As Malta gears up for another tourist bonanza, travel writer Andreas Weitzer argues that its soaring visitor numbers are not the result of marketing magic.
Tourism has always been a lucrative business for Malta: good weather, good food, good beaches and an industrious labour force, friendly and English-speaking, have provided for a steady flow of visitors.
Year after year, roughly a million visitors would guarantee good income for hotels, restaurants and shops. For decades this did not change much. The hotels may have got more posh and restaurants more sophisticated, but essentially the island was welcoming the same numbers of budget tourists – the kind who walked around in sandals drinking beer in St Julian’s.
Wealthier customers, those who bought lavish apartments and moored big boats, were increasing visibly over the years but they were mainly attracted by business opportunity and a favourable tax regime, not by our well-oiled tourism machine. Think of the gaming industry, for instance.
Numbers, of course, slightly fluctuated: a bad summer on the continent, a favourable exchange rate or sudden income boosts for European households all had an influence on holiday makers. But this is true for all markets, not only for Malta. When ferries go on strike in Greece, or its ATMs dry up, sun-seekers go elsewhere.
Yet, all of a sudden, beginning about 10 years ago, local tourist numbers started to go through the roof: while in 2006 the usual million-plus visitors had checked in, in 2007 they were up by 100,000 and have kept climbing since. Last year the National Statistics Office counted 1.807 million guests – an increase of 61 per cent in just 10 years!
More and more traditional holiday destinations have become exclusion areas – too dangerous, too uncomfortable or too risky to visit
Now, only the gambling enclave of Macao has more tourists per habitant. Bucking all international trends, tourists to Malta stay longer and spend more every year. They are not just retirees or package tourists either: the vast majority are working age and most arrange their holidays without a travel agent.
What is happening? Is Malta so desirable, all at once, or are its politicians on steroids? Admittedly, the gradual disappearance of the garbage mountain and the fact that a few more migrating birds are allowed to survive has had some positive influence. Our (Italian) coffee is good compared to France or Germany. And we do not tend to overcharge – compare the cost of a pint or a litre of petrol here with the island of Crete, for instance.
An undeniable, if incremental effect came from cheaper air fares. But this has not altered the overall cost of a holiday in Malta. It has just enabled its hotels to earn healthy profits, without the need to price-compete with nearby countries.
What makes Malta’s success story more of a conundrum is the fact that it is not an international phenomenon, in fact quite the contrary: putting aside the growing wealth of the Chinese middle class, and the holiday-home-comers of labour-exporting countries like Macedonia, Bosnia or Albania, tourism is generally having a hard time. With wages stagnating in the West after the financial crisis, people are increasingly forced to stay at home.
What, then, is the secret potion of the Maltese?
It is a phenomenon that the Association of British Travel Agents describes as “funnelling bookings into ever more limited areas”. More and more traditional holiday destinations have become exclusion areas – too dangerous, too uncomfortable or too risky to visit.
Tourists have been gunned down on the beaches of Tunisia and killed in buses, museums or aeroplanes in Egypt; terror attacks have taken place in Paris and Brussels; extremists are on the march in Libya; Kurds are revolting violently in Turkey; the Islamic State is killing scores in Ankara and Istanbul; the Greek islands have been swamped by refugees; and London is an accident waiting to happen.
If at the start of all this, British and American tourists were treading carefully in Muslim countries, with radical Islam becoming increasingly indiscriminate in its attacks, they now think twice about visiting beaches and tourist attractions in such countries. This applies even more to travel agencies, who risk reputational or legal consequences.
Bookings to Egypt are down by 60 per cent and to Turkey by 35 per cent, according to the Financial Times. Travel agencies Thomson and Thomas Cook have cancelled all their holiday bookings to Tunisia, until recently a premier place for care-free beach holidays.
To put it bluntly: our roaring tourism success boils down to war profiteering, not genius. And it’s not just us. In the first 30 days of 2016 more holiday packages to Portugal were sold by the UK travel industry than in the whole of 2015.
If we don’t mess it up, expect another bumper harvest in 2016.
Andreas Weitzer is a journalist based in Malta who writes for Condé Nast and other leading publications.