Destination Gozo

I am in contact with a German group who is at present holding a seminar in Gozo. The travel agent who booked this group organises such tours to Gozo mostly during the months of May and October - after all, those are the most beautiful times to enjoy Gozo if one is not just after the beaches (which we don't really have anyway!). And naturally, any travellers who are not stubbornly seeking accommodation in July or August are very much appreciated.

While organising the bookings, the travel agent stumbled across a very annoying problem, which is unique to Gozo: Flights that are scheduled to land in Malta very late at night (and those leaving early in the morning) seem to be on the increase this year. Being on such a flight when travelling to Gozo means that the last ferry will be long gone, which results in an unwanted overnight stay in Malta. It took a lot of haggling with the Air Malta booking office in Germany until at last, everyone was on a flight with decent timings.

Imagine my surprise when it came to reconfirming the return flights of the same group: Three seats on a flight leaving in the afternoon were unceremoniously cancelled and rebooked on a different flight leaving Malta just before 7 a.m. - a tad too early to make use of the first ferry. These three persons are now forced to take the 2 a.m. ferry, and they actually have to be grateful that they are travelling on a weekend as on a normal weekday the last ferry leaves Gozo at 11 p.m. There it looms again, another overnight stay in Malta, in order to avoid hanging around the cosy airport for the night.

One cannot help wondering whether such timing is intentional, filling some of the empty hotel beds in Malta, even if only for a night.

The point is that holidaymakers who give Gozo preference over Malta do so consciously and intentionally. Why do we have to make it so difficult for them to reach their destination? I cannot imagine that out of all the people on that afternoon flight, these particular three persons from Gozo were chosen at random to be dropped out. Flight time changes are almost always a nuisance to travellers, but it would have caused much less hardship to passengers from Malta.

I chose the above group as an example because it is a very recent one. However, it is by no means an exceptional occurrence of this problem. This particular group leader told me that she would think twice before organising the next tour to Gozo, and who can really blame her?

Apart from trying to attract more business outside the peak season, we cannot afford to lose customers we already have.