Making tourists feel welcome

Service excellence was key to ensuring that tourists who visited the island got a top-notch experience and promoted Malta as a destination, Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism Mario de Marco said.

He referred to the Merħba (Welcome) training programme which, so far, has trained more than 1,750 key tourism personnel by utilising €613,000 in EU funds.

The Malta Tourism Authority, he said, had recently been granted more funding to develop a Trainers' Resource Pack as part of this programme.

The pack was developed to serve as a training aid for managers of tourism establishments and related support services to train their staff.

He said a recent study showed these projects had a 97 per cent satisfaction rate and 83 per cent of the participants felt the programme had a positive impact on their career.

"Initiatives like Merħba can assist us to develop Malta further into a globally competitive service economy and destination of choice. Value for money is extremely important in attracting visitors and even more so in ensuring they return to Malta for repeat visits - which at present account for almost one third of our tourists," Dr de Marco said.

Customer satisfaction added to this value and was not something Malta could compromise on, he added.