The Malta Tourism Authority recently hosted a European blog trip with the aim of bringing together a group of influential bloggers from Malta’s European source markets over a weekend discovery of the Maltese islands.

Other objectives of the trip were to target a cross-section of market segments, such as lifestyle, sport, gastronomy and history and culture to reach out to around one million online readers in five core markets – UK, Italy, Germany, France and Spain – over various online platforms.

The group of 25 bloggers, forming the largest ever blog trip organised by the MTA, were in Malta for four days and were hosted to a full programme, highlighting the islands’ diverse product offer.

A number of fun and participative activities were organised, such as a cooking competition (gastronomy discovery) as well as different sports activities ranging from cycling to climbing, kayaking and snorkelling. They also had the opportunity to visit key historic and cultural sites.

While following their jam-packed leisure programme, the bloggers carried out live blogs to their social media members, as well as regularly updating their blogs highlighting their fantastic experience.

The trip came to a close with a special theme party on their last evening, where MTA presented trophies to the best blogger performances during the trip.

The feedback received from the bloggers has been extremely positive, with Malta and Gozo surpassing the expectations of most. Commenting on the trip, MTA’s chief executive officer Josef Formosa Gauci said: “We are sure this trip will enhance Malta’s presence on live blogs and social media throughout our core European source markets. We are doing our utmost to be avantgarde in our destination marketing efforts and embrace the online media and live blogging as much as possible.”

Air Malta and the Grand Hotel Excelsior were the main sponsors of the trip.