This week the news was, primarily, prevalent with the excessive amounts of power outages across the islands. 

This is an unacceptable incident, not only because of the inconvenience to the local community and visitors but more than that, for the elderly and vulnerable persons here who depend on energy to keep cool and comfortable in this horrendous summer weather and also those who depend on energy as part of their health care – persons who use breathing apparatus, hospital beds and other such equipment.  In any other country where democracy was effective, heads would have rolled, senior members in the civil service and Ministers would be forced to resign. 

You cannot govern a country with this laissez-faire attitude.  You cannot even expect the visitor to accept these outages in any destination of quality.  But that is exactly what I will be discussing this week.  Why do we have visitors who not only accept this complete lack of good management of tourism but add their vindictive and vandal attitude to this situation?

Unfortunately, we are set on accepting visitors who happen to be here, those degenerate characters who have no sense of civic behaviour, no ethical behaviour and no prudence.  Last week we read about a group of such characters who took the streets in Swieqi and defecated on the pavements and on peoples’ cars. What visitor would stoop so low as to act in this way in a destination where they were a guest? What visitor would ignore the civic laws of that destination? It is about time that we really thought hard about what type of visitor we want on these islands. 

The Authorities and the Ministry for Tourism pay lip service to a sustainable and quality destination yet not one person there really knows what this means.  They continue to treat the islands as some destination that will accept the lower orders of society from the source market.  I really think that the time may soon come when the local community who still have a sense of belonging and civic pride to follow the example of those communities in Barcelona, Majorca and Tenerife. 

This protest should not be aimed at the tourist directly but at the authorities who are mismanaging the tourism activity and allowing this sort of hooliganism. As usual I have the six proposals to conduct acceptable management of tourism here (I will not hold my breath, since it is obvious those in authority want to continue their style of bad governance of tourism):

 

1.      The first step is to ensure that we attract the tourist who wants to be here not the once who is focused simply on price and availability.

2.     The Authorities need to really check any accommodation that is not properly licensed (this includes the so-called Air B and B accommodation that is actually an unlicensed version of a self-catering accommodation since air b and b is part of the shared economy not self-catering sector).

3.     Those visitors who act like hooligans and ignorant ruffians must be charged, fined and expelled from the islands and not allowed to return for at least 10 years.

4.     We need to act as civic-minded and responsible hosts if we want to expect the visitor to be well-behaved – this includes our attitude with each other, our driving, our language and our sense of hospitality and service.

5.     It is time to consider a serious strategy for tourism for the next decade that must be developed and agreed using the integrated approach with all stakeholders including the local community not simply a few people who take decisions without consultation.

6.     Finally, to start to treat tourism as a professional and socio-cultural activity it is time we made sure that we have people to manage who have the skills, competencies and qualifications not just being in the right place at the right time.

 

By following these six stages, we can ensure that these islands are managed professionally, sustainably and with the idea of developing a quality activity that attracts the visitor who wants to be here not the one who wants to be here.  Travel and Tourism to these islands today is about quantitative gains for the greedy and uncouth.  We need to put professionalism and hospitality back in the equation.

 

Dr Julian Zarb is a researcher, local tourism planning consultant and an Academic at the University of Malta. He has also been appointed as an Expert for the High Streets Task Force in the UK.  His main area of research is community-based tourism and local tourism planning using the integrated approach.