Since it was the one which caused it, for the most part, it is now high time the government intervenes and sorts out the mess that has been allowed to creep into the tourism sector.
The most recent outburst by some of the main operators in the field comes after far more generalised grumbles from practically everyone in the sector – including those who for their own reasons, or through some sort of elbow-twisting, have come out to moderate the tone of those who were outspoken on the matter.
Mainly, as is well known, this is a sector of the economy where all investment is made by the private sector, and locally created. There are, to be sure, investments that went wrong, or were made on some wrong assumptions, or were plain over-ambitious. There are also some investments made by people who were construction entrepreneurs first and hoteliers by accident later. But, whatever it is, all investment in this sector is hard earned and not to be squandered.
Nurtured over the past 50 years or so, ever since Mosé Fenech built his small hotel at Golden Bay, tourism has grown into Malta’s major industry, especially when one considers not just the full time jobs it generates but all the ripple effects tourism has on the economy.
Malta has so much to offer, not just sun, sea and sand but also history, culture, traditions and entertainment.
Yet the appeal of Malta has waned and the main tourist markets are in decline. Malta, the tour operators tell you, is not as competitive as its main rivals, who offer a better product. Tourists come for less and less days, since tourism everywhere is now based on short breaks rather than long stays. The spending power of the tourists who come here is declining, especially due to the preponderance of English language students. Hotels in the lower classification closed down after years of defying the need for refurbishment while the much-vaunted hotels in the upper-range find they have to charge prices at two levels below them.
Over the past years, the government has taken upon itself a role that is increasingly central and interventionist in the sector. In other times, it set up Air Malta and, nearer our times it created first NTOM and then transformed it into MTA. Now the government is finding its interventions in the field have led to situations where it just does not know what the way forward is. Take the current issue of low cost carriers yes, low cost carriers no. Most of the industry is in two minds about such a move, but the government, mindful of its baby, Air Malta, is even more perplexed than most operators and its legitimate care of the national airline might be clouding its strategic views on the matter.
But even in areas well beyond such operational levels, the government has and is contributing to the confusion and the mess rather than helping to sort things out. First of all, it has split the operations under different ministries, so you get totally different priorities and points of view.
And then it created another one in a long list of such monsters, MTA, when all it would have needed is just a small marketing unit whose main duty should have been to sell, sell, sell Malta over and over instead of a whole complex structure that just defies logic and attempts to restructure it, which goes into organising things when it should have stayed out, which took over what used to be done, efficiently, by the police, health, and so on, and which repeatedly comes up with such non-starters as spending Lm1 million advertising on CNN, taking a huge delegation to China when it would have made more sense to nurture France, or Germany, or the UK, and similar pearls of wisdom.
The government is widely reported to be about to pronounce itself on low cost carriers and to come out with some proposals to kick-start the sector. Well, perhaps before doing so and wasting more time and money, it really needs to take a long cool look at its efforts over the years, hopefully understanding first where it went wrong and how it can avoid going wrong again. Apart from the above-mentioned confusion of roles and ministries, it is also directly responsible for the appearance of the country and, considering the messy state of the roads, the beaches, the capital itself, there is so much it must do before telling others what to do with their investment.
The time has come for the government to realise that it could never take the place of the private sector not even in this field, and that any intervention it can possibly make can only lead to further distortions of the market and to the wrong solutions being adopted. The sooner it gets out of the field, the better. The sooner it allows the market to operate freely, the better. The sooner it stops trying to be front wheel drive, the better. Instead of trying to take decisions that impact on the sector, how about getting some order, for instance, at City Gate, or outside the Cruise Liner terminal, or in the main tourist areas – now that is something the government can do and is expected to do. And how about understanding just a simple statement: it is worse than useless trying to bring in low cost carriers when your travel charges are the highest in Europe.