Editorial

Just as hoteliers are expressing so much frustration over the poor performance of the tourism industry, more and more tourists are complaining about the deterioration of the holiday product. Is the island not meeting its target figures because of such deterioration or is it because holidaymakers are finding other resorts more attractive in terms of both quality and price?

The probability is that both reasons are valid to the same degree. Despite the excellent rehabilitation of some places, like the Valletta Waterfront, the rebuilding of some roads and the manicuring of some roundabouts (never mind the hideous sculptures that are supposed to adorn some of them!), deterioration has set in, in some areas more than in others, making the island increasingly looking inferior to other resorts in the Mediterranean. To make matters worse, prices have generally gone up, forcing those that might have first been tempted to come to Malta to go elsewhere.

It is no wonder that performance is below expectations. A call has been made for the resignation (not for the first time) of the Tourism Minister and of the Malta Tourism Authority chairman, who, incidentally, has just announced he is stepping down in August. But in the light of what has been happening to the industry generally, is it not time too to see if the hoteliers and restaurateurs are playing their full part in the exercise to revamp tourism?

Does the service given match the prices charged? Does care to their product extend only up to the main door of their properties? There are cases where the immediate approaches to hotels and restaurants cry out for attention. True, the government has a major role to play in the development of the industry, but the drive to generate new interest in Malta as a holiday resort would need to be a collective one if the island really wants to make headway. This may be a truism but it does not seem to have been fully translated into practice yet.

According to one leading hotelier, figures for the first half this year were negative and it did not look like they were going to have the additional 70,000 tourist arrivals they had been promised. Promised? Hoteliers should know better than pinning their hopes on promises, and authorities, and politicians in particular, would be wiser to be wary of making predictions in such a volatile industry as tourism.

Instead of an upswing, the industry is going through a downswing, with hoteliers claiming the authorities had not been reading the situation correctly. Who, then, is reading the situation correctly? Can Malta afford to drag its feet any longer over low-cost carriers? Have we not had enough time to decide over this? The MHRA official was right when he said that, given the current situation, "if we want low-cost carriers to start operating in Malta next winter, every day is a day lost. So we need to move as fast as possible; we do not have weeks and months to discuss the issue".

The cost of a holiday counts a great deal, but the quality of the product is a determining factor as well. The country is losing itself on far too many fancy words when top priority ought to be given to seeing that the island is kept clean all the time. This is one basic challenge that has never really been fully grasped. The island will look a hundred times better if it is kept clean. Unless we take up this challenge, no branding or restructuring will ever work.