P ress conferences at the White House can be embarrassing affairs, especially when after talks with the President a foreign leader is invited to meet the press. He may expect to face tougher questions than he gets at home but more often he is ignored while the journalists get their teeth into US domestic issues. This past week the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan found himself in what must have seemed like a family feud as one newspaperman asked the President what he thought of allegations that his political tactics resembled those of Richard Nixon.

Eventually, though, Mr Erdogan got the chance to speak about the burden his country is carrying in taking care of some 400'000 Syrian refugees whose prospects of ever returning home are poor; their number is thought likely to increase to one million by the end of this year. He made it clear that he has asked the United States for more help in this huge task which other countries on Syria’s border are sharing. If America and other Western countries had decided to take military action in Syria how much would it be costing them after two years? Would it not be reasonable therefore to think that financial help to Turkey and the other countries involved should bear some relation to the costs avoided by the inability of the UN Security Council to agree on military intervention?

IT is a sign of the times when King Juan Carlos surrenders his beloved royal yacht. It is a shame but unfortunately it is the right decision. Short sighted republicans would have taken aim at the King if he had used the yacht this summer. I say short-sighted because the royal yacht was part of Team Royal Family. In otherwords it would be used to entertain visiting heads of state or businesspeople which would help Spain PLC. Without doubt King Juan Carlos is Spain´s greatest ambassador and is admired the world over. Many world leaders have been entertained at the Marivent Palace and aboard the royal yacht Fortuna. The fact that the vessel was a gift from a group of local businesspeople clearly shows the deep affection and admiration for his work which is felt locally. Queen Elizabeth was forced to give up her beloved Britannia for similar reasons. That was also a deep shame which probably cost Britain heavily. A group of businesspeople calculated that the Britannia helped secure many lucrative export contracts for Britain. But we live in difficult times where some people just take the short view rather than the long one. Britain needs a royal yacht which should not be viewed as just a royal pleasure craft. The Britannia would host large numbers of receptions and business gatherings around the world which was good business for Britain PLC. At a time when Britain is desperately searching for export contracts a royal yacht would have been a big asset.

I despair. After you’ve read the following, some of you may also despair. Are you sitting uncomfortably? Then he shall begin, he being Ramón Estalella, the secretary-general of the Spanish Confederation of Hotels and Tourist Accommodation. “We are not against people being free to rent out their properties. The thing we ask, though, is that, as with the tourist offer, these owners comply with the rules of the game as they apply to legislation and taxation, etc. in order that the greatest transparency and guarantees are given.” This rental of property should be “a legal, transparent and controlled economic activity that contributes to the public purse”. “One of the problems created by this unregulated provision is customer dissatisfaction. As the rental arrangement is between private individuals, if any problem arises, no form of protest can be made. The image of Spanish tourist accommodation, number one in Europe in terms of its quality-to-price ratio, can therefore be seen to be damaged. This lack of transparency creates problems for everyone.” Black economy
Sr. Estalella has gone on to say that the majority of owners who rent out private accommodation form part of the black economy because they do not declare income and commit social security fraud. He has added that the lower prices of these owners’ properties represent enormous competition to the legal offer; not because of customer satisfaction but because of price.

So, here we are yet again. The slight difference this time round is that it is a Spanish hoteliers representative who is getting the retaliation in early against the so-called illegal offer and not a Majorcan hoteliers representative. Never fear, the Majorcan hoteliers won’t have lost their voice and won’t be short of the spade-loads of hyperbole that were being chucked around last summer.

The economy was “broken”, they said, because hotel occupancy in high summer was going to be so dismal, and this was all down to those nasty inhabitants of the black economy. It turned out to be rubbish; July’s occupancy had never been so good (this century at any rate).

I suppose one can argue that Sr. Estalella has moved the now-so-predictable arguments on a touch by bringing in the customer satisfaction thing. He would appear to know that there is a great deal of dissatisfaction, despite the fact, as he points out, that it is difficult for dissatisfied guests to make their complaints known. Perhaps he stops tourists on the streets of resorts and interrogates them.

In his defence, it is of course far easier for a hotel guest to complain and to go onto Trip Advisor and slag off a hotel. If all illegal accommodation is lousy, then it would definitely do harm. But what percentage of it are we talking about? Would the complaints outweigh complaints about hotels? Can it be said, in all instances, that hotel guest complaints are acted upon satisfactorily and that guests’ experiences of hotels don’t also do harm?

The latest round of let’s-all-have-a-go-at-the-illegal-offer game is being played out against a background of reform to the tenancy act. This reform, so the unthinkingly pro-hotelier media in Majorca has been telling us, will be the thing to make the rotten non-tax-paying owners finally get their just desserts. Perhaps it will also mean that tax-paying owners who have, remarkably enough, been declaring and paying tax, despite having allegedly illegal accommodation, will get what’s coming to them as well.

Another law
I despair of all this not just because of the same old, damn points being made by the hoteliers but also because of the total confusion that surrounds the issue of the so-called illegal accommodation. And now, because of reform to the tenancy act, the Balearics may well have to pass another bloody law. I thought they’d already done this, but Will Besga, lawyer of this Majorcan parish, who is far better positioned to know about law than I am, suggests that this will indeed be needed. And once it’s passed, if it’s passed, everything will be clear. Or probably not.

Though it has been generally assumed that the illegal offer is more of an issue in the Balearics (and the Canaries) than in other parts of Spain, the fact that a Spanish hotelier group is pronouncing on the subject shows that it isn’t. And a reason for it having become more of a whole-Spain issue is that anything that smacks of not being legal is fair game in these times of crisis and austerity. Fair enough.

Now then, how many hotels do you reckon don’t play completely by the book?