Proud of St Paul's

By the end of our consultation exercise with stakeholders in the Bugibba/Qawra/St Paul's Bay/ Xemxija area, Labour had tapped most of the sources where business knowhow, interest and experience had accumulated over the years. Since the 1970s, the St Paul's Bay zone had developed as a premier tourist location, at one time securing 40 per cent and over of Malta's tourism revenues. There were ups and downs, with peaks happening in the late 1970s and again late 1980s, a big trough in between those years and another decline in the mid-1990s.

However, the stock of hotels, tourist-oriented restaurants, bars, clubs, diving and sea adventure facilities, clothes, souvenir and other shops remains practically without precedent, since it all happened so recently. True, the Sliema/St Julians/Paceville conurbation is touristically more salient than Bugibba but, in the former, the traditions of hosting outsiders for recreational and transient activities has a much longer tradition.

What emerged from the consultations Labour held was the wide-ranging pessimism shared by a lot of entrepreneurs and workers' representatives. They seem to feel that in the tourism game, the odds have become stacked against them. Occupancies have slumped in most hotels, especially in the three-star category. Bars, restaurants and shops report a persistent drop in business. Many seem to believe that, even as the situation improves this summer, the improvement will not be strong enough to compensate for what has gone wrong up to now, is still going wrong.

Yet, from the consultations spearheaded by Labour's main spokesman Evarist Bartolo, the point also emerged that it need not be like so. The analyses made by the people we met concerning how we have gotten to the state we are in were objective, straightforward and quick to accept that the "blame" must be shared all round. The suggestions advanced about where to go in the future were workmanlike and shorn of illusions.

Central to the problems being faced are: The decrease in hotel stock by way of numbers and quality, as three-star hotels are being wiped off the Bugibba and Qawra maps; the need to revitalise and modernise the tourism product offered by the area; and the inability of the government to take a worthwhile and meaningful interest in the fortunes of tourism there. Such problems are, of course, inter-related. Rates secured by hotels for business have been declining steadily, dictated by tour operators who impose their prices for rooms and services. This has cut on profitability or, quite simply, eliminated hotel profits. The product on offer consequently deteriorated, which, in turn, triggered further pressures for lower room prices plus spreading dissatisfaction among customers. Little to no product development took place.

On its part, the government, which should have taken the lead to ensure that the Qawra/Bugibba area remain viable as a tourism hub, looked the other way for most of the time. Management of the seashore areas is chaotic to non-existent. Street and beach cleaning leaves much to be desired. Other infrastructural services remain frequently primitive.

Clearly to reverse the negative trends, there must be a concerted effort to move on all fronts. The effort - if it is to succeed - must be grounded in a strong and unambiguous belief in the zone's potential, present and future. There are many people of talent and business acumen who share such a belief. I know, for I have met them. In the course of Labour's consultation, we did not simply get complaints, but were given lots of suggestions regarding what can be done.

Labour's commitment to making Malta tourism work is second to none. On Bugibba, we acted in 1996-1998 to give it the impetus needed to recover from years of neglect and careless decision making by the Fenech Adami government during the first half of the 1990s. In that instance too, what Labour did to revitalise Bugibba was based on the hands-on suggestions and proposals made by the people and enterprises involved in promoting and running tourism there.

Once extensive consultations have been conducted, the government must decide on an action plan and move forward to implement it. The truth is that the government has no idea regarding what to do for Bugibba. Even less does it have a plan. The day before Labour launched its policy proposals for Bugibba/Qawra, at the same venue as Labour's conference, Tourism Minister Francis Zammit Dimech launched an impromptu press event to announce what the government planned to do in the area. His presentation came replete with scale models of the works the government "intends" to carry out. Only, many of the projects mentioned had already been announced some eight to seven years ago...

When implemented, Labour's plan for the Bugibba/Qawra area will go a long way towards regenerating tourism there. Proposals include product upgrades that cover a yacht marina project; incentives to hotel owners to make it worth their while to re-invest in hotel stock, not least the three-star category; the provision of new public transport facilities; and a private-public management structure for the area empowered to monitor developments and deliver on initiatives. This time it is going to take longer to turn round the situation prevailing around St Paul's Bay. The basic tourism set-up has been allowed to suffer structural damage.

But in the context of Labour's overall strategy to revive tourism as a profitable pillar of the economy, we shall all become proud of St Paul's again. We need to be ambitious and proactive in a sector where too much inefficiency, plus gloom and doom, have become the order of the day. The national target is for 1,600,000 tourists to come and visit every year. Of that figure, a sizeable proportion will again go to the Bugibba/Qawra/St Paul's Bay and Xemxija area.