Having just returned from a travelling holiday through Italy, where we visited the Amalfi coast, which is well known for its seaside villages with typical Italian culture, I was astounded to see how all the villages I visited, including Positano, Ravello, Sorrento, Capri and Amalfi, were all “packed like sardines” with tourists of different nationalities.

To get to the village of Positano one needs to drive through kilometres of narrow, winding roads with cars parked all over the place but where one will find all sorts of interesting shops and restaurants with a pedestrian area leading to a nearby beach. We tried to park, go for a walk and a swim and as soon as we started looking for a parking area we noted that there were around three or four car parks all of which were full to the brim. There is certainly no sign of the words “world recession”.

We drove around the village for another 15 minutes but still could not find a parking place. In the meantime, we learnt that parking fees depended on engine capacity with a minimum charge of €6 per hour. We stopped and asked a police officer to guide us to where we could park but to our amazement her reaction was to tell us to “get out of the village, the place is far too crowded”.

We again tried to park on the outskirts and get a bus ride back down, only to notice a 50-metre- long queue waiting at the bus stop by which time we decided to give up. We then drove back to Amalfi only to find the same problem but with the road closed due to traffic congestion.

The question that we all kept repeating was what pulls all those massive crowds when Malta offers very similar scenery, beaches and facilities? Was it the sea, the paved roads, the shops, the restaurants, the souvenir shops, the culture, the history? Why do tourists flock to places like Amalfi, Sorrento, Capri and we cannot attract sufficient numbers to sustain the tourism industry in Malta and Gozo?

We have everything they have to offer and even more. The private sector has invested and is investing millions of euros in improvements and refurbishments of their establishments including five-star hotels, good varied restaurants, museums, shops and shopping malls. We also have a good culture with centuries of history. We must be doing something wrong and need to pull ourselves together to attract sufficient numbers that make our investments worthwhile.

One prime example is St Paul’s Bay, which was left to deteriorate for a number of years with a non-existent maintenance programme and no government-funded projects since 1996, when the promenade was constructed.

St Paul’s Bay offers good value- for-money hotels, restaurants, museums, good shops, sandy and rocky beaches, lidos, diving spots and beautiful blue seas. St Paul’s Bay badly needs the promised yacht marina, car parks, the occasional cruise ship, a new improved promenade offering more public services, public gardens and the obvious good clean up.

Then we will have a resort to compete with other destinations and attract higher tourist volumes to sustain the tourism industry just like the Amalfi coast. Our islands certainly have the potential to become one of the leading resorts in Europe.

So why have we so far failed to attract the quality and numbers as they do in other areas?