Incipit vita nova?

Over 700 years ago and before he turned 30, Dante Alighieri wrote his famous collection of poems which he called La vita nova. Love and the new beginnings that it stirs in our life is a theme that runs through them. Three words that Dante uses in this collection of poems are Incipit vita nova ("A new life begins").

We are coming to the end of summer. Spring is still far away. We usually associate spring with new beginnings. So spring has arrived early at the Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) as since last Friday it has a new leadership with chairman Sam Mifsud and chief executive officer David Mifsud. In the last three years MTA has had four chairmen, each one of them with his own set of priorities. The policy vacuum left by the lack of a strategic plan for MTA has been filled by personal agendas.

No wonder that the MTA is gripped by a sense of drift and lack of direction.

Things at MTA will not fall into place simply by having two new persons at the helm. I wish both of them well. A lot of hard work has to go into creating new efficient systems at MTA and to be effective they must be customer-oriented where all MTA employees feel they are there to serve tourists and the tourist industry. MTA must stop being an inward looking organisation.

Although nearly two years have passed since restructuring process started at MTA, there is still a lot of unfinished business that needs to be carried out and major decisions need to be revisited. MTA needs to reflect seriously on the decision to close down its offices in other countries, assess the result and take new effective steps to raise our profile as a destination in our core markets. Has appointing general sales agents to promote us as a destination been more effective than having our own MTA persons doing it?

Simply having an overseas office in our core markets does not work miracles. The office in Italy has been closed and more Italian tourists have arrived since its closure. The offices in the UK and Germany have been kept open and the number of tourists from our top two markets is down. Representative offices need to be backed and supported by other factors, such as good and affordable air links to Malta and the islands delivering good value for money.

The new MTA leadership also needs to reflect on the experience of the Segmental Advisory Groups and whether they have been effective in promoting and marketing our islands. Most of these groups still lack a serious business plan, which is an indispensable building block of any strategic plan. MTA still lacks a serious strategic plan of action and the top priority of the new chairman and chief executive office must be to drive the process to formulate an effective and dynamic strategic plan. But such a plan will only make sense if government finally gets down to drawing up and implementing a national strategic plan in tourism.

Still without a plan

One of the main objectives of the restructuring process that started nearly two years ago at MTA was meant to be the drawing up of a national tourism strategic plan. This has not yet happened. When the Opposition proposed in Parliament the need for such a plan and also an emergency plan to address the crisis in tourism, Government and MTA, to try and pre-empt the Opposition, hastily cobbled two documents and called them a draft national tourism policy and a strategic plan for MTA. Both are very poor documents and a lot of work needs to be done to turn them into valid documents to show the way forward.

The MTA restructuring process included the setting up of a Private Sector Consultative Board. According to the Deloitte report, "the individual Advisory Groups, acting through their segment committees, should collectively appoint a Private Sector Consultative Board, comprising not less than three and not more than five duly elected individuals to represent and voice the opinion of the overall tourism private sector in all dealings with the MTA and Government." The minister recently appointed a super board and has created another layer on top of the MTA chairman and executive board. This super board is made up mostly of hoteliers and it is still not publicly clear what role it will have.

In its recommendation for the setting up of a Private Sector Consultative Board the Deloitte report proposes having the members elected to represent all the industry. Deloitte stressed: "It is essential that these elected individuals would have broad tourism business knowledge, be able to contribute knowledgeably on a wide range of motivational segments and have the capacity to rise above and detach themselves from short-term narrow sectoral interests.

The Consultative Board will be responsible to prepare a consolidation of the individual Advisory Group business plans and to translate these into effective prioritised recommendations to be included in the National Tourism Strategic Plan; Government co-ordinated Product Improvement Plan; Marketing and Promotion Plan and Proposed Legislative Changes. The Chairman of the Consultative Board should be one of the selected board members on the MTA Main Board."

The Deloitte report had based its restructuring proposals on the philosophy that MTA decision-making structures should be a bottom-up representative tool of the industry. Government has now departed from that philosophy and created a new super board which so far looks a top-down government tool.

Government has perverted the structural set-up proposed in the Deloitte report. It is still not clear how the minister's super board is going to interface with the MTA main board and what role it will have in planning and implementing our national tourism policy. Creating more layers of structures and power centres does not augur well for efficient and dynamic decision-making and implementation.

New wine, old bottles

So despite the change of leadership at MTA it is still not clear whether we are going to have the beginnings of a new life for our tourism industry. The new chairman, CEO and even the minister's super board are like new wine in old skin. They all have to work within the constraints and framework provided by the Inter-Ministerial Tourism Development Group chaired by the Prime Minister. The group started meeting towards the end of 2004 and was set up "to successfully work out tourism issues across inter-ministerial functions". This committee headed by the Prime Minister is ultimately responsible for what is going on in tourism. Its tasks are to approve government policy for tourism, approve and implement a Product Improvement Action Plan and design fiscal measures to develop tourism.

This Inter-Ministerial Tourism Committee headed by the Prime Minister has failed. The crisis we are going through in tourism is adequate proof of that. As ultimately responsible for tourism in our country, it is obvious that all this Committee, and not the Minister of Tourism alone, has to answer for the crisis in tourism. It is pointless to call for the resignation of the Tourism Minister, when the political responsibility for tourism lies with this Committee headed by the Prime Minister.

The Inter-Ministerial Committee has failed to drive the process leading up to a national tourism plan, has failed to set up and manage the structures needed to clean up Malta and Gozo and keep them tidy, has failed to provide the conditions to improve the product, price and services we offer tourists, has failed to address issues that undermine our tourism, such as the nuisance caused by construction, the unacceptable behaviour of certain drivers in public transport and taxis, has failed to improve the project management that require better coordination between different ministries, has failed to lead the initiatives to market and promote Malta and Gozo more effectively overseas and has failed to design fiscal measures to help the private sector deal with the threats to their viability and sustainability arising from falling income and rising costs.

A new life for tourism can only start when issues such as these are addressed properly. The Inter-Ministerial Committee headed by the Prime Minister does not have the energy, the ideas and the strategic vision and drive to instil any new life in our tourism industry.

evaristbartolo@hotmail.com