For the first time in almost two decades, I had the opportunity this summer to see Malta through the eyes of a tourist

My wife and I had the pleasure of looking after our two English grandchildren, aged eight and six years, for the five weeks of August. We took them out swimming, to restaurants and various places of entertainment. The experience was enlightening, as well as exhausting. While it was a great joy to have the grandchildren with us, seeing Malta as a tourist was a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly. Other Maltese should try it, especially those who are themselves in the tourism industry.

I shall start with the good. We visited the relatively newly opened Bird Park near Salini. This was outstanding. It is well organised and well run, caters for both children and adults, and contains the most exciting range of exotic birds and some animals. It is attractively laid out, clean and tidy. Excellent value for money. The children thoroughly enjoyed it and we shall certainly visit it again.

The children absolutely loved the sea-bathing. We took them to Ray’s Beach in Armier, Golden Bay at Għajn Tuffieħa, Għar Lapsi, the Blue Lagoon and the Splash and Fun Water Park in Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq. The sea and beaches were beautiful. But they were over-crowded (the Blue Lagoon was almost intolerably over-crowded) and the cleanliness, organisation and general appearance of the Splash and Fun Water Park (it looked pretty tired) left much to be desired. Still, as I say, the children loved it and that was the objective. As to the visit to the gory torture chambers of the Mdina Dungeons, that was a roaring success.

Our restaurant-eating experiences were more mixed. As we live in Qrendi, visits to the Ħaġar Qim and Blue Grotto restaurants were the obvious places to go. While the Ħaġar Qim restaurant was consistently good – good food, quick, helpful service and a fine setting – our experience at two restaurants in Wied iż-Żurrieq was dire, by contrast with the excellent Trattoria at the Xara Palace in Mdina.

In one restaurant, I was mistaken for an Englishman and found myself being served after a Maltese family which had arrived well after us. (I gather this is a fairly regular experience among foreigners). Worse, the service was so slow, and the place so under-staffed, that we had no alternative but to leave. The second restaurant was not much better: Slow service and helpings for the children which, despite our specifically asking for child’s portions, were massive. It is tragic that the Blue Grotto, which should be such a tourist attraction, has become tatty and has failed to raise its standards to those in other parts of the island.

Our worst experience, however, was near St Thomas’ Bay, where we had arranged to meet some friends on their boat. We met them near the old Jerma Palace Hotel. The area is a pigsty. Rubbish and litter have been deposited all around the old hotel. The hotel itself is dilapidated and vandalised. The “park” area leading to the sea at St Thomas’ Bay nearby has been left unmaintained and scruffy. The local council is clearly failing in its duty to keep the area, which is a prime tourist site, clean and well maintained.

The children loved everything they did and saw in Malta. But I was able to see parts of Malta through the eyes of an adult as their grandparent – and therefore through the eyes of a tourist. Despite the successes Malta has achieved in attracting high tourist numbers, our tourism product – the tourist experience – remains well below what is required. We are attracting tourists to Malta under a false prospectus. I wonder how many actually return. I strongly suspect that our numbers have been boosted in the last couple of years not because our product is good, but because we have benefited from the national woes of Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. When those countries emerge from their difficulties – which in time they will – Malta will feel the backlash.

Let me be clear. Malta has made huge strides in improving its tourism in the last few years especially in the standard of most hotels and restaurants. But there are still far too many areas where we lag behind. For a sector which we rightly regard as one of the mainstays of our economy – an area which has been painstakingly built up over a period of half a century – there are still far too many aspects that need improving. While we cannot do anything about our over-crowded beaches, we can certainly do something about the look of our island.

One of the most striking things when one puts on a tourist’s hat is how shabby, noisy and dirty the country looks. There are few, if any, parts (possibly Mdina?) where one can walk confidently without encountering litter, rubbish, shabbiness and ever-encroaching construction development. I challenge anybody to walk for more than 50 metres anywhere in the town or countryside without facing one or other of these phenomenons.

Secondly, although we have made good progress in the last 10 years in improving the presentation of our main cultural heritage sites, so much more still remains to be done. While it is greatly to be welcomed to see improvements being made to Valletta and the fortifications, and the news that the restoration of Fort St Elmo and Fort St Angelo is under way, the threat to our traditional indigenous architecture, especially in village and town cores which are an intrinsic part of our cultural heritage, has still not been overcome.

Seeing Malta through the eyes of a tourist for five weeks was not an unpleasant experience. It was an educational experience which simply brought home vividly to this “tourist” that there is a crucial need for a higher quality of service throughout the industry. We are a friendly nation and that attribute makes up for a lot of shortcomings. But in a highly-competitive industry – I was in Dubrovnik last July and saw what is on offer there – Malta must sharpen up its product at every level if it is to continue attracting tourists in the numbers and of the quality we are seeking.

Martin Scicluna is the

Director General of Malta’s only independent think-tank,

the Today Public Policy Institute.

He writes here in his personal capacity