Malta has the highest rate of employment in hotels and restaurants in the economy compared with the EU's 27 member states, according to Eurostat figures.
In Europe, more than nine million people are directly employed in tourism-related activities, with Malta emerging top with 8.3 per cent of jobs held within this sector.
Malta also has the second highest rate of tourist arrivals per inhabitant - 2.9- and Tourism Parliamentary Secretary Mario de Marco is working to decrease the island's dependence on seasonality.
"While we want more tourists, at the same time we're making a big effort to spread the tourist base and increasing our marketing efforts for the lean shoulder months," he said.
This is being done by concentrating on business incentives, and cultural, sports and health tourism which are not dependant on weather.
Dr de Marco was reacting to figures highlighted by the European Commission's Tourism Unit during the seventh European Tourism Forum in Bordeaux.
The Parliamentary Secretary joined other European ministers last Thursday for the forum, opened by commission vice-president Günter Verheugen, to discuss the challenges Europe faced in the light of global economic slowdown.
The emerging news was that Europe, although the most visited region in the world, has seen its market share constantly shrinking for many years and its growth rates were lower than those of other regions. Europe had to work on tapping emerging markets such as China and India, since a staggering 87 per cent of all tourist arrivals in European countries come from Europe itself.
Dr de Marco said Malta had to work harder to tap these emerging markets, especially India, since they shared the same language and both countries drove on the left.
After an informal ministerial meeting during the forum, he told The Sunday Times that he had proposed the setting up of a European tourist office within emerging economies such as China and India, to be in a better position to promote Europe.
Ajay Prakash, national general secretary of the Travel Agents Federation, described the bureaucratic process Indians faced to obtain a Schengen visa, and suggested extending it past the present maximum of 90 days to avoid "putting Europe into a fortress".
Mr Verheugen said he would be raising this matter to facilitate the present system and ensure that while security concerns came first, the Schengen visa was not an obstacle.
Mr Verheugen also announced the EU's plan to launch a Europe-wide survey on the region as a destination and establish how travellers were being affected by the economic slowdown, their booking patterns, and travelling behaviour, among other issues.
The general feeling at the forum, titled 'The European Tourism Offer: Quality and Sustainability vis-à-vis Demand Trends', was that 2009 posed tough challenges with rising transport costs and recession hitting the travellers' pockets.
In this scenario, Malta faced the added disadvantage of being an island, practically dependant on tourists flying in, as opposed to other countries that gained from travellers driving across the continent, which kept costs down.
When asked whether the outlook for Malta in 2009 was gloomy, Dr de Marco said:
"I wouldn't say it is all doom and gloom. We have to stay on our toes and remain focused. Tourism is not an area where we can let our guard down. We have to be marketing aggressively, and getting our product up to scratch," he said.
"Even though they may be spending less, tourists demand quality. We cannot afford to get it wrong.
"Nowadays, if they come to Malta and don't get a good service they will go to websites, such as tripadvisor.com, give us a bad review and then go off to another destination next time."