Tourism – Learning from our mistakes. Are we ready to bite this bullet?

‘Tourism is like a fire, you can cook your dinner on it or it can burn your house down’

In Malta and Gozo and across the globe, governments and the business community have been hellbent on reopening this industry and trying to return it to its pre-pandemic quantitative status. But this will mean that they are happy with the issues of overtourism, sustainable tourism and responsible tourism, it means they are happy to create an industry that is about to “burn our house down”. We have experienced, here in Malta, the fracas of the so-called language students (I use the term “students” loosely here because these youngsters are not students in the serious meaning of the word – they are only interested in the three S’s of the mass tourism group); government was pressured by the industry to reopen this market and immediately we began to see the start of a third wave of the pandemic; too little too late, the Malta Tourism Authority decided to create a support to the health authorities and MIA consisting of 120 persons working at the airport to “control” visitors to the island (this has resulted in absolute chaos and even more apprehension for the local community and industry). We are not building a new chapter for tourism today, we are blundering in our poor sense of management of this activity. The reason is very simple – there is no cooperation, no coordination and no professionals to develop the three Rs – rethink, redevelop and restore.

This is happening now: hotels opening without the necessary trained and professional staff, a focus on the economic side and no consideration for quality and proper tourism hospitality and service. Look what happened in Valletta last week. One boutique hotel decided to “requisition” a large part of Merchants street – the Malta Tourism Authority (probably through its so-called enforcement board) rubberstamped the permit and fasttracked the application. I know what should be done, I was director for Tourism and we frequently had such applications, many of which were turned down or modified drastically. Tourism does not belong to the politicians and the business persons, it belongs to the whole local community and to the destination, the sooner these short-termists learn that they cannot bulldoze through these islands by developing tourism projects that jar with the culture, character and heritage, the better it will be for the goodwill of the destination itself.

Another point concerns the mad rush to turn our bays into marinas with the risk of seriously damaging the marine environment and the coastal environment. This has nothing to do with tourism; this is pure and utter vandalism of the character and heritage of the islands. We must not allow this to happen, this is benefitting a very few persons and it certainly does not benefit the local community nor the visitor who wants to be here. This is a clear example of mismanaging tourism.

Another example of mismanagement is the situation on the

Natura 2000 island of Comino. We are turning this beautiful spot into a nightmare, all so that one or two persons (with obvious hidden agendas) can make a quick buck from the spaghetti and chips brigade. In fact we should be implementing the management plan for Comino that was drafted in 2012, not destroying this natural environment.

Indeed we have a choice – we can either manage tourism so

that we can cook our food sustainably or we can go on mismanaging this activity by leaving it in the hands of amateurs and poseurs (people who think they know what they are doing in the industry) or we can make the change and work with professionals, academics and the key stakeholders, including the local community, to develop a new activity that will sustain many more stakeholders.