A medium-term tourism campaign

The United States is nearly always the place where trends are set. Europe and Asia follow suit months later.

The first reality shows, the father of all the Big Brothers of this world, were aired in the United States. Practically all the different contortions of this phenomenon emerged from there too, including the tasteless Who's Your Daddy? where an adopted child gets to guess who are his natural parents from a given set of people. Useless to say that the show will soon be exported elsewhere.

At the same time, there are other trends which are much more worth noting and which have interesting potential for our country.

One of these trends is what seems to be the Americans' current passion for everything that has to do with the Crusaders, the Templars and the Knights in general. Some say this passion was subconsciously triggered off by George Bush's war on terror, which is many times personified by extreme Muslim militants.

Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, which took The New York Times bestseller list by storm more than 18 months ago, was the main catalyst of the Americans' new born interest in this sector. The Templars and their symbols play a key role in the controversial historical plot put forward by Mr Brown. There were many other works that spawned from this book, many of which have the crusades and the different orders of the Knights as their main theme. Major networks, including NBC and CNN, have also produced prime-time documentaries related to these issues. This was the first sign that the trend would be relayed from the printed to other media.

In fact, in less than 12 months, the major movie producers will have released at least three blockbusters on this theme. The first was National Treasure, in which Nicholas Cage plays the part of an Indiana Jones type of hero who is after a treasure that Christopher Columbus brought from Europe and which the screenplay connects to the Knights.

Soon we will have the second movie, Kingdom of Heaven, in which Orlando Bloom plays a crusader in what is said to be an epic movie.

In the meantime, Ron Howard is filming the big screen version of Dan Brown's book, with Tom Hanks playing Harvard professor Robert Langdon.

These movies are and will be hitting the United States, Europe and elsewhere by storm and are likely candidates for box office top spots.

In other words, the Crusaders and the Knights in general are back big time. To the mind of many people, Malta is synonymous with all this. It goes without saying that those responsible for marketing our country should move quickly to make a short-to medium-term campaign focusing on Malta's historical ties with the Knights. Given the unfortunate events that took place in Asia, many holidaymakers worldwide will be seeking elsewhere for their holidays in the near future. Focusing at least a part of our resources to put part of our history in evidence would help us reap the benefits of an up-and-coming global trend. It is likely that such a campaign would catch the attention of new markets of tourists having a relatively higher purchasing power.

But to do so, we must be quick and creative. And, of course, we must get our act together and hasten the upgrading of our infrastructure and save historic places, such as Fort St Elmo, from the shameful state they are in.

Mr Muscat is a Labour member of the European Parliament.

www.josephmuscat.com