There are several fundamental issues that we need to address properly if our tourism industry is to have a future. We need to decide which markets we have the necessary resources to appeal to and make sure that we reach them through advertising targeted precisely at them.

We must ensure adequate and affordable air links from the cities we want to bring tourists from. We must have new investments in a good budget holiday village and three- and four-star hotels and improve their quality. We need to understand the travelling habits of today's tourists and cater for them. Our competitors offer much better products and prices than us: in flights, accommodation, food and other services.

We must improve the way the country looks and the range of facilities and experiences we offer tourists throughout the year to at least match, if not beat, the competition. Our tourism industry and the way Government deals with tourism issues still lack networking and co-ordination. This fragmentation increases our disadvantages as a small country as we compete with bigger destinations equipped with more resources than us.

Government is not tackling these fundamental problems in a comprehensive and strategic manner. Our country still does not have a national tourism strategic plan and Malta and Gozo are lacking the necessary focus and drive to compete successfully with other destinations.

There is no one miraculous quick-fix solution to bring about a recovery in our major economic activity. There are a lot of decisions that we need to take.

We need a national tourism plan. We need to work together much better and co-ordinate our efforts more effectively as a nation to improve our standards in tourism.

We need to diversify our product by enhancing different tourism localities all over Malta and Gozo. While continuing to take care of our core tourism zone in Sliema and St Julian's we must start taking proper care of Marsascala, Marsaxlokk and Birzebbuga, Cottonera, Valletta, Bugibba, St Paul's Bay and Mellieha and Gozo and Comino. We must improve our project management to carry out the necessary work to upgrade our facilities.

A more authentic product

We need to clean up our country and keep it much cleaner than we are doing at present and we must stop destroying our rural and urban environment.

We need to make our product more authentic, more Maltese and Gozitan as most of our product is still dominated by the homogenised mass tourism model that is dying. More people are travelling to places and expecting them to be different and unique so we must increase the local content in terms of food, culture, customs, and music in our product. There are thousands of destinations but only one Malta, one Gozo and one Comino. Let us identify what makes us unique and articulate it...

We need to review the tax structure that has made us the most taxed tourist industry in the EU and liberate our industry from this burden that is undermining its viability.

We need to have a leaner regulatory regime that is more relevant for our reality instead of the cumbersome and expensive regulations introduced by Government without an impact assessment on the industry.

We need to help the tourism industry innovate the products and services it offers and we need a better trained workforce at all levels in tourism.

We need to market ourselves much better than we are doing and increase our visibility and accessibility through a much more effective use of the Internet as a marketing and sales tool and act on the feedback travellers are giving regularly in virtual forums on holiday experiences.

We must advertise and market our islands much better than we do but without the illusion that advertising on its own will give longer-term value to our islands. That value will only come if we provide services and products of the right price and quality.

More than half of today's travellers are deciding where to go on the basis of what relatives, friends and colleagues recommend and on what they read about a destination in Websites like TripAdvisory.com. This new development is changing radically the role of advertising, tour operators and travel agents and these elements must change if they are to remain relevant.

Improving air links to Malta should also be one of our top priorities to revive our tourism industry. Government took a small and hesitant step forward when it issued a tender for new routes from Europe. While helping Air Malta survive and thrive in today's times we need to attract other low-cost airlines from other airports without becoming over-dependent on one of them.

Get the basics right

As smal lisland we need our own viable national airline. So the necessary steps need to be taken to help Air Malta survive in the new reality shaped by a liberalised aviation industry including low cost carriers. It makes sense to put Air Malta under the responsibility of the Tourism Ministry to co-ordinate its operations much more in synergy with the need of the tourism industry.

Improving air links to Malta is crucial but not enough. Malta has entered the stage of maturity and decline as a destination and we need a tourism strategic plan drawn up jointly between Government and the stakeholders to rejuvenate and reinvent ourselves as a tourism destination. We can revive tourism. But its revival cannot happen on its own. We need a new dynamic government that has the ideas, energy and dedication to give a new beginning to our tourism industry.

Unless we get the basics right in our tourism, this industry will enter a long period of decline from which it will be hard to recover. The basics in tourism are that people who come here feel that we have given them good value for the money they spent. Tourists will come and will tell others to come if we make them feel welcome among us, they find a beautiful and interesting country and feel satisfied that they paid the right price for the product and services we gave them.

No amount of re-branding, advertising and low-cost airlines will revive our tourism if we continue to get the basics wrong: a good product and the right price for it. Branding will help but it has to go hand in hand with improving the urban and rural environment in our country.

Greek Tourism Minister Fanny Palli-Petralia said last March: "The Olympics offered Greece a total re-branding exercise any European country has ever undergone, which means new infrastructure, new improved highways, new subways, new hotels, a comprehensive security plan and a new airport." So a total effective branding exercise is not simply changing the packaging and improving perception, it is part of a holistic plan to make the country a nicer and satisfying experience for those who live in it and visit it.

evaristbartolo@hotmail.com