Tourist arrivals down 6.8 per cent

Bernard Spiteri

Nov 1st 2009, 20:31

All this negative comments the majority come from the English or British whatever, they complain, moan,whing and the list goes on and on day in day out, YET they still come over here for our lovely friendly nature, nice warm weather, healthy climate, cheaper for them to visit restaurants so why do they bother may i ask? ORRRRRRRRRRR do they come over to our country just to annoy us or make us feel inferior to them or what. All i can say to the English is you can moan to your heart's delight, PROVIDED YOU SPEND YOUR CASH HERE JOHNNY BOY. T>TA have a nice time.

Rita&Ron.Hoskins

Nov 1st 2009, 20:10

Yesd i agree Jennifer Grech*, my husband is also British, and as you say One price for the Maltese and a different price(higher) for the tourists, as long as there are british tourists the higher prices they are charging us or rather poeple ,like my husband as i can speak Maltese, but naturally can't be with him 24x7 shopping are not going to change because we are complaining, its in their blood i am afraid the maltese are a greedy nation and there is no way of getting away from it, either grin and bare it, learn the language as my husband is trying to do or we all know the alternative by now as we hear it far too often! Good luck Jennifer.

jennifer grech

Nov 1st 2009, 01:32

the british tourist find malta too expensive as the euro now more or less equals the pound,in the uk the frozen food shop iceland sells 3 products for £5 lasco sells the same product marked up in british pounds and the product of iceland for 4.70 euros for only 1 of the products,my daughter and family would like me , would not even think of paying nearly £5 for only 1 when in the uk we get 3 for the same money, even the tal-lira shops sell the same products as the uk so why would we pay 2 euros which is more or less £2 to us when we can buy the same back home for only £1 it is not malta`s fault as our pound hasdevalued,but it does not help when we also get ripped off as soon as we open our mouths to ask a price as i am married to a maltese for 38 years i do understand maltese so i hear one price for the maltese and one for the tourist when will this practise stop?

W Spencer

Oct 31st 2009, 20:20

The problem is, that the hotels in Malta / Gozo, are really inferior to hotels in so many other Countries. If one wishes to talk about quality of hotels in Malta, then there is an awful lot of modernisation, with regard to hotels and its staff, to be done to achieve parity with other Countries .

Henry Mifsud

Oct 31st 2009, 09:19

I am reproducing my comments which were posted a bit late a few days ago in another blog. Then I shall rest my case!

"Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. The irony of it all is that whilst on the one hand we keep on talking about Quality vs Quantity, the only benchmark being used is the Number of tourist arrivals! When are we going to learn that the best possible solution for Malta is to improve the Product and do our best to de-marketing from certain Market segments and concentrate on other more sustainable and lucrative niche markets, possibly spread over the whole year rather than concentrated over the high summer season and shoulder months? Wishful thinking? I strongly feel that MTA's strategy and mission on paper are firmly in place but when it comes to execution and implementation, MTA is miles (if not light years) behind. It's role should be as the chief planner and controller not the operator! So for the umpteenth time may I dare to ask Quo Vadis Malta?"