Malta brand based on diversity, heritage and hospitality

Diversity, heritage, and hospitality have been chosen as the core values that will make up the Malta brand for tourism purposes under the vision Enriching Your Life.

The brand was launched yesterday at the Malta Tourism Authority's annual conference by brand consultant Christian Sinding.

He said there will be a branding system for each of the seven segments of Maltese tourism on which the MTA's marketing strategy will focused.

These are the leisure segment, that of history and culture, the meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions segment, English language learning, Gozo-based holidays, sports - including diving, and other growth markets - encompassing the cruise liner business, and the potential for Malta-based cruise and fly holidays.

The mission of the branding system is to take tourists away from their daily life through the country's heritage roots and the multi-faceted diversity of its exotic Mediterranean islands. Tourists had to be given a professional service by an enthusiastic people, in a warm, friendly and caring way.

Mr Sinding said that if properly managed, a branded product created income and generated value.

A brand, he said, had to be believable, have a clear emotional value and a functional one.

"We need to own a place in the customer's heart and mind... We have to position Malta in the minds of the consumer."

Awareness, preference and loyalty, Mr Sinding said, created repurchase. But, he warned: "You will not succeed if you do not pay attention to the people who are going to make the brand alive. You have to live and breathe brand Malta".

Branding a country, Mr Sinding said, was far more complex than branding a product and the smaller the country, the more it had to fight. But done well, branding will help more than tourism.

He presented the 10 "branding commandments" for Malta, namely:

¤ Involve all stakeholders.

¤ Don't try it if you can't fund it.

¤ Set clear objectives and maintain them.

¤ Invest in internal branding.

¤ Everything must be done within the brand platform.

¤ Appoint a branding general and give him authority.

¤ Branding is segmentation focused.

¤ Branding is a long-term exercise.

¤ Branding a country is more than tourism alone.

¤ Brand Malta must be driven fanatically.

MTA chairman Romwald Lungaro-Mifsud said the process of branding the Maltese islands, kick-started last July, was possibly the most important project the MTA will be undertaking over the next years.

He said that over the next months, the MTA will be embarking on a tendering process to select a company that had the resources to undertake the communication of the brand on an international scale.

This company will be responsible for communicating the "magic" which will define the Maltese islands on the international travel and tourism market.

"Meanwhile, plans are also in hand to develop the first phase of an internal branding campaign, which will target tourism industry stakeholders, such as MTA partner organisations, tourism service providers as well as providers of support services." Mr Lungaro-Mifsud said that a brand needed the involvement of all the people engaged in marketing and delivering the product to the customer.

The subsequent phase of the internal branding exercise, he said, will target a wider cross-section of the Maltese population, eventually encompassing the entire local community.

"We need to have 402,000 brand managers if we want to be truly ahead of our competitors. Experience shows that a strong brand is successfully developed from within, by adopting the core values of the brand into our lifestyles."

He said the MTA's marketing strategy will now be focused on the market segments rather than geographic regions.

The MTA's Valletta head office will house a team of segment specialists who will be sourcing business for Malta overseas, in their respective segments.

The segment leaders will be travelling abroad almost every other week, visiting every source market and targeting their specific segment. This new approach will allow the authority to be considerably more focused.

Mr Lungaro-Mifsud said the MTA will be moving away from paying expensive rents and other overheads to operate overseas offices. "In this respect, we have embarked upon the selection of representation companies that will be operating on a retainer and incentive basis and working to set targets, for which they will be held accountable.

"We have already appointed representatives in Italy and we are in the process of selecting representatives in the other source markets, including France, the Benelux countries, the Nordic states and Russia.

"These companies will also be providing support to the segment leaders in their sales activities in the respective geographical markets."

MTA will be keeping its offices in the UK and Germany.