The Malta Tourism Authority’s strategic choice to use the internet as another way of marketing Malta is paying off. Last month, the MTA website www.visitmalta.com had a record 372,675, or a daily average of 12,422 visits, the highest recorded to date.

The number of visits to the site during in the first half of this year (2006) totaled

1, 960,368 visits, compared to 1,149,556 in the first half of last year. This amounts to a percentage increase of over 70 per cent in just one year. Here one should make a clear distinction between website ‘visits’ and simple page ‘hits’. A single website visit may easily incorporate dozens of hits.

Asked to comment on this significant increase in website visits, an MTA spokesman had this to say: “In today’s globalised tourism market and the increasing reliance on the internet for communications, marketing and trade, we know that we can no longer rely exclusively on traditional methods to put Malta on the tourism map and keeping it there.”

The internet offers the best means of reaching the highest number of potential tourists from the four corners of the world. And it is by far the least costly of all marketing and advertising vehicles. That is why we have developed a state of the art website which projects our country in the best possible way.

We are very proud that our efforts are paying off. Not only have we had about two million visitors to our website this year but, more importantly, the rate increase by 70 per cent over last year. This achievement spurs us to continue to explore better and more effective ways of attracting visitors to Malta through cyberspace.