Tourism’s current surge of success should not blind us to the problems that the same success is giving rise to. If they are going to stay valid, not dissolve by tomorrow, the best successes are those which give value for money. The client must feel that he is receiving what is due to him and more for payments made.

Beyond press reports, I have listened to complaints made by ordinary people about how at hotels, they received less than what they had bargained for. Faced with such a situation, they found there was, is, practically no remedy.

In any case, remedies do little to correct what has gone wrong. The failure to achieve what was promised by way of quality becomes a signpost of things to come.

In a small society like ours, solid professional and commercial controls on operators within the same sector hardly exist. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, that’s the dominant value.

Yet we need to ensure that today’s success is not held hostage by those who seek to abuse it.                  

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Accountability in the media

The media rightly insist they should be allowed total independence in how they operate as well as full freedom from all unwarrantable interference in their management. So, they can report fully on facts and opinions, thereby keeping citizens well informed about breaking news. Events should not be projected according to the views of political parties or commercial interests.

However, it has become clear that increasingly, the media are not just in the business of shovelling ongoing news across. They are also interested in shaping emerging events as well as their development.

Given this, I wonder whether the media too should be subject to a scrutiny that resembles the one that is being placed on political parties to ascertain transparency.

How are the media being financed? Who is controlling them? How are their controller’s interests defined?

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More on security

When Brussels international airport was about to reopen last Friday, a dispute arose between the airport’s police and security services, and its management. The former claimed that security measures at the airport were still inadequate and decided to strike.

Even so, had it opened, the airport would have run initially at 20 per cent of its daily capacity. When its opening was postponed, the inconvenience created could hardly have been greater than what had already been endured over the last week and a half by the hundreds of thousands of passengers and their families who transit through the airport.

However what this episode gives rise to by way of reflection is disquiet at the fact that once again, it has been shown how the maintenance of security at the centre of Europe is still not sufficiently effective and coordinated. That’s another reason why terrorists succeed in launching their strikes.