Business analysts love to scrutinise performance indicators of the industries they follow. Tourism is one of the most active global economic activities that is growing consistently and has become a major element of growth for various countries.
The latest World Economic Forum global travel and tourism competitive index has shown that Malta has placed in the 24th place in this index – two notches better than its previous ranking. This index is one of many published by various organisations that measure various aspects of competitiveness of the global tourism industry.
However, the World Economic Forum index is one of the most comprehensive because it delves into a multitude of aspects that are rarely covered in other surveys.
The good news for our tourism industry, according to this index, is that overall Malta is managing to rank ahead of some of its competitors like Italy, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey. The island scores highly in the areas of tourism infrastructure, regulatory framework, prioritising of travel and tourism in economic policy, safety and security and business environment and infrastructure.
In other aspects that affect the competitiveness of this industry we lag behind some of our competitors. These include the aspects of reliability of the police, policy rules and regulations, enforcement of environmental regulations and environmental sustainability.
Perhaps the most worrying result of this survey is that Malta ranked “a lowly 90th place for price competitiveness”.
In the prevailing tough economic climate, especially within the EU, not providing the best value-for-money to prospective travellers is, of course, a major handicap that does not augur well for the growth of this industry.
When our potential clients consider where to spend their holidays, they do not usually consult indexes like that of the World Economic Forum to decide where to go. They rather search for the ideal destination on travel websites and online travel forums to gauge where their money will give them the best value. So cost is likely to be a key element in determining the success of our tourism industry.
Operators in the tourism sector have long clamoured for more reasonable energy charges that are one of the major cost elements of this industry. One hopes the new Administration’s energy policy will indeed deliver the kind of cuts in electricity and water tariffs promised in the plans.
We are not a low cost country especially when compared with destinations like Turkey, Croatia and the Balkan states. We need to look at the value chain of the processes we use to offer a service to tourists and aim to enhance value in the final product we provide without adding cost.
Equally important, we need to give more importance to environmental issues. An overpopulated small country has to struggle to appear attractive to visitors and this challenge becomes even more daunting if we treat our fragile natural environment with disrespect.
Our tourism sector also needs to give more importance to the training of staff at all levels of the industry. The Institute for Tourism Studies must embed the teaching of total quality management concepts in all the courses followed by its students. Hardwiring quality in everything we do is the ultimate guarantee for success in this and other industries.
There is no lack of public commitment to quality in what we say. However, more needs to be done to translate this commitment into concrete action that will help us achieve excellence in tourism.