nine million of it will go to the councils of the different islands, such as the Council of Mallorca, for them to engage in their own promotion. You are back again to the issue of duplication, for 6.9 million will also go directly on promotion through the ATB. Of the rest, and from the original 22 million, there is money to meet agreements previously entered into with town halls operated or then operated by the Unió Mallorquina party, Alcúdia and Pollensa being two of the four in question.
The UM, it should be recalled, ran the tourism ministry before it was booted out of the coalition; it is now having overtures made to it by the ruling PSOE socialist party to sound it out as to a possible future coalition. There is also 3.1 million euros for renovation work to be undertaken at the Pati de Sa Lluna in Menorca. This may be money well spent, but who in the regional government is from Menorca, a leading PSOE politician in Menorca and the erstwhile president of its council? Joana Barceló.
Guerrero has gone. Her departure signals more disruption within the tourism ministry, the one of which tour operators and hoteliers have asked that there be stability and continuity. Well, there is continuity. It is that of continual change. And what seems to have prompted this latest change is a political agenda, one to which she was not amenable.
Some of the erstwhile figures at the tourism ministry did not leave of their own volition. One now has. And it is important to know why. The question is whether we really do know why.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Pollensa's Plague: Its town hall
A couple of days after last June's demonstration against the alleged neglect of Puerto Pollensa by the town hall, a restaurant owner who had been on the march said to me that Pollensa was the worst town hall in Mallorca. It was a theme that was revisited when I spoke the other day to someone from the port who has been active in attempting to get improvements from the "ayuntamiento" for some years. Despite my suggestion that Muro town hall, with one ex-mayor now banged up for 12 months for vote-rigging and another disqualified from office for ten years, might deserve some prominence in the dishonourable roll call of local authorities, he insisted that Pollensa remains the leader.
The current administration in Pollensa has, since being elected and appointed in 2007, stumbled from one crisis to another, largely to do with its management (such as it has been) of Puerto Pollensa. So great is the divide between the port and the town hall that when a crisis comes along for which it (the town hall) might be deserving of some sympathy, it manages instead to further alienate the port's residents, to the extent of a "denuncia" being lodged with the Guardia Civil.
An ecological disaster is occurring in Puerto Pollensa. This may sound like an exaggeration, but the impact of the loss of landscape and visual charm can be dubbed thus. Residents and tourists alike want, demand even, the attractiveness of the natural world, but when it is being killed off as rapidly as it is, then one has to wonder as to the harm that may be caused to economic life by the destruction of palm trees.
Puerto Pollensa has been hugely affected by the actions of the "picudo rojo". The weevil's appetite for palms is such that in one avenue alone over one hundred palms, all the palms in the avenue, have been infested. The sympathy that the town hall might have had stems from the fact that the control or even the elimination of the weevil is far from straightforward. The mayor has suggested that little can be done. Up to a point he is right, but this acceptance has merely highlighted the fact that the town hall's own attempts at control have been poor, to the point of incompetence. It has managed to exacerbate the situation and to make Puerto Pollensa the "epicentre" of the beetle "plague" which has now spread to neighbouring towns.
The charges levelled against the town hall's competence in respect of the palm beetle go back some time. In 2008 the delegate for the port was told that palm trees in the Gotmar area were showing signs of being destroyed. She said there was nothing wrong with them and so nothing was done. Now you have a situation in which the actions of the town hall in trying to stem the problem have resulted in the denuncia made to Seprona, the Guardia's environmental investigation unit, and the call for the head of the town's services department, Martí Ochogavia, to be sacked.
What has helped to spread the beetle has been the way in which the town hall, rather than sending infested trees that have been cut down away for incineration (as it should have done), has been packing them in plastic and dumping them in the Llenaire area of the port. This has created a breeding ground for the beetle which has then escaped from what has been punctured plastic. When the town hall decided it would set fire to the cut-down trees - in open fields - this merely gave the beetle a fright and off it flew. It is possible for the weevil to travel up to four kilometres in one go; hence it has spread and colonised trees outside of the port. And there is the potential for even greater damage, one of the beetle skipping species of palms and infesting those not currently at risk, including the "palmito", the one tree that is native to Mallorca.
Residents in the port hold Ochogavia responsible. And he has form, such as with the accusation that was reported widely some time ago of nepotism in his having granted a relative's company the contract for street lighting. There is now also a question as to what has happened to the budget, 100,000 euros, that was set aside to tackle the palm beetle. Pollensa's mayor, Joan Cerdà, has said that there needs to be more financial assistance from the regional government, and has pointed to the cost of arranging for a crane, a gardener and labourers to cope with just one tree. Nevertheless, residents are keen to know how the budget has actually been spent.
The town hall administration, with elections looming, seems to have been stung into action. The new street-cleaning operation, at a cost of 800,000 euros per annum and with a machine dedicated to cleaning Puerto Pollensa's streets, was unveiled before Christmas. The town hall has also announced two projects in the port - worth 600,000 euros in total - for upgrading waste and water pipes and for placing rubbish containers underground. But this might all be a bit late.
The disaster of the palm beetle is something of a metaphor for a different type of disaster - what the residents of Puerto Pollensa see as the disastrous management of the port by the town hall. For the administration and for Sr. Ochogavia, a plague on both their houses.
* At the "pleno" at Pollensa town hall tonight (27 January), there will be a call for Sr. Ochogavia's dismissal.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The current administration in Pollensa has, since being elected and appointed in 2007, stumbled from one crisis to another, largely to do with its management (such as it has been) of Puerto Pollensa. So great is the divide between the port and the town hall that when a crisis comes along for which it (the town hall) might be deserving of some sympathy, it manages instead to further alienate the port's residents, to the extent of a "denuncia" being lodged with the Guardia Civil.
An ecological disaster is occurring in Puerto Pollensa. This may sound like an exaggeration, but the impact of the loss of landscape and visual charm can be dubbed thus. Residents and tourists alike want, demand even, the attractiveness of the natural world, but when it is being killed off as rapidly as it is, then one has to wonder as to the harm that may be caused to economic life by the destruction of palm trees.
Puerto Pollensa has been hugely affected by the actions of the "picudo rojo". The weevil's appetite for palms is such that in one avenue alone over one hundred palms, all the palms in the avenue, have been infested. The sympathy that the town hall might have had stems from the fact that the control or even the elimination of the weevil is far from straightforward. The mayor has suggested that little can be done. Up to a point he is right, but this acceptance has merely highlighted the fact that the town hall's own attempts at control have been poor, to the point of incompetence. It has managed to exacerbate the situation and to make Puerto Pollensa the "epicentre" of the beetle "plague" which has now spread to neighbouring towns.
The charges levelled against the town hall's competence in respect of the palm beetle go back some time. In 2008 the delegate for the port was told that palm trees in the Gotmar area were showing signs of being destroyed. She said there was nothing wrong with them and so nothing was done. Now you have a situation in which the actions of the town hall in trying to stem the problem have resulted in the denuncia made to Seprona, the Guardia's environmental investigation unit, and the call for the head of the town's services department, Martí Ochogavia, to be sacked.
What has helped to spread the beetle has been the way in which the town hall, rather than sending infested trees that have been cut down away for incineration (as it should have done), has been packing them in plastic and dumping them in the Llenaire area of the port. This has created a breeding ground for the beetle which has then escaped from what has been punctured plastic. When the town hall decided it would set fire to the cut-down trees - in open fields - this merely gave the beetle a fright and off it flew. It is possible for the weevil to travel up to four kilometres in one go; hence it has spread and colonised trees outside of the port. And there is the potential for even greater damage, one of the beetle skipping species of palms and infesting those not currently at risk, including the "palmito", the one tree that is native to Mallorca.
Residents in the port hold Ochogavia responsible. And he has form, such as with the accusation that was reported widely some time ago of nepotism in his having granted a relative's company the contract for street lighting. There is now also a question as to what has happened to the budget, 100,000 euros, that was set aside to tackle the palm beetle. Pollensa's mayor, Joan Cerdà, has said that there needs to be more financial assistance from the regional government, and has pointed to the cost of arranging for a crane, a gardener and labourers to cope with just one tree. Nevertheless, residents are keen to know how the budget has actually been spent.
The town hall administration, with elections looming, seems to have been stung into action. The new street-cleaning operation, at a cost of 800,000 euros per annum and with a machine dedicated to cleaning Puerto Pollensa's streets, was unveiled before Christmas. The town hall has also announced two projects in the port - worth 600,000 euros in total - for upgrading waste and water pipes and for placing rubbish containers underground. But this might all be a bit late.
The disaster of the palm beetle is something of a metaphor for a different type of disaster - what the residents of Puerto Pollensa see as the disastrous management of the port by the town hall. For the administration and for Sr. Ochogavia, a plague on both their houses.
* At the "pleno" at Pollensa town hall tonight (27 January), there will be a call for Sr. Ochogavia's dismissal.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
The Price Barometer: Mallorca under pressure?
I can hear the sound of pencils being sharpened, of keyboards being thumped indignantly, of conclusions being drawn and of calls for "they" (the ever-anonymous "authorities") to do something.
Prices. Give me strength. The UK Post Office has issued its annual worldwide holiday costs barometer, the needle edging ever higher until the barometer bursts with the rising pressure of a correspondent letting off steam with a shout of Mallorca's so expensive.
Mallorca, according to the Post Office's survey, stands at number 14 in a list of 36 destinations. There are two ways of looking at this. Mallorca is either the fourteenth cheapest place in the world or it is the twenty-third most expensive. The damning evidence, if you want to call it this, is that Portugal and Spain top the list of the cheapest destinations. How can Mallorca be more expensive than Spain? Must be because it's a rip-off. So will go the conclusions. Presumably, similar hackles are being raised in Tenerife which comes in at number nineteen on the list. Perhaps there is something to do with islands. And what might that be?
Let's get some perspective. With the exception of Bulgaria (number four), other non-Iberian competitors to Mallorca are, if one accepts the Post Office's findings, about as expensive or about as cheap - Croatia and Cyprus fractionally cheaper, Greece and Turkey fractionally more expensive.
The other perspective that is necessary is to understand how this survey is compiled. The trouble is that the Post Office doesn't say. If you go to its website, you will find the full results, but nothing about the methodology, save for the basket of goods that form the basis of the comparison. And one other thing. As a footnote, it says that prices are supplied by tourist offices with certain exceptions. Information for Mallorca comes from a villa agency. Why? I honestly couldn't say.
Unless you know the precise way in which this survey is conducted, you can make all manner of assumptions. The villa agency in question is a highly reputable operation. It specialises in luxury villas. Of its thirteen properties in Mallorca, eleven are in Pollensa. Let's just assume for one moment that information on prices is taken locally - in Pollensa town. It is not hard to imagine that these might be a tad higher than they are in, say, Puerto Alcúdia or Magalluf.
Mallorca languishes twelve places below Spain in this survey. But what is meant by Spain? Make another assumption. Benidorm. Anyone can tell you that Benidorm has a reputation for being cheap. Naff cheap, inexpensive cheap. Potentially, therefore, you have a polarity in terms of market; the economy variety of Benidorm and the luxury end of Pollensa. Chalk and cheese. One of the greatest disparities between Mallorca and Spain, says the survey, is the cost of a three-course meal with wine for two, a twelve euro difference. So what? It's eminently possible, just as it's eminently possible to pay the lower Spanish amount in Mallorca.
Everything depends, just as President Zapatero's famous 80 cent coffee depended. Another item from the survey is the cost of factor-15 sun cream. It's way higher in Mallorca than in Spain, by almost seven euros. And? Is this the same brand, the same supermarket chain? Perhaps it is, in which case there is a legitimate question to be asked as to why it costs that much more. But perhaps it isn't. You don't know, because the survey doesn't tell you. Nor do you know what size the bottle of sun cream is. There is a factor 15 sitting in my bathroom. It still has its price sticker. 3.99 euros. From the German Müller store in Alcúdia. Is this evidence of something being cheaper than the 4.42 euros on the mainland of Spain? No, it is evidence of one product at one store in one location costing one particular price. See, it all depends.
Price comparison surveys of this type need to be treated with scepticism, taken with a pinch of salt that probably costs more in Mallorca than on the mainland. They can be indicative of prices, but the surveys themselves vary. One from last year (Skyscanner's) made Cyprus the cheapest holiday destination in Europe. Yet it is thirteenth in the Post Office's worldwide survey, one place above Mallorca. Another, that from Thomas Cook, placed the Balearics seventh - behind Egypt, Turkey and the Canaries. But these are all more expensive, according to the Post Office.
Rigorously scientific these surveys tend not to be. They are unverified snapshots, they provide a talking-point, but that's about it. And there is often another reason for their being produced. The Post Office sells currency, a point it makes on its survey.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Prices. Give me strength. The UK Post Office has issued its annual worldwide holiday costs barometer, the needle edging ever higher until the barometer bursts with the rising pressure of a correspondent letting off steam with a shout of Mallorca's so expensive.
Mallorca, according to the Post Office's survey, stands at number 14 in a list of 36 destinations. There are two ways of looking at this. Mallorca is either the fourteenth cheapest place in the world or it is the twenty-third most expensive. The damning evidence, if you want to call it this, is that Portugal and Spain top the list of the cheapest destinations. How can Mallorca be more expensive than Spain? Must be because it's a rip-off. So will go the conclusions. Presumably, similar hackles are being raised in Tenerife which comes in at number nineteen on the list. Perhaps there is something to do with islands. And what might that be?
Let's get some perspective. With the exception of Bulgaria (number four), other non-Iberian competitors to Mallorca are, if one accepts the Post Office's findings, about as expensive or about as cheap - Croatia and Cyprus fractionally cheaper, Greece and Turkey fractionally more expensive.
The other perspective that is necessary is to understand how this survey is compiled. The trouble is that the Post Office doesn't say. If you go to its website, you will find the full results, but nothing about the methodology, save for the basket of goods that form the basis of the comparison. And one other thing. As a footnote, it says that prices are supplied by tourist offices with certain exceptions. Information for Mallorca comes from a villa agency. Why? I honestly couldn't say.
Unless you know the precise way in which this survey is conducted, you can make all manner of assumptions. The villa agency in question is a highly reputable operation. It specialises in luxury villas. Of its thirteen properties in Mallorca, eleven are in Pollensa. Let's just assume for one moment that information on prices is taken locally - in Pollensa town. It is not hard to imagine that these might be a tad higher than they are in, say, Puerto Alcúdia or Magalluf.
Mallorca languishes twelve places below Spain in this survey. But what is meant by Spain? Make another assumption. Benidorm. Anyone can tell you that Benidorm has a reputation for being cheap. Naff cheap, inexpensive cheap. Potentially, therefore, you have a polarity in terms of market; the economy variety of Benidorm and the luxury end of Pollensa. Chalk and cheese. One of the greatest disparities between Mallorca and Spain, says the survey, is the cost of a three-course meal with wine for two, a twelve euro difference. So what? It's eminently possible, just as it's eminently possible to pay the lower Spanish amount in Mallorca.
Everything depends, just as President Zapatero's famous 80 cent coffee depended. Another item from the survey is the cost of factor-15 sun cream. It's way higher in Mallorca than in Spain, by almost seven euros. And? Is this the same brand, the same supermarket chain? Perhaps it is, in which case there is a legitimate question to be asked as to why it costs that much more. But perhaps it isn't. You don't know, because the survey doesn't tell you. Nor do you know what size the bottle of sun cream is. There is a factor 15 sitting in my bathroom. It still has its price sticker. 3.99 euros. From the German Müller store in Alcúdia. Is this evidence of something being cheaper than the 4.42 euros on the mainland of Spain? No, it is evidence of one product at one store in one location costing one particular price. See, it all depends.
Price comparison surveys of this type need to be treated with scepticism, taken with a pinch of salt that probably costs more in Mallorca than on the mainland. They can be indicative of prices, but the surveys themselves vary. One from last year (Skyscanner's) made Cyprus the cheapest holiday destination in Europe. Yet it is thirteenth in the Post Office's worldwide survey, one place above Mallorca. Another, that from Thomas Cook, placed the Balearics seventh - behind Egypt, Turkey and the Canaries. But these are all more expensive, according to the Post Office.
Rigorously scientific these surveys tend not to be. They are unverified snapshots, they provide a talking-point, but that's about it. And there is often another reason for their being produced. The Post Office sells currency, a point it makes on its survey.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Money Isn't Everything: Tourism promotion
Something rather odd has been happening. Prospects for this summer's tourism are looking good. It's not just the regional government saying so, the tourism industry is also confident.
This may not be odd when you consider factors such as increased prices in competitor destinations and events in Tunisia, but it is when you add in one further element, or rather its absence. Promotion. The government's promotion.
As mentioned yesterday, haggling is still going on in governmental circles as to what exactly the budget for promotion will be. Though the tourism agency (ATB) announced a couple of weeks ago that it will be assigning 22 million euros, precise spend and therefore precise plans have yet to be agreed.
Despite this, we are presented with evidence painting a rosy picture for this coming season. Which leads you to question the role of the government's promotion. There hasn't been any, yet there are optimistic noises.
Regular are the calls for more government money to be spent on tourism promotion and for television campaigns. Regular also are the links made between a failure to spend, a failure to engage in high-impact campaigns and a future of dwindling tourism in the face of international competition. Far less regular are any suggestions that this promotional spend and these campaigns may not make massive amounts of difference.
You can point to any number of reasons as to why the noises are optimistic, and one of them is reliability. It may not be an exciting message, but for a tourism market which is generally less than adventuresome and wishes only to be guaranteed reasonable value for money, then Mallorca can satisfy this wish. It doesn't necessarily need to offer excitement, especially as, as a "brand", one built up over many years, its attributes are well-enough known.
When promotion is spoken about, it tends to be done so in terms of headlining advertising, such as that involving Rafael Nadal. But this advertising is only part of the promotional equation. Its value lies as much with creating "front of mind" or reinforcing a message to the punter as it does with creating significant new business. Just as important is what goes on that is largely hidden, for example the co-operative campaigns between the government and the tour operators.
When the tourism minister Barceló was threatening to remove funding for such co-operation with Thomas Cook when it started deducting 5% from what it owed hotels, she was playing politics. It would never have been done, as to have done so would have been a case of cutting off her nose to spite Mallorca's face.
What is overlooked when it comes to tourism promotion is the sheer volume of it that is done on the government's behalf. The government has its own websites, but how many others are out there doing promotion that is as good if not better? In addition to tour operators and villa agencies, there are numerous websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts, apps for mobiles all doing their bit. Where the government has been missing a trick is in not engaging with this informal resource that does so much work for it.
The internet has totally transformed tourism promotion and, for the most part, it is considerably less expensive than television or glossy print advertising. Criticisms of the style of headlining advertising, of the Nadal type, or of its absence miss the point that its value is greatly exaggerated within the mix of media and the vast number of sources of information and promotion that are available to the tourist.
Shortage of funding for the government's tourism promotion is, in one respect, a positive. Or will be if it has the effect of making the tourism agencies think more carefully about how they use the different tools that exist in order to get their message across. Having a huge budget does not guarantee anything other than potentially wastefully expensive, "vanity" campaigns, the returns on which are difficult if not impossible to calculate. The Nadal campaign was an example of "ego" advertising; not Nadal's ego but that of the person responsible for commissioning it.
Altogether less glamorous are the associations with the tour operators, travel agencies and online brokers; the optimisation of websites and the working with those who are performing a task for tourism promotion; the tourism delegations, especially those in the newer markets. They are less glamorous but they are more meaningful.
So if it turns out there isn't some expensive TV campaign, it shouldn't be considered a failure. It might just actually be the most sensible thing the tourism ministry has done.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
This may not be odd when you consider factors such as increased prices in competitor destinations and events in Tunisia, but it is when you add in one further element, or rather its absence. Promotion. The government's promotion.
As mentioned yesterday, haggling is still going on in governmental circles as to what exactly the budget for promotion will be. Though the tourism agency (ATB) announced a couple of weeks ago that it will be assigning 22 million euros, precise spend and therefore precise plans have yet to be agreed.
Despite this, we are presented with evidence painting a rosy picture for this coming season. Which leads you to question the role of the government's promotion. There hasn't been any, yet there are optimistic noises.
Regular are the calls for more government money to be spent on tourism promotion and for television campaigns. Regular also are the links made between a failure to spend, a failure to engage in high-impact campaigns and a future of dwindling tourism in the face of international competition. Far less regular are any suggestions that this promotional spend and these campaigns may not make massive amounts of difference.
You can point to any number of reasons as to why the noises are optimistic, and one of them is reliability. It may not be an exciting message, but for a tourism market which is generally less than adventuresome and wishes only to be guaranteed reasonable value for money, then Mallorca can satisfy this wish. It doesn't necessarily need to offer excitement, especially as, as a "brand", one built up over many years, its attributes are well-enough known.
When promotion is spoken about, it tends to be done so in terms of headlining advertising, such as that involving Rafael Nadal. But this advertising is only part of the promotional equation. Its value lies as much with creating "front of mind" or reinforcing a message to the punter as it does with creating significant new business. Just as important is what goes on that is largely hidden, for example the co-operative campaigns between the government and the tour operators.
When the tourism minister Barceló was threatening to remove funding for such co-operation with Thomas Cook when it started deducting 5% from what it owed hotels, she was playing politics. It would never have been done, as to have done so would have been a case of cutting off her nose to spite Mallorca's face.
What is overlooked when it comes to tourism promotion is the sheer volume of it that is done on the government's behalf. The government has its own websites, but how many others are out there doing promotion that is as good if not better? In addition to tour operators and villa agencies, there are numerous websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts, apps for mobiles all doing their bit. Where the government has been missing a trick is in not engaging with this informal resource that does so much work for it.
The internet has totally transformed tourism promotion and, for the most part, it is considerably less expensive than television or glossy print advertising. Criticisms of the style of headlining advertising, of the Nadal type, or of its absence miss the point that its value is greatly exaggerated within the mix of media and the vast number of sources of information and promotion that are available to the tourist.
Shortage of funding for the government's tourism promotion is, in one respect, a positive. Or will be if it has the effect of making the tourism agencies think more carefully about how they use the different tools that exist in order to get their message across. Having a huge budget does not guarantee anything other than potentially wastefully expensive, "vanity" campaigns, the returns on which are difficult if not impossible to calculate. The Nadal campaign was an example of "ego" advertising; not Nadal's ego but that of the person responsible for commissioning it.
Altogether less glamorous are the associations with the tour operators, travel agencies and online brokers; the optimisation of websites and the working with those who are performing a task for tourism promotion; the tourism delegations, especially those in the newer markets. They are less glamorous but they are more meaningful.
So if it turns out there isn't some expensive TV campaign, it shouldn't be considered a failure. It might just actually be the most sensible thing the tourism ministry has done.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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