Next weekend probably represents the start of the peak of our tourism season. It will hopefully last into September. Efforts continue to be made to extend the peak in some shape or form into November and to fill the gap that exists sometimes between Easter and the end of June.
Moreover, there are also efforts to seek to increase numbers to an appreciable level in the period November to March, which, however, continue to be considered as dead months in this activity.
Some of these efforts have reaped fruit, as witnessed by the number of tourist arrivals in the first three months of this year. This week's contribution and, the next two, will focus on the economic activity which is so critical to our country.
It is worth asking the question as to the direction that we wish our tourism sector to take in the coming years. This is because there are still contradictions in what the various stakeholders in this sector are doing.
At times I can understand the short-term view taken by some. Persons that have invested in this sector need to have a return on that investment and a payback period as short as possible, as do people in every other area of business. Government performance is assessed on a month by month basis and so needs to deliver the numbers on a monthly basis.
Employees, whose livelihood depends on the tourism sector, will tell you straightaway how this sector is performing as they are probably the first to note a drop or increase in activity.
Thus, their concern is the here and now. All this is exacerbated by the fact that capacity for tourism services, unless used today, is lost forever. It is a perishable asset. For example a hotel bed that is not used today or a seat on a harbour cruise boat that is not sold today, cannot be left to tomorrow. It is gone, never to return. This goes a long way to explaining why a short term approach is required.
On the other hand, this does not mean that the medium and long term are to be ignored. It only means that we need a bi-focal approach - maintaining a good performance in the short term while steering the sector towards a well defined direction in the medium and long term.
The document Vision 2015 and Beyond has sought to identify those development opportunities that can leverage the country's assets towards higher value economic growth, job creation and wealth creation. It included tourism as a key component of this strategy. And, within the tourism cluster, a number of sub sectors were identified, namely educational tourism, eco-tourism, high-end tourism, short term duration travel, health tourism, cruise destination, yachting and super yachting, arts and culture, and film editing and production.
Cruise destination and yachting and super yachting overlap with the transport and logistics sector, while arts and culture and film editing and production overlap with the creative industries sector.
The Vision 2015 strategy also indicates that eco-tourism, high end tourism, health tourism and arts and culture are niches especially suitable for Gozo. In the light of the proposed development at White Rocks in Bahar iċ-Ċagħaq (a development with which I agree wholeheartedly), to the list already identified we need to add sports tourism.
Two important considerations emerge from this. The long-term vision is very clearly focused on specific market niches. This means that we cannot have a generalist approach to tourism marketing and product development. Although the number of tourist arrivals need to remain high, they must increasingly come from the identified niches.
The second consideration is that Vision 2015 seeks to place Malta in the upper middle tier of nations - an aspiration that we share as citizens. The long-term vision for the tourism sector also falls within this strategy, and so we need to understand that we have to move out of our current mindset, which is giving tourism the image of being in the lower middle tier. At this stage the short-term strategies need to be aligned to this longer term vision.
The third consideration is the overlaps that exist between the tourism sector and other sectors. Ignoring these overlaps would jeopardise not only the development of the tourism sector, but also the development of other sectors. For example one sector where such an overlap exists is in the yachting sector. The south of France is considered to be a premier destination not just for the yachting sector but also for the tourism sector, with the result that one sector's success feeds into the other. I am not so sure that we are exploiting fully the benefits of such synergies in our country.
Within this context one should mention this week's news item that Air Malta was ranked highest in a passenger satisfaction survey carried out by the magazine Which?. The good name that our national airline gives to the country will eventually reverberate across the whole economy through the linkages that exist. It is a result that gives the airline an image of excellence, which is an image that the country as a whole is aspiring to achieve. This is why we have to be capable of merging the short term strategy into the medium and long term one.