The first holidaymakers to fly to Malta post-lockdown were mostly in their 20s and 30s with the tourism authority seeking to attract solo travellers, couples and groups of friends.
Addressing a webinar on Wednesday, MTA’s chief marketing officer Carlo Micallef said the tourists that Malta initially focused on were German-speaking, Sicilian and eastern Europeans.
It promoted events such as alfresco dining and outdoor sightseeing, with the marketing team focusing on the ‘sunny and safe’ mantra.
While it was still too soon to provide demographic data on arrivals, “the feeling is that we are getting a lot of what we targeted”, Micallef said during the event organised by Horeca Malta magazine.
According to information relayed by operators and agencies abroad, there was a “very big interest in Malta,” Micallef said. In the UK, online searches about the islands had surpassed those about Spain, a favourite holiday destination with UK nationals.
In a recorded message, Tourism Minister Julia Farrugia Portelli said that while it had been a slow start, the first month post-lockdown “has proven better than many expected.” However, “we cannot let our guard down”, she warned.
“One of the strongest messages that we are putting across in all markets is the excellent way in which we managed COVID-19… Tourists expect that the basic principles of social distancing, hygiene and wearing of masks or visors are observed,” she said.
Addressing the same event, AX hotels’ hospitality director Claire Zammit Xuereb said that following the lockdown the group hosted a much younger crowd than it usually does.
It’s more about building confidence
Meanwhile, AX hotels, which caters for a variety of visitors, has seen its Qawra properties doing “relatively better” than the Sliema ones, which in turn fared better than Valletta’s.
Still, this did not mean that lowering rates would attract more business: “It’s more about building confidence. We are now attracting a different sector of the market in terms of age so one needs to constantly revise strategies to reflect what’s happening out there.”
Former acting CEO for Air Malta and MTA’s ex-international marketing director Joseph Galea also argued against lowering prices because “competing destinations can play much better with the price”.
“Ultimately, we would only be harming ourselves as they can go lower… we don’t want short-term gain but a sustainable long-term development”.
He urged the tourism industry to carry out sanitation measures and cleaning in front of guests as they needed to not only know that it was being done, but also to see it being done.