The biggest danger for Malta’s tourism industry is the risk of the country becoming a victim of its own success, the Nationalist Party’s new tourism spokesperson Mario De Marco has told The Malta Independent on Sunday.

In an interview three weeks after being re-appointed to the PN’s shadow cabinet, the veteran MP sounded a warning against over-tourism, saying that while Malta’s tourism product is varied, the destination is the same and the quality of that destination must be maintained.

De Marco admits that his reappointment to the PN’s shadow cabinet, less than a year after he was left out on the basis of having served in the Gonzi administration a decade ago, came as something as a surprise.

“It did come as a surprise because you start getting used to the fact that you aren’t shadowing anything in particular, but in reality you’re also showing an interest in those subjects,” he says, before adding that in his case there was a vacuum due to the passing of Robert Arrigo, who held the tourism portfolio before him.

Of course tourism is not a new topic for De Marco: for five years in the Gonzi administration he served as Parliamentary Secretary and then as Minister for Tourism – a period he describes as “one of the most interesting periods of my life”.

The fact that tourism touches so many different areas and the fact that working in the industry helps you look at Malta “in the way you want to look at it from outside” makes the industry an important one, he says.

Tourism without a doubt is a hefty subject and an important one for Malta.  In any sector, attracting people is down to the quality of the product. In Malta’s case, many have said that rather than improving – the tourism product that the country is offering is actually getting worse. 

Asked whether he agrees with this sentiment, De Marco says that one of the biggest challenges for tourism in Malta today can be summed up in one sentence: “let us not be the victims of our own success.”

“In other words, the biggest threat to tourism is over-tourism, and it is also the over-development taking place in the country right now,” he says.

Malta’s advantage, he says, is that the tourism product is varied: some come for the climate, some for the culture, some for the MICE business, some for marine tourism, some for language schools, and so on.

“Having said that, they are all coming to the same destination.  So whilst we have a varied tourism product, we have to be careful that the product is renewed, rejuvenated and reinvested constantly,” he says.

“We also have to be wary that we have a problem compounded by two factors at the moment: apart from development, we have a growing population,” he adds.

He explains that Malta is in a situation where tourism is not managing to attract Maltese people to work within it, meaning that many tourism operators are having to look towards expatriates, which means that the labour force for the industry must come from abroad, therefore increasing the country’s population

“We have a density problem and an infrastructure problem: both situations which can end up ruining the tourism experience.  People come here thinking they are coming to an island, so when they come and suddenly see blocked traffic or cranes all over the place, that can risk ruining the tourism experience,” he says.

A recent survey carried out by the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association showed that Malta needs to attract around 5 million tourists every year in order to sustain the hotels which are built or which are planned to be built.  That is almost double the 2.7 million the country attracted in its record year, 2019.

Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo has already said in comments to The Malta Independent that Malta will not be aiming for this number of tourists, and de Marco agrees that this number is not the way forward.

“The two issues we have is over-supply of beds and the issue of over tourism.  We need to find that magic number which will not ruin the tourism experience.  If we want to save the industry, we need to get all the stakeholders in with government and understand what is the number of tourists we want to attract,” he says, questioning whether we want to continue attracting higher numbers or whether we should be measuring success by how much tourists spend.

Does de Marco worry about the sustainability of the hotel industry if he thinks that the country should not go in the direction of attracting this number of tourists?

“I think again before saying whether we have an over-supply or not, we need to determine what type of supply we want,” he says.

He points towards there possibly being an over-supply of some types of hotels, and a need to reinvest in others. He quoted figures from the MHRA’s fourth quarter survey, issued this past week, saying that there is even a large discrepancy in the performance of higher tier five-star hotels and lower tier five-star hotels when compared to 2019.

“It shows that they need to keep investing.  Those that do get the results,” he says.

“It is not a matter of seeing whether we should stop licensing new beds or start controlling the number of beds; we need to decide the type of hotels we want, how to spread them, and where we should be spreading them,” he said.

Comino: ‘The situation today is unacceptable’

A topic at the centre stage of the tourism debate in the past year was the island of Comino. Last summer the overcrowding on the island by commercial tourism operators and the resulting environmental degradation that this brings was at the centre of a lot of headlines. 

Asked whether he thinks that the number of visitors to Comino should be capped in order to protect the island, de Marco said that being a Natura 2000 site, Comino is meant to have a management plan, which also means “controlling – or staggering – the number of tourists.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean capping… you can have the same number of tourists but staggered at different times – or else, yes, you can simply say that number today is excessive and we need to regulate it,” he says.

“The reality is that the situation today is unacceptable.  Even those operators who make a living on taking tourists to Comino need to realise that the situation today is unsustainable, as I’m sure many of the tourists going there are not having a positive experience.  They are going there, maybe they enjoy it for a while, but after a time they realise this is not the idyllic Blue Lagoon they see in photos and wanted to go to,” he adds.

“Something needs to be done so people can enjoy nature tourism for what it is meant to be.  I repeat, Blue Lagoon is one of the most unique lagoons in the Mediterranean but we are killing the experience, and we are killing it with our own success.  We cannot talk about it every July and August and save the problem for the following year; we need to speak about it now,” he says.

Tying into the matter of Comino is a proposed hospitality project on the island, which has garnered thousands – over 13,000 in fact – of objections who have insisted that the island should remain untouched.

“It is a fine balance,” de Marco says when asked for his stance on the project.

“I think the owners of the Comino Hotel and the land there have a big responsibility to ensure that whatever they do is something better, not worse, than what there is.  It is a matter of footprint – not increasing it,” he says.

“I haven’t seen much about the project, but it seems that from the photomontages the footprint is increasing and not decreasing and if that happens then we are going against the very plans meant to be there to protect the Natura 2000 areas,” he says.

The project will in fact consist of more built-up area than its predecessor, with the gross floor area increasing by from 9,945 square metres to 13,209 square metres.

“The developers need to be conscious of where they are: Comino is not any place.  The success of their project will depend on the amount of respect they show to the site where they are, so they need to listen to what the objectors are objecting about and if need be going back to the drawing board,” de Marco says.

‘It is critical that we have our national airline’

A key part of Malta’s tourism sector is Air Malta.  Much has been said about the future of the airline in recent months as it continues to face financial difficulties, including that the airline may be shut down and replaced. 

“I think it is critical that we have our national airline,” de Marco says when asked about the prospect of Air Malta going bust.

He points out that Air Malta last year carried 26% of the country’s passenger movements, second to Ryanair which carried 45%.  Lufthansa is the next closest at 5%, meaning that “Malta has become dependent on two airlines: Air Malta and Ryanair.”

“There you realise how strategically important Air Malta is – plus, Air Malta is a legacy carrier while Ryanair is a low-cost carrier.  Why am I saying this? You have particular types of businesses like the MICE sector which depend a lot on legacy carriers such as Air Malta and Lufthansa and find difficulty in connecting through low-cost carriers,” he says.

“It’s not simply out of nostalgia that we need Air Malta – but it is because it is by far our main legacy carrier, and I fear that if we had to lose Air Malta we will become over-dependent, and we are already quite heavily dependent, on a particular low-cost carrier and we cannot risk that,” he adds.

Commenting on how Air Malta has gotten to this point, de Marco recalls that between 2010 and 2012 and action place for the airline for state aid to be granted to it was submitted to and accepted by the European Commission.

“That application was approved because the Commission believed it was credible and viable.  Unfortunately – and I do not want to sound partisan – after the change of government in 2013 that business plan was abandoned, any restrictions to employment numbers were thrown to the dogs, and the reality is that Air Malta has been losing silly money,” he says.

“It is not easy for any airline to make proper money, but you cannot just throw away a business plan approved by the European Commission.  State aid is only approved once: it is one time and the last time,” he says.

Air Malta’s current application for state aid is still on the rocks, with no answer forthcoming from the European Commission. De Marco says that it is critical that the people – particularly the industry and the workers – know where the airline stands.

Tourism and the PN

Explaining the PN’s priorities for the tourism sector if it were to be in government, de Marco focuses on three pillars: accessibility, tourism product, and marketing.

On accessibility, de Marco says that currently 55% of Malta’s current air travel comes from low-cost carriers and 39% from legacy carriers. “I think there needs to be a better mix between the two. We also need to have perhaps a better mix of low-cost carriers as well,” he says.

On tourism product, de Marco says that better management is needed, citing Valletta as an example of where this was lacking

“Valletta is a brilliant tourism product but now there is the law of the jungle there.  It started with the issue of music which can be played till 1am, never realising that people come to Valletta because it is a different customer base. We cannot try to make Valletta successful by trying to make it another Paceville. More recently there is also the issue of security; we read stories about violent incidents in Valletta, so we definitely need to see better management of our product,” he says.

De Marco says Malta should look towards spreading tourism to other smaller villages, strengthening the different touristic niches and managing them correctly, and also strengthening certain industries such as the language school sector to develop a more specialised product.

On rural tourism, de Marco says “we have a fascinating countryside but only as long as protect it not keep developing it,” while he also says that more pedestrianisation can be carried out in village squares. 

“On Gozo, we must be careful not to be a victim of our own success here too. The scourge in Malta is starting to hit in Gozo.  If Gozo simply becomes a mirror of all the wrong things we did in Malta, then there will remain nothing unique there that will pull people towards it,” he says.

On marketing, de Marco says that the government needs to work directly with private stakeholders to transform the way they market Malta to the different markets across the globe.

On the upcoming year, de Marco says that 2023 will be challenging as airlines face high fuel costs, and high inflation in certain key markets reduces the disposable income people have, which then equates to less travel.

“It will not be an easy year, but this is an industry which is resilient and which bounces back and you realise that after every crisis people want to travel, which is why in 2022 we already had 83% of the arrivals we had in 2019.  We need to keep working and realise we have a lot of competition,” he says.

He points out that Greece has surpassed its travel figures for 2019, while Spain, Portugal and Italy are close to 90% of that year.

“So we are slightly behind, but I am convinced that if we really have a proper vision of where we want to be we can get there… but this is what worries me… I’m not seeing a particular vision…” he starts.

Asked why this is the case, he replies: “Because we’re a bit all over the place.”

“I’m not seeing real coordination between the ministry for tourism and other ministries.  If there was you would not have had the disaster on the roads leading to the airport – that’s the first and last image that tourists have of these islands,” he says.

“I would like us to have a proper idea and vision of where we want to go and what we want to be.  But we need to remember that we cannot be everything to everyone at the same time,” he says.