In the hot seat
Sam Mifsud took over as chairman of the Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) on September 1 last year. With David Mifsud as CEO at this side, it was supposed to be the dream team that reversed the decline - and instability - of the previous years. Tourism figures are now recovering but the CEO left not long ago. Will things ever settle down? Vanessa Macdonald found Sam Mifsud had lost none of his determination.
David Mifsud left as CEO two months ago. Why can't anybody stay on and complete their job?
I've been here for a year.
A year is hardly a long time...
The MTA has unfortunately been through a lot of changes. We need to find somebody who is going to settle down and come into the MTA to serve his term rather than leave. I don't think we like the fact that David left.
There hasn't been any advertisement for his replacement. That makes you an executive chairman in everything but name. Didn't we decide that the roles should be split?
The roles are split - I am not an executive chairman. What is happening is that I am taking certain executive decisions until we find a replacement.
So you are de facto the executive chairman...
I am not known as the executive chairman. George Micallef is assisting me taking care of the regulatory and the product sides, while I am taking care of the administration and the marketing until such time as we find a replacement.
You're not going to find a replacement unless you publish an advert. There seems to be doubt as to whether the advert will be issued or not.
I don't think that this question should be posed to the MTA.
(Pause) Since we spoke, you appointed Media Consulta as the marketing consultant. So, do we now have a three-year plan?
We are working on it. I've just been to Germany and the UK to test our new advertising campaign. It's the first time in MTA's history that the advertising campaign is not being chosen by the board but just approved by it.
We set up eight or nine focus groups in each country who told us how they perceive Malta: people who had never been to Malta as well as others who had, tour operators, travel agents, the whole spectrum of the market. So now we're going to work with that feedback and the 'creatives' will be in hand towards the beginning of September, well in time for the season.
Once adopted, this concept will be in place for three years so that is why I decided to take it overseas, to make sure that we get it right first time.
One thing that emerged clearly from these focus groups is that we should maintain our slogan: "Malta the Mediterranean's best-kept secret".
You cancelled the CNN campaign because it was aimed at the wrong market. Is the Isle of MTV, or Isle of FZD as I've heard it called, going to work? I was always told that Malta does not want to promote itself as a potential Ibiza...
The funds for MTV came from the government not the MTA. The concert was a one-off party, which puts Malta on the map for the younger generation - but not as another Ibiza.
The concert promotion just shows that there are lot of things to do here that are appealing to the young, like climbing, watersports... and concerts.
It will put Malta in the youths' minds. We have an image problem in the UK, for example, where younger people associate Malta with the place their grandparents went on holiday.
We also took note of the comments from the 2,000 Thomas Cook travel agents who came to Malta last year. Over 85 per cent of the people changed their perception of Malta after they'd come there.
Operators in Gozo are clamouring for a Gozo Tourism Authority as they feel sidelined. Do they have a point?
No, they do not. We've sorted it out. OK, when I first started working here Malta was on the agenda; now Gozo is on the agenda as well. You can't market everything at once. You have to take it step by step and the most important element was Malta.
So you are now paying attention to Gozo. What about the buoy in Xlendi for the cruise liners?
We had a meeting recently and MTA agreed to finance a big part of the Lm70,000 needed. That is how serious we are about Gozo.
We had two meetings with the GTA over the past six weeks and people who have been there for ages say that these were the most positive meetings they ever had with the MTA.
We drew up an action plan and by the next meeting, everything on the list had been done.
Lm750,000 was earmarked as incentives for low-cost airlines for the year till October. How much is actually being paid out, given that the scenario changed since Ryanair started?
I think we are still looking at that same amount - for all the low cost airlines - although it might go up as the figures were based on a load factor of 75 per cent and Ryanair averaged 85 per cent.
New routes - and new airlines - will commence on November 1 so the figure will obviously go up then.
Has it been worth it?
Yes, we created new clients. According to our surveys, 65 per cent of the passengers who come from Luton are first-time travellers to Malta. I was expecting this from Pisa - but not from Luton.
Three-star occupancy went down not up and per capita expenditure went up. They are definitely not low-spend tourists.
It has also done a world of good for Air Malta, which is now moving towards direct sell, rather than relying on tour operators. We were envisaging that the tour operator market would decrease by 6 per cent but it went down by over 20 per cent. Had we not gone in for Ryanair and made Air Malta competitive then arrivals would have plummeted.
Ryanair carried 82,000 passengers so far between November and July, 27,500 between January and June. The NSO figures show tourist arrivals from the UK in the first six months of the year were up by 10,000. So, does this mean that were it not for Ryanair, we would actually be 17,500 down on 2006?
It is difficult to compare because you have to see how many of those 27,500 were Maltese. Ryanair accounted for 6 per cent of our passenger movements in winter and up to July - but our increase overall was 9 per cent. Had it not been for Ryanair, comparing like with like, we would still have been up.
But Ryanair did create an awareness that helped other airlines. British Airways is flying at 95 per cent load factor, which is excellent.
Last year, you blamed poor tourism figures on insufficient seat capacity. This has changed but arrivals from Germany were down by 5.3 per cent until June. That must be a real disappointment.
I am not 100 per cent convinced about the NSO figures because passenger movements till July from Germany show +6 per cent in May, +8 per cent in June and +30 per cent in July.
I am not 100 per cent satisfied, especially for May and June, but in July and August we had a greater increase in passenger movements than in aircraft movements.
As I said, we anticipated that the tour operator market would decrease by 6 per cent but it went down by over 20 per cent. We only realised this in April/May and had not planned any advertising during the April to mid-June period. As soon as we realised what was happening, we ploughed extra funds into advertising - without even waiting for government consent.
Why did you realise so late? Isn't that exactly what you are supposed to be doing - picking up these trends?
Yes, and we do speak to all our operators and airlines, more so than ever before.
Tour operators had booked many of Air Malta's seats but were releasing them at the very last minute - and by then it was too late.
Now, you have your own portal and Air Malta has its own direct booking portal. Are you sure that this will not happen again?
Air Malta's portal is now ready. We are not looking at our portal as a way to generate bookings. Visitors will check it for information and to check prices but we know that they will go to other portals to book.
I am sure that Choosemalta will be pleased....
We have come to an agreement with them and others and will be opening our portal to them. So if a client wants to book a particular hotel, they would look it up and be given the price but underneath there will be a list of the portals through which it could be booked.
To be listed, the portals would have to meet
certain criteria - for example, they would have to offer more than 30 hotels. Also, the portal should not advertise other destinations on that page.
Is MTA going to offer this service to the portals free of charge?
We are speaking to the lawyers to see what the options are but the idea is to have it free of charge. We are there to facilitate. Full stop.
But with tour operator bookings going down and individual bookings soaring, it is clear that you cannot afford not to be out there. The moment you have a lull in your advertising, you notice it immediately.
Expedia International commented recently that the MTA is an e-pioneer as we were the first national tourism organisation to actually market directly on their booking portal. Now, on average, Expedia is booking 300 bed nights a day to Malta, up from negligible amounts a year ago.
Our research people alert us to the fact that things are changing but you have to stay very nimble to keep up with the pace of change.
The business traveller category in the NSO figures went down by 11.2 per cent. Does that include conference and incentive travel?
My figures show that conference and incentive travel increased but it could be that conferences decreased while incentives went up. Conference delegates might be listed as business travellers while incentives travellers might fall under leisure. It depends how the NSO categorises them.
We believe that CIT has grown but it is becoming very last minute. Now that there is the flight capacity, we can get more of this business, which we desperately need.
Cruise lining is up by 28.3 per cent but we still have not broken into homeporting...
The worst thing would be to get a ship that would pull out after a season.
Star Cruises' withdrawal was not Malta's fault...
Unfortunately the owner had a different idea about the Mediterranean but it still did not reflect well on Malta.
For next year, we are going to adopt a 'slow but sure' approach: Ships which take on passengers from here which can then increase year by year.
In my opinion there is no place in the Mediterranean where a ship can go westwards one week and eastwards another and we have to market that.
Will having another quay at Senglea help?
(Pause) It is well known that we need more berths. But where the best place would be, I really do not know.
Was the proposal put forward without input from the MTA?
We were not involved.
(Pause) The number of Americans coming to Malta was up by 14 per cent. Is there any link between this and the fact that American tourists are up by 22.3 per cent?
Bringing them here on a cruise ship is the best advert we could have and the Americans who come here love Malta. Air Malta now has a code-sharing agreement across the Atlantic, which will also help.
We will use this a lot more when we take over the tourist information office at Viset.
The tourist information office?
We are taking it over from the Malta Cruise Network, which was made up of Viset, Malta International Airport, us and the Malta Maritime Authority. Now MCN will be taken over entirely by MTA as part of our remit.
In the near future we will be producing materials and information packs aimed specifically at cruise passengers.
We are also breaking into the Spanish market for cruise passengers and have already run out of Spanish-speaking guides. Why do we always seem to be reactive and not proactive?
We have Spanish-speaking guides but not enough. Unfortunately, all the Spanish ships come to port on a Friday. We had a meeting recently with the guides' union and MTA is going to finance any guides who want to learn Spanish.
Reactive, not proactive... The growth has been incremental.
Had it just been tourists arriving by air, we would have been able to cope. The problem is the ships all come in on the same day.
But at least, now that we know the problem, we are going to sort it out.
We seem to have lost control of the English-language market: Not enough host families; complaints from hotel guests; Paceville full of drunken teenagers puking into people's gardens... Are you concerned?
Very, very concerned. I have formed a core team that will work on a plan for student travel next year. It will include two people from GRTU, two from MHRA, two from FATTA, two from Feltom and obviously, delegates from MTA.
The plan will look at ways to control the influx of these students in July and August. For example, if a hotel is going to accept student groups, then they will have to employ security and have a separate restaurant and so on.
We also have some EU funds which we can use to train and license group leaders. We cannot tolerate group leaders who are younger than the students.
Is it too late? We have already had terrible reviews in the Swedish press...
We looked into that and they were talking about one particular school, EF, because a student attending that school had died in another country and they were looking at EF in various countries, including Malta. In doing so, however, they also painted a bad picture about us.
We did try to come up with a law for bottle shops and believe that this should be enforced, ensuring that bars do not sell. But we need help from the police.
Two of your enforcement officers were beaten up...
And this was not the first case. Our people are very good at what they do and they often get threatened.
I've been here for a year.
A year is hardly a long time...
The MTA has unfortunately been through a lot of changes. We need to find somebody who is going to settle down and come into the MTA to serve his term rather than leave. I don't think we like the fact that David left.
There hasn't been any advertisement for his replacement. That makes you an executive chairman in everything but name. Didn't we decide that the roles should be split?
The roles are split - I am not an executive chairman. What is happening is that I am taking certain executive decisions until we find a replacement.
So you are de facto the executive chairman...
I am not known as the executive chairman. George Micallef is assisting me taking care of the regulatory and the product sides, while I am taking care of the administration and the marketing until such time as we find a replacement.
You're not going to find a replacement unless you publish an advert. There seems to be doubt as to whether the advert will be issued or not.
I don't think that this question should be posed to the MTA.
(Pause) Since we spoke, you appointed Media Consulta as the marketing consultant. So, do we now have a three-year plan?
We are working on it. I've just been to Germany and the UK to test our new advertising campaign. It's the first time in MTA's history that the advertising campaign is not being chosen by the board but just approved by it.
We set up eight or nine focus groups in each country who told us how they perceive Malta: people who had never been to Malta as well as others who had, tour operators, travel agents, the whole spectrum of the market. So now we're going to work with that feedback and the 'creatives' will be in hand towards the beginning of September, well in time for the season.
Once adopted, this concept will be in place for three years so that is why I decided to take it overseas, to make sure that we get it right first time.
One thing that emerged clearly from these focus groups is that we should maintain our slogan: "Malta the Mediterranean's best-kept secret".
You cancelled the CNN campaign because it was aimed at the wrong market. Is the Isle of MTV, or Isle of FZD as I've heard it called, going to work? I was always told that Malta does not want to promote itself as a potential Ibiza...
The funds for MTV came from the government not the MTA. The concert was a one-off party, which puts Malta on the map for the younger generation - but not as another Ibiza.
The concert promotion just shows that there are lot of things to do here that are appealing to the young, like climbing, watersports... and concerts.
It will put Malta in the youths' minds. We have an image problem in the UK, for example, where younger people associate Malta with the place their grandparents went on holiday.
We also took note of the comments from the 2,000 Thomas Cook travel agents who came to Malta last year. Over 85 per cent of the people changed their perception of Malta after they'd come there.
Operators in Gozo are clamouring for a Gozo Tourism Authority as they feel sidelined. Do they have a point?
No, they do not. We've sorted it out. OK, when I first started working here Malta was on the agenda; now Gozo is on the agenda as well. You can't market everything at once. You have to take it step by step and the most important element was Malta.
So you are now paying attention to Gozo. What about the buoy in Xlendi for the cruise liners?
We had a meeting recently and MTA agreed to finance a big part of the Lm70,000 needed. That is how serious we are about Gozo.
We had two meetings with the GTA over the past six weeks and people who have been there for ages say that these were the most positive meetings they ever had with the MTA.
We drew up an action plan and by the next meeting, everything on the list had been done.
Lm750,000 was earmarked as incentives for low-cost airlines for the year till October. How much is actually being paid out, given that the scenario changed since Ryanair started?
I think we are still looking at that same amount - for all the low cost airlines - although it might go up as the figures were based on a load factor of 75 per cent and Ryanair averaged 85 per cent.
New routes - and new airlines - will commence on November 1 so the figure will obviously go up then.
Has it been worth it?
Yes, we created new clients. According to our surveys, 65 per cent of the passengers who come from Luton are first-time travellers to Malta. I was expecting this from Pisa - but not from Luton.
Three-star occupancy went down not up and per capita expenditure went up. They are definitely not low-spend tourists.
It has also done a world of good for Air Malta, which is now moving towards direct sell, rather than relying on tour operators. We were envisaging that the tour operator market would decrease by 6 per cent but it went down by over 20 per cent. Had we not gone in for Ryanair and made Air Malta competitive then arrivals would have plummeted.
Ryanair carried 82,000 passengers so far between November and July, 27,500 between January and June. The NSO figures show tourist arrivals from the UK in the first six months of the year were up by 10,000. So, does this mean that were it not for Ryanair, we would actually be 17,500 down on 2006?
It is difficult to compare because you have to see how many of those 27,500 were Maltese. Ryanair accounted for 6 per cent of our passenger movements in winter and up to July - but our increase overall was 9 per cent. Had it not been for Ryanair, comparing like with like, we would still have been up.
But Ryanair did create an awareness that helped other airlines. British Airways is flying at 95 per cent load factor, which is excellent.
Last year, you blamed poor tourism figures on insufficient seat capacity. This has changed but arrivals from Germany were down by 5.3 per cent until June. That must be a real disappointment.
I am not 100 per cent convinced about the NSO figures because passenger movements till July from Germany show +6 per cent in May, +8 per cent in June and +30 per cent in July.
I am not 100 per cent satisfied, especially for May and June, but in July and August we had a greater increase in passenger movements than in aircraft movements.
As I said, we anticipated that the tour operator market would decrease by 6 per cent but it went down by over 20 per cent. We only realised this in April/May and had not planned any advertising during the April to mid-June period. As soon as we realised what was happening, we ploughed extra funds into advertising - without even waiting for government consent.
Why did you realise so late? Isn't that exactly what you are supposed to be doing - picking up these trends?
Yes, and we do speak to all our operators and airlines, more so than ever before.
Tour operators had booked many of Air Malta's seats but were releasing them at the very last minute - and by then it was too late.
Now, you have your own portal and Air Malta has its own direct booking portal. Are you sure that this will not happen again?
Air Malta's portal is now ready. We are not looking at our portal as a way to generate bookings. Visitors will check it for information and to check prices but we know that they will go to other portals to book.
I am sure that Choosemalta will be pleased....
We have come to an agreement with them and others and will be opening our portal to them. So if a client wants to book a particular hotel, they would look it up and be given the price but underneath there will be a list of the portals through which it could be booked.
To be listed, the portals would have to meet
certain criteria - for example, they would have to offer more than 30 hotels. Also, the portal should not advertise other destinations on that page.
Is MTA going to offer this service to the portals free of charge?
We are speaking to the lawyers to see what the options are but the idea is to have it free of charge. We are there to facilitate. Full stop.
But with tour operator bookings going down and individual bookings soaring, it is clear that you cannot afford not to be out there. The moment you have a lull in your advertising, you notice it immediately.
Expedia International commented recently that the MTA is an e-pioneer as we were the first national tourism organisation to actually market directly on their booking portal. Now, on average, Expedia is booking 300 bed nights a day to Malta, up from negligible amounts a year ago.
Our research people alert us to the fact that things are changing but you have to stay very nimble to keep up with the pace of change.
The business traveller category in the NSO figures went down by 11.2 per cent. Does that include conference and incentive travel?
My figures show that conference and incentive travel increased but it could be that conferences decreased while incentives went up. Conference delegates might be listed as business travellers while incentives travellers might fall under leisure. It depends how the NSO categorises them.
We believe that CIT has grown but it is becoming very last minute. Now that there is the flight capacity, we can get more of this business, which we desperately need.
Cruise lining is up by 28.3 per cent but we still have not broken into homeporting...
The worst thing would be to get a ship that would pull out after a season.
Star Cruises' withdrawal was not Malta's fault...
Unfortunately the owner had a different idea about the Mediterranean but it still did not reflect well on Malta.
For next year, we are going to adopt a 'slow but sure' approach: Ships which take on passengers from here which can then increase year by year.
In my opinion there is no place in the Mediterranean where a ship can go westwards one week and eastwards another and we have to market that.
Will having another quay at Senglea help?
(Pause) It is well known that we need more berths. But where the best place would be, I really do not know.
Was the proposal put forward without input from the MTA?
We were not involved.
(Pause) The number of Americans coming to Malta was up by 14 per cent. Is there any link between this and the fact that American tourists are up by 22.3 per cent?
Bringing them here on a cruise ship is the best advert we could have and the Americans who come here love Malta. Air Malta now has a code-sharing agreement across the Atlantic, which will also help.
We will use this a lot more when we take over the tourist information office at Viset.
The tourist information office?
We are taking it over from the Malta Cruise Network, which was made up of Viset, Malta International Airport, us and the Malta Maritime Authority. Now MCN will be taken over entirely by MTA as part of our remit.
In the near future we will be producing materials and information packs aimed specifically at cruise passengers.
We are also breaking into the Spanish market for cruise passengers and have already run out of Spanish-speaking guides. Why do we always seem to be reactive and not proactive?
We have Spanish-speaking guides but not enough. Unfortunately, all the Spanish ships come to port on a Friday. We had a meeting recently with the guides' union and MTA is going to finance any guides who want to learn Spanish.
Reactive, not proactive... The growth has been incremental.
Had it just been tourists arriving by air, we would have been able to cope. The problem is the ships all come in on the same day.
But at least, now that we know the problem, we are going to sort it out.
We seem to have lost control of the English-language market: Not enough host families; complaints from hotel guests; Paceville full of drunken teenagers puking into people's gardens... Are you concerned?
Very, very concerned. I have formed a core team that will work on a plan for student travel next year. It will include two people from GRTU, two from MHRA, two from FATTA, two from Feltom and obviously, delegates from MTA.
The plan will look at ways to control the influx of these students in July and August. For example, if a hotel is going to accept student groups, then they will have to employ security and have a separate restaurant and so on.
We also have some EU funds which we can use to train and license group leaders. We cannot tolerate group leaders who are younger than the students.
Is it too late? We have already had terrible reviews in the Swedish press...
We looked into that and they were talking about one particular school, EF, because a student attending that school had died in another country and they were looking at EF in various countries, including Malta. In doing so, however, they also painted a bad picture about us.
We did try to come up with a law for bottle shops and believe that this should be enforced, ensuring that bars do not sell. But we need help from the police.
Two of your enforcement officers were beaten up...
And this was not the first case. Our people are very good at what they do and they often get threatened.