Editorial

Doubt that rather like the state of Denmark there is something not quite right about the performance of the Malta Tourism Authority has been amply confirmed by a report drawn up by Deloitte & Touche for the Ministry of Tourism. Not only are its structures "cumbersome and complicated". There is "an unclear chain of command, excessive internal fragmentation, unnecessary territoriality, ineffective coordination and weak communication".

Much worse than that it cannot get. What is surprising is that the MTA functioned at all. Its harshest critics will say that in effect it did not function because under the weight of its own inefficiencies it could not do so in a productive manner.

It is tempting to say that the MTA should have been the subject of such a report two, three years ago but there has been a tendency to assume that our performance as a tourist destination was hit primarily by 9/11 and most weaknesses followed form that. Clearly, 9/11 did have a major impact on tourism figures here as everywhere else in the world. Just as clearly, the MTA is not solely responsible for the performance of the tourism sector. There are a number of factors that are outside its control.

However, the MTA is culpable to a high degree if, on top of the considerable negatives created by 9/11, it allowed itself to become an unmanageable sprawl, lacking cohesion and blighted by internal contradictions. For it is nothing but a contradiction for a unit such as the MTA to be riven by fragmentation, incapable of coordinating its efforts and all but ineffective in its internal communications, which is basically what the report is saying.

The MTA has developed into an organisation with its left hand not knowing what its right hand was supposed to be doing. Too many chiefs and sub-chiefs decided that what mattered was their patch and nobody seemed to think much of the greater picture to which the whole set-up should have been contributing. It clearly lacked leadership right from the very top.

It is only to be expected that "a radical streamlining of the organisation" is recommended in the report. The introduction of efficient vertical and line communications must form part of this process; as must a chain of command that leaves nobody in the organisation in any doubt as to whom they ultimately answer.

Streamlining, in short, is not enough, vital that it takes place but useless if there is not, in parallel, a determined effort by the streamlined to avoid the sins of commission and omission of the past. Among these sins, few can be more mortal than the implosion of an organisation because of its failure to communicate internally and externally. This failure makes another one automatic: that of marketing Malta.

In this respect, one acknowledges the wisdom of the Tourism Minister when he declares it his intention to make all his ministerial colleagues "ministers of tourism". In an important sense they are because the work of most of them affects the Malta Product, be it the environment or road transport, heritage or the construction industry. One can also back to the hilt the Prime Minister's decision to chair an inter-ministerial working group with its brief to address developments in the sector in an on-going manner. Tourism is a flighty activity that requires constant monitoring and may demand regular restructuring of central systems, such as the MTA, in order to keep tabs on a process that is vital to the well-being of our island economy.