Albert Fenech is in no mood to wax lyrical over tourism here. The real problem, he concludes, is not the product, nor the facilities (or lack of them). It is the Maltese people themselves.

Two of my friends have just come back from the Greek island of Corfu, gushing effusive praises over the general quality of the tourist environment, but particularly over the tremendous customer care service they obtained from every quarter. This was whether from hotel staff, taxi drivers, barmen or restaurant proprietors.

Additionally all the tourist and tourist peripheral service suppliers assured them that for the height of summer, order books were packed full, sold out and bulging at full capacity.

Compare this situation and its optimism to our plunging figures and to my personal enigma. I have a number of friends in the UK who ten years ago and beyond were frequent and regular visitors to Malta. They have stopped coming, and nothing will induce them to return.

As I write this, the time is 06.30 on a Saturday morning and I live in Bugibba – one of our prime tourist areas.

A few metres down the road an uncaring and uncouth clan of Maltese baboons have opened up a warehouse door to do ‘repairs’. They have been banging and clattering and generally raising hell since 06.00. Yes, because this is Malta and this is the way we do things. They have awoken the whole neighbourhood.

So, if you are a tourist and have been enjoying the revels of our night life (i.e. that is seriously drinking yourself to death in Paceville, or Bugibba Square because there is not much else to do) and have struggled home to our neighbourhood at say 04.00 to sleep it all off, you are rudely awoken a couple of hours later by this infernal noise – on a Saturday morning for God’s sake!

No wonder my friends no longer consider Malta as a visitor-area. I guess they wouldn’t even consider coming if I offered to pay their air fare – and who can blame them?

Because we have not only missed the boat, we have missed the whole damn planet.

Some years back Ex-Minister for Tourism Karmenu Vella confided that when he was Minister for Tourism (back in the 80’s) he would light a candle every morning to show God his gratitude that tourists were still coming to Malta despite all the obstacles we put in their path. Many years later the situation has deteriorated so much, it’s not a candle we have to light, but a whole waxworks that would have to be larger than Madame Tussaud’s in London. After all, even our illicit and illegal immigrants find Malta grossly unattractive and normally end up here by mistake.

Over the years I have many recollections of how and where things have been going wrong. The real problem is not the product, nor the facilities (or lack of them). It is the Maltese people themselves, a motley rabble and babble of uncaring, profiteering and egotistic merchants who – when the chips are down – would have little compunction in selling their mother to the highest bidder.

In days of yore one of our selling points was what we daubed to be ‘Maltese hospitality’, or ‘the friendly Maltese atmosphere’. These – thankfully – have slowly disappeared from our selling pitch. They were embarrassing labels that we could never live up to. We are not hospitable and we are not friendly. On the contrary, we are surly, stupidly proud and mentally shallow.

Believe me when I relate that I recall days when Maltese politicians trumpeted the ‘take it or leave it’ philosophy. That is, tourists are to ‘appreciate’ how they find us, or otherwise they need not come at all. We are not going to change our philosophies to accommodate visitors. And they even quoted examples and parallels to convince us.

“The people of Monte Carlo, Spain and Greece have sold off their pride and culture to pander to the God of Tourism. Their citizens have become second class. This will never happen in Malta!”

Yet, what pride, what culture?

Some years ago I remember being in a hotel on the south side of Malta. A large tourist liner was laid up for repairs at the then Malta Drydocks. A few days before repair completion, the company brought the whole crew to Malta in preparation for sailing. These numbered a few hundred different staff from cabin crew to engineers. I was invited one Sunday afternoon to join a crowd of them for drinks. The majority were British and they were hell-bent on drinking the bar dry.

I edged myself towards the bar to do my round and nearly died of embarrassment. The two barmen were grumbling and moaning (how unusual for the Maltese), surly-faced and uncompromising. The butt of their anger – the drinkers were giving them too much hard work and little respite. A large plate on the bar was over-flowing with tips – many of them paper notes!

When I wrote about this in a newspaper, the response from their representative union was typical. I was accused of being ‘against’ the workers. Many years have gone by. The lessons have not been learnt. It’s still a take-it-or-leave-it attitude. Because definitely, we have an attitude problem and the manifestations are in our fabric and in our environment.

It reflects in our driving. It reflects in the way we regard other people, caring little for their sentiments and their feelings. Do Maltese drivers know that cars have indicators? These vehicle indicators are meant to be used to let other drivers know the direction they intend to take. These are particularly essential on approaching roundabouts so that other drivers coming from other directions know the indicated way the oncoming motorist intends to take. That of course is why most motorists do not use them even though it just takes the momentary flick of a finger!

Our estimation of other people (and I am referring to Maltese-to-Maltese) is so low, that other people’s discomfort or disquiet matters not a jot. During Easter I went over to Gozo for the week-end and took an apartment. The apartment above had been rented to two Maltese families, four adults and five children. It was like being in hell – four adults bawling and shouting and five children screaming and ranting. What cared they for the people below them?

On Good Friday evening, in the apartment below, a group of Maltese teenagers decided to throw a party. It went on to 3am next morning – loud music, arguments, screams, profanities, swearing, doors banging and general bedlam. What cared they for the people above them and in the area?

These things happen everywhere, so why make a big fuss? The difference is that in Malta this sort of behaviour is common and goes on all the time. And what has this to do with tourism?

When I was a young man it used to be told to young ladies that they could gauge the sentiment in their young man by the way he treated his mother. If he treated his mother like dirt, then he would equally treat a wife like dirt. So if we treat relations between ourselves in this way, what distinction do we show towards others, towards tourists and visitors?

Transport is one of the basic essentials to tourists. Only the other week we came across an astonishing case (yet again!). I work in a plant that is literally five minutes away from the airport. We had a visitor arriving from the airport by taxi. He was charged Lm8.50 for the five-minute ride. The taxi driver had bought his taxi ticket for him – when we checked it, the taxi driver had written ‘Sliema’ on it!

Put all these things together and a picture of the ‘attitude’ of the Maltese people begins to emerge. Again I underline that these miscreants can be found everywhere – grumbling barmen, cheating taxi drivers, noisy neighbours, brat-like teenagers, baboon-like individuals raising hell at 6am and uncaring drivers. But whereas in a civilised country these are the exceptions, in Malta people like these are the general rule – and let’s not kid ourselves by thinking otherwise.

We just don’t have it, and we never will.

It’s splendid that we now have a number of five star hotels that we can justly be proud of. Just entering one of them gives one a feeling of distinction, a feeling of being ‘not in Malta’. The architecture is splendid, the facilities superb, the general environment excellent. The only problem is that most of the staff is Maltese.

On the last 1st of May I took my 84-year-old mother to lunch at our latest five star addition at Ghajn Tuffieha and experienced a parking problem because of the restricted parking space. On entering the foyer with my mother clinging to my arm for support I politely asked one of the three receptionists whether there was any other parking space available. The response was astounding.

“Our parking facilities are for residents”.

Sure, I reasoned, I understood that, but did she know of any other nearby parking facility that could be used? Her response:

“I don’t know from in here. I’m not outside”.

In my younger days – when I could still take and hold my drinks – I was enjoying a convivial party with some English visitors and we drank our way to the solemn moment (for drinkers), when they relax, ruminate and philosophise about the world in general (usually after a lot of drinks).

One Englishman looked me squarely in the eye and kindly said: “You know, Malta is a lovely place. The only problem is that it is populated by the Maltese”.

That surely is a complete indictment to our supposed centuries of civilisation, education and Christian religion.

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