Quality tourism?
Are the government and the authorities really committed to quality tourism? Dishing out Michelin plaques to restaurants without any serious plan for ensuring that standards are maintained is an absolute waste of time.
About 20 years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Jeremy Boissevain on one of my weekly radio programmes about tourism. I asked him what he thought about sustainable tourism, to which he answered very frankly: “I think Malta and Gozo have already reached a point of no return on this issue.” That was already two decades ago and I often wonder what his reply would be today.
How can you promote quality tourism when the whole island is a construction site that is destroying the character, culture, heritage and the landscape with tiny units that pass for luxury apartments?
How can you promote quality tourism when there is this obsession for building roads that literally lead to nowhere and increase traffic congestion and pollution?
How can you promote quality tourism when the government allows campers to set up their decrepit caravans along the coast at Salina and the Mellieħa cliffs overlooking L-Ahrax?
In fact, how can you promote quality tourism when you have an amateur outlook by those managing tourism, where professionalism, hospitality and service are just empty words?
I think it is time to take a good long look at the definition of quality tourism which should attract the visitor who wants to be here rather than the tourist who happens to be here because of two factors: price and availability.
As long as there is the lack of professionalism, as long as we treat tourism as that quantitative industry which can be measured in numbers instead of in the value experience, the service standard and hospitality, these islands will never be promoted as a first choice destination.
I have been warning about the need to rethink, redevelop and restore this new tourism activity based on the socio-cultural factors rather than the old socio-economic measures we have abused over the last 50 years.
Just look at the results today: resorts like Buġibba and Qawra that are squalid and degenerate; tourists who are not even interested in the cultural and historical aspects of the country and who think the islands are a good extension to tacky resorts such as Ibiza and Marbella.
If you asked me whether quality tourism really is an alternative for Malta today, I would have to reply that this dream is a long way off.
What is needed is a transformation of our tourism industry, one that is based on the Calvia model in Majorca, where the infrastructure has been upgraded in order to attract a better quality tourist.
These islands have the potential for a quality destination once we take bold decisions.
Good Luck Malta and Gozo.
JULIAN ZARB – Local tourism planning consultant and university academic.
Eurovision song contest
We do not watch the Eurovison song contest because, for the last 30 years, it has been rendered a political farce. I’m amazed that contestants don’t cringe with embarrassment when they watch playbacks.
I wonder how many of the young population gave up their Saturday night at clubs or pubs in order to watch clowns dressed and performing in all sorts of weird ways hoping to create a new ‘genre’ of ABBA or Beatles and failing before the first hurdle.
We were watching Far from the Madding Crowd on BBC2 and we found out that the contest was on when it finished, and we changed channels. A few days ago, our grandson had his sixth birthday party and some of the young mums were asking who won the contest. Few even knew who or what the UK entry was – I still don’t – apparently some guy called Sam. There was a 10-second mention on the news about UK coming second (apparently Ukraine won, as expected) but that was it.
As to the Maltese entry and the suggestion that the lyrics should be in Maltese (or in the language of whoever sings it), well, since 2000, 16 of the 22 winners sang their song in English. Apparently, overall, 83 per cent of all songs since inception were in English and another three per cent in mixed English and another language. The reason is obvious, unless an entry makes it into the UK and/or the US charts, it’s a flop!
The truth is it is something from the 1950s (which is consistent with most things in Malta) and out of date and it should be going the same way Miss World did – into oblivion.
PAUL BRINCAU – Uxbridge, UK
US abortion ripple effects
A pro-choice activist speaks with pro-life activists during a national day of protest in support of abortion rights in Louisville, Kentucky, US. PHOTO: AFPI refer to the article ‘Roe vs Wade: ripple effects on Malta’s abortion debate’ (May 15).
The result of that decision by the US Supreme Court in 1973 was to permit abortion as a constitutional ‘right’. That decision was, oddly, based on the US law of privacy and abortion was, strangely, accepted as a ‘right’ worldwide, as if the US court was infallible!
The correct reversal of that mistake by the current US Supreme Court will be encouraging to pro-life supporters everywhere and will discourage pro-abortion campaigners in Malta.
To soften the strong ethical reactions against abortion, the pro-abortion lobby often talks about ‘reproductive rights’. In truth, the ‘right to reproduce’ truly exists in all of nature but there can never be a ‘reproductive right to abortion’.
According to Natalise Psaila, a member of Doctors for Choice, “strict abortion laws were about controlling women and their bodies”. Any woman in Malta is free to avoid pregnancy and can seek available help in cases of coercion or worse. Maltese law does not deprive any woman of her “right to control her body” but, when pregnant, that particular right is superseded by her baby’s superior ‘right to life’. A woman with an unwanted pregnancy has a right to the support of the community and Malta has adequate facilities of assistance. Public policymakers should be engaged in discussion and facilitation of genuine human care, not ‘abortion care’.
The Maltese pro-choice lobby laments the fact that Malta is the only state in Europe that bans abortion. So what? Here, one must ask why intelligent people have to blindly succumb to this lobby’s demeaning inferiority complex.
The US seems, at long last, to be recovering some of its damaged ethical integrity and returning in the direction of Malta’s honourable legal stance regarding the protection of life from conception to natural death. However, the US will likely still allow individual states to decide for themselves whether abortion should be legal, irrespective of any decision by the Supreme Court. It’s unlikely to have much of a ripple effect on Malta’s position.
The EU, however, is intruding and should desist from encouraging Malta and any of its member countries to initiate, increase or extend abortion rights when America and most decent people worldwide, including women who have experienced abortion, are becoming disgusted with abortion that the US Supreme Court ‘Roe vs Wade’ decision led to.
JOHN PACE – Victoria
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