The tourism season has started in earnest. Beaches are beginning to fill up with tourists, roads are seeing more rented cars, and it is becoming harder to stroll on the promenades where tourists usually congregate. It won’t come as a surprise if 2015 is another record-breaking year. But what about the long-term prospects for this vital industry for the Maltese economy?

Short-term tactics seem to be working. I have noticed that most beaches are quite clean from very early in the season. The quality of the seawater was never better thanks to the investment in the sewage treatment plant. Various low-cost airlines continue to provide the seats needed for visitors to come to Malta without having to spend too much of their hard-earned cash on air fares. The quality of the food served in most restaurants is good, even if prices remain far too high in some of them.

So who needs to worry about the future? I do. Some tourist operators are still aiming for success by continuing to cut costs by employing foreign hotel and restaurant staff who can hardly speak English. When in Gozo recently I was embarrassed when a French tourist asked an Eastern European waiter working in a popular restaurant (probably illegally) what was Gozo’s most popular dish. Struggling to make himself understood in pidgin English, he answered he did not know but confirmed that “all the food on the menu is good”.

Many argue that they do not find Maltese staff who want to work in restaurants or hotels – either because the work schedule is considered too disruptive or because they expect higher wages. The regulating authorities often close their eyes to various suspicious work practices that indicate that the black economy in tourism services is booming more than ever. This is short-sighted management indeed.

Entrepreneurs in the tourism sector also need to risk more of their own money in ventures to offer enhanced services

The tourism authorities should implement a tourism strategy that embeds high quality service in its objectives. The Tourism Institute needs to be upgraded to ensure that students are indeed trained to a high standard before being employed in the industry. Hotel and restaurant operators need to be initially encouraged and later compelled to employ qualified staff to serve their clients. This is the only way to make employment in tourism services a desirable career path for young people.

Entrepreneurs in the tourism sector also need to risk more of their own money in ventures to offer enhanced services if they want to attract better quality and higher spending tourists.

For too long, some hoteliers have depended on being granted public land by government to make their ventures viable. Most ventures have gone beyond providing hotel accommodation and catering facilities, and evolved into property development projects that are known to give stratospheric returns on investment for those who did not have to pay the market price for prime land owned by the state.

Over-development is one of the most serious threats to Malta’s future, not only in terms of the quality of life that the locals rightly expect to enjoy, but also for our tourism industry. One tourist that has visited Malta frequently in the last two decades told me that he does not come here to admire “Malta’s new stone age” but to enjoy the tranquillity that our island offers – at least in the eyes of visitors. Yet we continue to build and build with population density in some tourist spots reaching totally unacceptable levels. All property bubbles eventually burst and we should be wise enough not to permit such bubbles to build up.

Another strategic issue that needs to be addressed is the state of our roads and the multitude of vehicles that use them. Admittedly there seems to be an ongoing road maintenance programme partly financed by EU funds. But lack of investment in the past means that there is much catching up to be done to make our roads safe and easy to use.

We still need to see how the new public transport operators will perform. Most tourists prefer to use the public bus service and the sight of tourists waiting for an hour or more at bus stops is a totally unacceptable way to treat people who chose to pay to visit Malta.

While significant progress has been achieved in various tourism services, much remains to be done. It is no use having five-star hotels with excellent quality of service if the surrounding environment is at best three-star.

johncassarwhite@yahoo.com