Editorial

Tourists are becoming increasingly de­mand­ing on how and where to spend their hard-earned money and will not put up with incoherent service providers. This is particularly relevant for Malta, one of the EU countries depending most heavily on income from tourism.

The news that the European Consumer Centres Network (ECC) has commented negatively about the lack of standardisation in three-star hotels throughout Europe needs to be followed up by action to define common standards. The fact that there are no common minimum criteria for such hotels in the EU irritates consumers who often feel cheated and short-changed.

The EU’s single market should guarantee consumers a fair and consistent deal wherever they choose to book accommodation in a three-star hotel. But this is not the case. Michael Nowlis, Tourism Control Intelligence managing director, noted thus: “In a seamless Europe, where holidaymakers can travel from France to Portugal without ever stopping at a border and use a single currency along the way, the lack of coherence in hotel classification is an embarrassment to the tourism industry.’

European tourism destinations compete with other resorts worldwide for the important European market where prospective tourists can research, decide and book for their holidays from the comfort of their homes. If European tourist destinations, including Malta, are to win the support of holiday travellers, they need to have strict specifications of minimum standards that have to be adopted by all hoteliers.

The establishment of such standards cannot be achieved by the efforts of any single state. While the Malta Tourism Authority has defined the standards of three-star hotels, this has limited value unless it is incorporated in a broader EU-wide definition of hotel accommodation standards.

The ECC has asked the European Parliament to implement a common set of minimum criteria “to ensure that accommodation standards across Europe have a level of consistency in a bid to avoid nasty surprises”. This proposal may have come at the right time because the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Michel Barnier, is piloting a new Single Market Act expected to be approved by the European Parliament early in 2011.

In October, a White Paper on the proposed law will be published and the European Commission expects all interested parties to make suggestions on how consumers’ rights in the single market can be strengthened. One trusts the MTA will take this opportunity to promote the standardisation of minimum criteria for hotel accommodation as a means of meeting consumers’ expectations.

Malta’s representatives in the European Parliament should also invest the political capital needed to ensure that this effort to achieve hotel accommodation standardisation will bear good results. They need to meet with both local hotel operators and foreign travellers’ organisations to define the action that needs to be taken to harmonise relations between tourist accommodation providers and their prospective customers.

Despite Malta’s small size, its experience in the hospitality industry gives it an edge to contribute effectively to upgrading customers’ services throughout the EU. We need to understand what tourists expect from a three-star hotel and work to meet, and even exceed, these expectations by defining strict common accommodation standards.

By doing this Malta will be protecting the massive investment in tourism.