The editorial of Times of Malta about moving away from mass tourism (January 5) cannot be more mistaken. It is articles like this that are endangering the tourism industry.

Tourism should not be called by different names. It is just that, plainly tourism, and one should not refer to it in terms of upmarket or downmarket tourism, mass or quality tourism.

Trying to change course to cater for a market that probably does not even exist or is difficult to target is folly and also dangerous.

Today, most people take several holidays a year. They sometimes stay in a 3-star hotel, some go for a 4-star hotel and others prefer the 5-star category… They change their level of choice of hotel according to the country they visit, their present financial situation and, most importantly, the prices being offered by the hotels at the time.

To label a person as being a mass market client just because he chose to book a 3-star hotel and fly Ryanair is just as silly as branding somebody as being a 5-star client when perhaps it was only once that such person opted for such accommodation and flew Air Malta as an upmarket or quality tourist.

People choose their hotels according to the rates available at the time of booking.

Malta’s tourism around the year 2000 was stagnant. In fact, the industry only started to improve when the country took two very important decisions after a two-year battle with the government of the day. The first was to allow low-cost airlines to operate to and from the island and the other to completely change our marketing policy.

These decisions resulted in increasing tourism from a stagnant circa one million for many years to about 1.7 million in seven years.

To move away from this policy and to try to attract high-end tourism, if one can define who and where they are, can only send an absolutely wrong message to our main partners: the airlines that operate and continue to fly to Malta and which were completely responsible for the huge increase registered.

We need to upgrade as a country but not at the expense of changing the current proven tourism policy

Such air carriers would not be happy to continue to fly these routes should we change our policy. They are used to occupancies of a sustainable 80-90 per cent and if our advertising policy changes and occupancy drops as a result they will surely decided to reduce or cancel routes and will send us back to the stagnant, dark days of tourism.

This can happen within a year because, as soon as airlines see occupancies falling, they cancel routes.

If we also change our marketing policy in search of quality tourists (whoever and wherever they may be), we risk losing our core markets. Malta will never again be seen as an active competitor in the tourism industry. We will slowly be forgotten and the tour operators will pull out due to a lower demand for Malta as will the airlines.

We know how the market works and we should not try and reinvent the wheel. Nor should we try to compare Malta’s tourism to that of London’s and other capital cities.

We are an island destination in the Mediterranean; our competitors are Mediterranean destinations, including Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Cyprus, Spain, Italy, France and many more, which all happen to be geared towards mass tourism.

Visitor numbers in the case of capital cities must never be confused with and are completely different to those applicable to holiday destinations.

Moreover, when the whole world is competing for family holidays there is no single family that will be willing to pay crazy rates when buying a family holiday. Unless, that is, such a family happens to be super rich.

The sensible way forward for Malta’s tourism is to persist with its present marketing spend in core markets and also to invest in new markets, like China.

We need new markets to increase the number of arrivals because I firmly believe that we should be targeting two million arrivals by 2017/18 simply because of shorter stays and new beds coming online.

If we are to fill our beds all year round and if we are to sustain the number of restaurants, bars, shops, excursions, boats, buses etc, then we need to manage to create the sort of demand that would make all these different businesses flourish and profitable.

Increasing demand is the only way to raise room revenue. This is absolutely the only way to increase much needed revenue for our hotels but not just for hotels. Once we have more tourists, the ancillary services linked to tourism will experience a bigger demand and an increase in turnover.

By dumping our present policy and changing it to target upmarket tourism we will be sending the tourism market into a downward spiral.

By changing the present policy and attracting smaller numbers, demand will decrease and, consequently, room rates will drop too. We may, thus, end up having the so-called ‘quality tourists’ (if they exist) paying cheaper rates than what they do today.

Yes, we need to upgrade as a country, especially our infrastructure. We must never lay back and say we have it all and must constantly improve. We also need to carry on upgrading our hotel product and, if necessary, even build a 6- or 7-star hotel but not at the expense of changing the current proven policy.

If, as the editorial suggests, we were to cater for ‘quality tourism’, what is to happen to the hotels in Buġibba, Qawra, Paceville, Sliema, Gżira?

Michael Zammit Tabona is a hotelier.