I am on the eve of another visit to Malta. So it was with some interest that I read Daphne Caruana Galizia’s recent column (TMID, 13 April) on Malta as a tourist destination.

She is, I am afraid, entirely right. Malta is not a destination that comes easily to mind to tourists who contemplate a place to visit. And if they are steered to, or stumble upon, Malta they will hardly find it superior to other places.

The country is too ill maintained, too limited in its attractions, too neglectful of its assets, too deaf to the damage done by its hunting fraternity.

If the Malta Tourist Authority should ever undertake (or publish) data on whether tourists return for another visit, I would expect that data to be disappointing.

What Ms Caruana Galizia wrote is what a visitor like me is reluctant to say for fear of meeting the usual irrelevant retort that, say, downtown Detroit is a worse place than downtown Valletta. (That’s marginally true. But Detroit doesn’t need tourists, whereas Valletta desperately does.)

Still, I will visit Malta once more.

I will no doubt recoil again at the destruction of its past charms but, then, I come only for the pleasure of meeting many of the friends I have made in Malta over the years. After that I can enjoy London and San Francisco, Rome and the Caribbean, Paris and the Canadian Rockies, Barcelona and Cape Cod. Tourists like me have many tempting choices and I can only wish that Malta were particularly tempting.

John Lane

Buffalo, New York