The vouchers announced this week are a good move. Yet we need to do much, much more to feed the hunger of private investment in the hospitality and leisure industry that is designed on an influx of 2,6 million tourists.
Given the natural mistrust now engrained in many Europeans for air travel, getting back to normal will require us rising to the occasion.
From hotels to restaurants, from taxi drivers to owners renting their apartment on online platforms... all have been hit by the complete halt of tourism activity.
We must be ready to give a good spin to the wheel as from 1 July while reassuring everyone that our health remains the top consideration.
The government's track record on the topic does not augur very well. Labour's tourism drives have been in the news a few times of late, but mostly for the wrong reasons. Remember the secret deal between Konrad Mizzi and football club Manchester United, ending up on the British press and described as a 'Tourism Woe'?
That's only the starter. Last January we learnt how Mizzi, was given a lucrative two year deal with MTA for a total of 80,000 Euros a year.
Only when this came to light and led to a public outcry, did the government act and cancel the contract. Questions on contracts at the MTA are the order of the day. Between 2016 and 2018 MTA Chairman Gavin Gulia signed a massive contract of €4.5 million with VistaJet for 'marketing services'. MTA failed to justify the spending of €4.5 million of taxpayers' funds and did not provide any tangible proof of the actual services acquired other than a half page marketing plan. Just imagine how much help could have been provided to restaurants and hotels should this money have been used on them rather than on other motives.
The present situation requires that we deploy the professionals not the party blue-eyed boys. One classic example of what to avoid again (many of those) is the appointment of Konrad Mizzi's 'person of trust' at MTA as head of events. In summer 2018 alone, some €2 million worth of event sponsorships were awarded to the same group of individuals.
Time is up. Labour must stop considering MTA and tourism as a cash cow. Thousands of jobs are now at stake. Life was easy reaping the fruit of past policies and harnessing the breeze originating from policies adopted by past administrations.
It is time to rise to the occasion and come up with a concrete plan on how to reboot the tourism sector in Malta. So far, three months into Covid, we have learnt of no new policies other than another marketing campaign and buzzwords like bubbles and corridors. We heard nothing of how the government will work to attract niches of tourists that are willing to spend or how it will offer peace of mind to tourists as a covid free destination. We heard nothing on how it plans to make our tourism sector more sustainable. What we need from now onwards is a concrete plan and vision and not fake marketing campaigns without any substance to build upon.
Countries all around us, competitors for the same bed nights are considering, and in some cases already deploying, measures to attract sustainable covid-safe tourism. Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Spain have already announced incentives and health and safety measures hitting the international headlines, sending out the first messages to address traveller mistrust. We must catch up, and rapidly, if we want the small sigh of relief of the government vouchers to be followed by a constant oxygen flow ensuring the livelihood of thousands of workers and businesses once flourishing on Malta's tourism industry.