Incentives for Tourism

Looking through the archives of the Online Times this week, Julian Zarb was not amazed to see over eight pages of articles about the hot theme of the month. He discusses the package of incentives announced to encourage low cost airlines to use Malta as a destination to and from European Cities:

..The package also included incentives for industry to develop new marketing techniques and programmes. But a number of articles and letters were seeing further into the future as many hoteliers and tourism entrepreneurs are seeing the sense in developing incentives and initiatives as part of a structured plan for the industry in Malta and Gozo. There has been a tendency, in the past, to develop incentives for tourism as part of some crisis management plan – certainly, this was the case some twenty years ago!

Last Wednesday, the Times carried a report about the reactions to the incentives package announced by Government on Monday. It was agreed at an extraordinary meeting that by the end of April, a task force made up of Government and the Association would prepare a plan that could address the present situation in tourism that included a look at increasing bed-nights in proportion to revenue increase calculated at some 12 million Malta Liri.It was also agreed that there should be a clear plan to achieve growth by the Malta Tourism Authority as well as accelerating the branding project by the Authority...