Alternative tourism

With the Mediterranean losing its charm with travellers, Malta needs to find its niche attraction, writes George Mangion in Business Today:

..Conservationists plead for the Holiday Inn site not to be turned into another concrete jungle adding to the cacophony of luxury apartments on the once pristine Tigne peninsula. The alternative to office blocks and residential units is of course more bedstock. It comes at no surprise that MHRA is warning that the proliferation of more bedstock in an already saturated Sliema/St Julians area needs to be monitored by the authorities. But since the successful bidder must assume the entire workforce of Holiday Inn, one assumes they would opt for a hotel with the obvious expansion of five star accommodations.

MHRA is sensing a saturated market with the opening of the St Julians Le Meridian, the new Radisson Golden Sands and expansion plans at the Hilton and the Westin Dragonara. So is there a solution in sight? There is no quick- fix solution and studies confirm that the future of our tourist product shows reason to be cautious. With exotic resorts competing head-on with the Malta destination, we are likely to lose market share to upcoming destinations, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Overall, Mediterranean tourism is losing the virtual monopoly it held over the world tourist market until a few decades ago. This relative fall in tourist numbers to the Mediterranean is linked to the globalisation of tourism, which entails more and more competition among world destinations.

One possible solution is to re-brand by attracting alternative tourism focused on the importance of cultural tourism as a key factor in boosting arrivals. Lobbying for more cultural tourism leads us to start discovering and preserving our heritage and invests more in our culture. Otherwise, this legacy from the past remains in a state of neglect. Can we spare cash to refurbish St Elmo and raise the Opera house from its ruins? Unless we spare millions to finance direly needed upgrades we cannot expect better than a miserly single digit growth in arrivals...