The resort that Buġibba should be

How many times do we have to hear that the product we offer our tourists needs to be ameliorated? In how many more budgets do we have to hear politicians making promises they have never kept? How many more "hard" years and bleak winters do we have to endure to shake off the apathy?

Look at Buġibba/Qawra. It is a tourist resort without a plan, with private businesses working on their own for their own individual benefit and no holistic plan to give the area a raison d'être.

It is just a densely-built-up space which happens to have a lot of bars and restaurants.

That is no tourist resort! A tourist resort needs to be a place with a difference, where families can take their kids to amusement and water parks, where you can have a nice, cold, cheap beer with a friendly service, where you can explore the wonders of life under the sea, where clubbers can go clubbing and where you can go for long walks along pristine promenades.

A tourist resort needs to be accessible day and night through public transport; it needs to have folk festivals in the summer, big parks, Christmas and Easter villages, good roads and pavements, and its own local council which gives all its energy to the area. It also needs properly enforced building regulations and a hard-handed approach to litter louts. It needs to have charm and taste! It needs businesses backed by proper infrastracture, laws, business-friendly authorities and the right kind of tourists.

Buġibba should be competing with Barcelona, Sousse, Benidorm, Aya Napa, Marseille and Sliema/St Julians.

The fact that it is not goes to show that the government has abandoned it and while it keeps throwing projects from the hip it seems to have no idea where to start from.

I do hope that Mario de Marco will prove me wrong but until then I will judge by the results and not the sweet talk.