Implementing the national tourism strategy successfully

A National Tourism Strategy needs to be a long term vision that creates a live plan of action, which needs implementation through the integrated approach.

In my last article, I wrote about the importance of making the National Airline function by looking at three essential aspects, namely :

1. Once again, by looking at the management of human resources. Encourage motivation, incentives and initiative; as well as emphasize the proper care of grooming and presentation. The staff are the heart of any company, and any airline cannot survive if its staff are not well motivated.

2. Look at the position of Air Malta in the regional and international market, and renew or rethink its alliances with other airlines. As a legacy airline, Air Malta needs to maximize on the open skies network across Europe, as well as with its core markets such as the UK, Germany and France. The airline has a good reputation that has been built over fifty years, but now it needs to rethink, redevelop and restore those alliances to meet today’s traveller who is looking for accessibility, comfort and friendly service (as opposed to the “busboy” attitude of today’s cabin crew).

3. The management and board for Air Malta needs to be less politicised, and more focused on the business acumen for the national airline. This will ensure that the idea for good governance and management will trickle through the organization, and thus improve the delivery of service and hospitality to the client. A new airline will most definitely be a political tool now (the announcement about the closure and a new airline was first mooted by the Minister for Finance and not by the Board of Directors, where this very clearly shows political interference).

4. Consider offering alliances with other service providers – car hire, accommodation and catering outlets for Air Malta clients. This will mean extending the offers for Air Malta Card Holders. This could also mean offering a quality package to clients.

5. The value of this national airline is in the name – fifty years of goodwill needs to be enhanced by continuously improving and managing this airline.

6. The National Airline is the linchpin between a quality tourism destination and business links with these islands. It may very well need revamping, but why break what is not broken?

Today I will turn to the importance of applying the longterm plan of action, not a four year or nine year “wish list”, but a programme that will ensure an inclusive development of the tourism activity, one that is beneficial to all the key stakeholders, and one that will see a tourism activity based on quality and sustainable principles, instead of one developed by unprofessional and amateurish strategies focusing on the quantitative results.

Tourism policies are not there to satisfy the short term stakeholders – such as the politician and the business community, but to satisfy all stakeholders, including the local community and their own quality of life. As always, these are my points for ensuring a tourism strategy that needs to be a long term vision, which creates a live plan of action, and which in turn needs implementation through the integrated approach.

1. Through a continuous and consistent consultation process involving all the key stakeholders.

2. Developing the tourism policy by working with all the stakeholders, and not “for”them.

3. Designing a framework for the policy which will include an action plan, deadlines for action and which considers short-term, medium-term and long-term strategies to prioritize the action effectively.

4. Creating focus groups and a community forum that will work continuously on the application of the policy document.

5. Finally NEVER treat the policy document as some political document to be prepared and then abandoned on some office shelf for its duration.

There are still more facts in this short article which I hope will continue to encourage more people to write and assist in the compilation of the Guidelines to Stewardship by Q3 of 2023. Thank you to all of those who have already shown their support from as far as the UK, Switzerland and Germany (incidentally being three of our key source markets). If we persist in ignoring these facts then, as I have said, tourism here will be an activity that may just attract sordid and nasty characters, instead of the visitors who actually want to be here. Let us keep persisting.

This year I will be completing the Guidelines for Stewardships, with the help of a number of individuals and NGOs who have already approached me, and I hope to present them to you, as the community, to our politicians and to our authorities. We may yet be able to save these islands from total oblivion as a sustainable and quality tourist destination, and that is my New Year’s resolution. Will you join me?

Dr Julian Zarb is a researcher, local tourism planning consultant and an Academic at the University of Malta. He has also been appointed as an Expert for the High Streets Task Force in the UK. His main area of research is community-based tourism and local tourism planning using the integrated approach.