Eiffel Tower, London Eye: similarities and contrasts

The Eiffel Tower had 6.7m visitors in 2006 - a new record - and the London Eye sells 'over 3.5m' tickets a year, making it the UK's most popular paid-for attraction. These two icons of mass-market, urban tourism offer up some interesting contrasts - as well as similarities - for anyone examining leisure markets in Europe.

The Eiffel and the Eye are in some ways symbolic of the economic and cultural differences that have been deepening between the UK and France. Take your child to climb some of the 1,665 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower and you will be doing what you did as a child and perhaps what your own parents or grandparents did. The Eiffel is fun to visit but, after 117 years at the heart of a city, it has plenty to teach about history, technology and keeping fit by climbing stairs.

In contrast, the London Eye is an overtly commercial 'ride', taking its inspiration from ferris wheels in the old amusement parks that have evolved into today's theme parks. No better reminder of the commercial reality than the permanent title-sponsorship: it should always be referred to as the British Airways London Eye. As of March 2007, the Eye is just one of many European attractions owned by the private equity giant, Blackstone Group, bringing it to the forefront of cutting-edge investment in leisure. Another contrast, then: the Eiffel Tower remains steadfastly owned by the Paris municipal authority although operation is sub-contracted to a private company. (To complicate matters, part of the land on which the Eye sits is municipal, but this does not affect its operation.)

Tourism needs this combination of hard-nosed commercial reality with more profound cultural experiences. France still has the edge as a destination because it attracted Walt Disney to build its only European park near Paris, so visitors to the region can have a kaleidoscope of experiences. Not that London is lacking in cultural appeal; a short walk from the queues to ride the Eye, the Tate Modern (free admission) is already attracting over 4m visitors a year to puzzle over ground-breaking works of installation art.

What about the similarities?

Firstly, both monuments are centrally positioned in their cities and offer splendid views over the many attractions of Europe's two most popular cities: by nights spent in hotels, London and Paris remain head and shoulders above all other European cities.

Inevitably, both attractions are extremely busy and expensive to visit in peak periods. In 2007, a 'flight' on the Eye costs an adult £14.50, while the Tower is charging €11.50, about £8, for an elevator ride to the top. Fortunately, both are situated in pleasant surroundings where tourists can sit and watch the world go by - the Trocadero fountains and Champ de Mars in Paris, the redeveloped South Bank of the Thames in London.

Another similarity is the excellence of the two attractions' websites with the Eiffel Tower operators, in particular, providing in-depth visitor statistics. The fully private Tussauds Group, immediate owner of The Eye, is understandably more coy about revealing operational data.
www.londoneye.com
www.tour-eiffel.fr/teiffel/uk/ - English version

EMI and Warner: what's in a label?

Anyone who grew up in the Glory Days of vinyl will remember how resonant record labels could be: Sinatra's Capitol Years, The Beatles on Parlophone then their own Apple label, Bob Marley on Island, the rubber-stamp of Motown for so many stars, the joyful soul of Stax and so on.

Labels may have reached their PR climax in 1977 when Johnnie Rotten signed off the Sex Pistols "Never Mind the Bollocks" LP with a song mocking EMI and A&M, both labels which failed to cope with the maelstrom of punk. But EMI won in the end, buying the label on which the Pistols actually recorded, Virgin Records, in 1992.

By the early 1990s, much of the romance of being signed to a particular famous label was gone for young musicians. EMI and the three other global majors (Universal, Warner, Sony BMG) have swallowed up dozens of labels which once stood proudly for independence (or an attitude). EMI alone owns the likes of Parlophone, Capitol, Virgin, Chrysalis and Mute. The need for labels is only recognised in miniscule writing and logos on the CD and cover of the Beatles 2006 compilation, "Love". "Parlophone is a Capitol music label." "Marketed and distributed by EMI".

Labels lost importance as records and cassettes gave way to CD, and downloading now turns the concept of a physical label - if not the idea of a small, independent production company - into a recording industry dinosaur. Selective downloading of individual tracks, combined with the almighty iPod/iTunes system, is also undermining the whole idea of producing "singles" or "albums" which need labels. When you make up your own playlist (or your personal compilation album) you are effectively creating your own, personal music label.

So it's become a struggle to make money out of music, at least enough to keep a multinational ticking over. Hence the label-swallowing and mega-mergers that have produced just four majors:

• Universal Music Group - leader with 25% of the world music market, labels include MCA, Polygram, Decca, Motown and Island). UMG is part of the French media group, Vivendi Universal.

• Sony BMG - over 20% market share, product of a 2004 joint venture (still under investigation: see below) between Sony and Bertelsmann. Famous labels include RCA, CBS, Epic and Rough Trade but Sony Music or Sony BMG are increasingly used.

• Warner Music Group bought out the music division of Time Warner in 2003 (just as UMG is now separate from Universal Studios). Historic labels under WMG include Atlantic, Elektra and Asylum (label for The Eagles in the 1970s: their first hits compilation is the top-selling album of all time.)

• EMI - UK-based although a USA major through Capitol since the 1960s.

The four majors could become three if Warner and EMI can get round to merging, a possibility since the early 2000s but one which seems some way off in early 2007. The problem is that the European Commission (plus the US government) would have to agree to a merger, and the Commission is spending the first half of 2007 investigating whether the 2004 Sony-BMG merger was legal after all.

Tour ops: then there were two?

Hard on the heels of the planned merger of MyTravel and Thomas Cook, two of the UK's 'big four' tour operators, came news that the other two, TUI and First Choice, also wanted to merge. The timing of the deals, within a month of each other in early 2007, means that the companies must have been talking to each other confidentially for a long time about the benefits of consolidating their package holiday businesses.


But why the rush to get married? Unusually candid statements from the air travel regulatory body, the Civil Aviation Authority, about changes in the holiday market are revealing. The CAA, which issues the licences (called ATOLs) to companies selling package holidays, has commented on a fall in the number of package holidays -those 'fully bonded', or insured - sold in 2006. It has taken a few years, but the effect of people organising their own flights and hotels on the Internet, instead of buying ready-made packages at the travel agent, is at least beginning to show through in the statistics. Even the 'big four' are contributing to the trend through their websites, where they offer the flexibility to book flights and hotels seperately.

There were some other reasons for the decline in 2006. Fuel-cost supplements added to the brochure prices were offputting, and the operators are steadily cutting capacity, removing some of the poor-quality hotels that consumers with 30 years of Mediterranean experience are rejecting. But the long term trend is away from the packages and towards independent bookings, which means that online sellers like Expedia and Cendant Flightbookers, Travel 2, etc) are creeping up on the tour ops.

The EU will have to ratify the mergers because the 'big four' operate across Europe. Germany's TUI, if it included the UK's First Choice, would sell around 7.5m holidays out of the UK (a third of our market) but globally it would be a giant with 27m customers a year. The enlarged Thomas Cook Group would sell about 6.5m UK-outbound holidays a year, giving just two companies a market share in excess of 60% of the package holiday business.

The new 'big two' would be German-controlled. TUI (Touristik Union International) is a German company and the enlarged Thomas Cook Group would be 52% owned by KarstadtQuelle, 48% by MyTravel shareholders.

Cost-saving consolidation is the order of the day but the groups are not monolithic in structure. The new number two will take the Thomas Cook name in recognition of trust consumers place in the world's oldest "tour" brand, but MyTravel was an umbrella for many specialist brands which will survive: Cresta (city breaks), Manos (Greece), Direct Holidays (direct-sell), and probably the big general brand at the core of MyTravel, Airtours. These will join former Thomas Cook brochures like JMC and Club 18-30 in the new group.

Thomson Holidays and First Choice are the big TUI brands but the united group brings together a startling range of familiar holiday brands: Simply, Meon, Trek America, Exodus, Hayes & Jarvis, Skibound et al. The specialist holidays - upmarket, long-haul, adventure, clubbing, sporting etc - have been preserved but when booking on their websites, the brochure name is no longer as important as it was when High Street travel agents sold nearly all the packages.