How to improve the tourism product

It is relatively simple to advertise in the foreign press to bring tourists over to Malta, and if you advertise in large quantities, then large quantities of tourists will hopefully arrive.

This is where the problem starts. If the Maltese tourism product is substandard, then when the tourists come over they will be bitterly disappointed and leave with a sour taste in their mouths. On arriving back to their respective countries, they will inevitably be asked about their holidays, and they will not be very complimentary. The result will be that the people they speak to will not come over to Malta themselves. Positive recommendations are extremely important. Negative recommendations are disastrous.

Without recommendations we will have to advertise profusely to bring over thousands of new tourists each and every year. Which is in fact, what we are doing at present.

Now let us look at another scenario. Let us imagine, if we can, that Malta gives the tourists a very good impression, then they will be very impressed and recommend Malta to all the people they speak to. This means that Malta will get many more tourists without having to pay enormous advertising bills each and every year.

Let us go one step further, if we encourage a huge quantity of these tourists to settle in Malta permanently, then we would not need so many short-term tourists each year, and everybody will be very happy, except for perhaps the adverting sections of the foreign press who would not get as many adverts as they do now.

How do we get the Maltese product acceptable?

We do not have to invent the wheel twice. We really just have to look and see how our successful competitors manage their affairs.

All districts of Malta and Gozo are looked after by local councils, who take care of all the cleaning and maintenance of their respective localities. This is not good enough for the delicate and sensitive tourism areas. I call these areas Tourism Priority Areas. Or TPAs for short.

If you go to places like York and Stratford and Canterbury in England, San Gimignano, in Tuscany, and Taormina in Sicily, to name just a few examples, you will find that each place will have two, three or four streets that are beautiful and full of tourists, and the rest of the streets in these localities are just normal everyday streets. They may also have a main scenic attraction, that is impeccably maintained. A tourist leaves these places, thinking how beautiful and sweet and clean they are, and recommends them to all and sundry.

What I am going to suggest now is what I recommended years ago when I was chairman of the MTA Product Directorate, when I was told that there were no funds to do what I suggested. We must spend more money instead on advertising Malta as a holiday destination.

I suggested that we designate about 28 areas in Malta and Gozo that we would call Tourism Priority Areas. These areas would comprise just a few streets in strategically important, sensitive and beautiful locations. These streets would, however, be arranged and maintained in an impeccable condition all year long, and maintained and protected by special units completely controlled by the MTA.

These areas would be cleaned and washed daily. They would have benches, flowers, attractive façades of buildings and shops, pleasant and attractive colour schemes on all buildings. Nothing substandard would be tolerated.

In other words, they would all be supervised and arranged and maintained in order to make them a credit to our islands.

An example of these areas would be Mellieħa High street, from the top of the hill to the church at the bottom of the hill; four of five streets and squares in Valletta; Spinola Bay up to the Spinola Palace; all of Mdina and Cittadella in Gozo; Xlendi sea front around the bay; the sea front area of Wied iż-Żurrieq.

In all there were 28 different areas singled out for such a scheme. Once these areas are up and running, then other areas will want to be included, and so Malta and Gozo will gradually have more and more desirable locations. Once we have these TPAs up and running, we then plan our tourism product around them. For example, we send our tourist buses from one TPA to another.

We suggest to tour buses to include all the TPAs in their itinary. We give preference to all the TPAs on all tourist maps and information booklets, thus ensuring that out lovely product is seen by as many tourists as possible in order to get our message across.

Success does not happen by accident. To be successful you have to plan, and to make your plans happen.

We cannot leave our Maltese tourism product in the state that it is in at present, and looked after by all the wrong people, instead of the people whose interest it is for Product Malta to be a great success.

It saddens me to see the filth and grime around the new entrances to the gardens in front of Spinola Palace. It breaks my heart to see the broken steps left abandoned and left for people to trip over.

It pains me to see the filthy dustbins overflowing with rubbish. Do we believe that tourists do not see these things?

Wake up Malta. There are hundreds of places tourists can go to.