Joseph Grima, a former tourism minister, is undertaking an ambitious project aiming to collate a city by city list of all the main points of interest for tourists around the globe.

The website, supercitiesglobal.com, is still at the concept stage, but Mr Grima, who is the chairman of the company behind the website, explains that he has already spearheaded a similar project based around Malta.

“In 2008-2009, we undertook this innovative project, which consisted of a website called supercities.eu that was heavily based on videos. At the time, such a video based concept had not come into its own yet. It took a while to convince the authorities to come on board, but soon the Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) asked for our videos to be used on visitmalta.com,” Mr Grima told The Malta Independent.

Mr Grima explains that at the time, only 0.5% of all websites on the internet made use of videos.

“These were not just simple videos, as they were more akin to a one and a half minute documentary, providing commentary on the subject in question,” Mr Grima said.

Listings on the website for businesses were free, as the MTA had subsidised the site.

The venture eventually fell to the wayside, but Mr Grima says that it was just a pilot project that was never intended to stop in Malta.

“It is unfinished business, we should have already seen this concept thriving and developing from 2009. Now, 27% of websites on the internet are video based. Had we stuck with the video concept for this new website, then we would have already lost 27% of the market. The new project will consist of a compilation of great websites,” Mr Grima said.

The concept behind supercitiesglobal.com is to “have the least amount of clicks lead you to the information. The collection of websites will be split into various headings, then sub-headings, which can be narrowed down,” Mr Grima said.

The categories that will be listed on the website range from ‘Travel and Tourism,” to ‘Real Estate’ and ‘Commerce and Trade.’

A team of six people are working on the new website, but Mr Grima says that he will not be personally involved in it.

Despite this, he proudly says that he wants to see the project “grow like my child.”