Tourism in Gozo - Do we care?

It is widely accepted nowadays that Gozo has to be marketed as a tourist destination on its own if it is to reap the full benefits of tourist arrivals on the island. For Gozo to be credible as a destination on its own, there has to be substantial private and public investment in new facilities and upgrading of others.

The problem of mass transport of tourists between the two islands has to be addressed. These two points are serious enough in that they involve financial commitments, which we are clearly not in a position to make presently. More worrisome, however, is the fact that we have very little idea of how to market this island to start with.

The average age of the visitors to Gozo is higher than the national average for tourists. Gozo does not have as much to offer Europe's youths as Malta, so the younger tourist tends to stay in Malta.

This deficiency offers an opportunity. Gozo is more attractive than Malta to the older tourist who tends to look for a peaceful, clean and uneventful stay in a friendly environment. Do we really understand this?

The roads in Gozo, once a picture of cleanliness, are now strewn with rubbish. Even the arterial roads, most notably the road leading to the main beach in Gozo, Ramla Bay, and the road leading to our world heritage site, Dwejra, are in a state of disrepair. Some of the roundabouts are in a state of total abandonment. Our ancestors used to plant palm and olive trees all over. We don't do so anymore. Indeed, in some cases we are even uprooting the few trees that we have left. The countryside is littered with garbage.

Rather than catering for the special interests of this type of tourist, we ignore them. Many tourists would like to be able to roam our countryside if only decent country paths were provided for them for this purpose. However, this idea is totally foreign to us, and there is not even a hint that one day there will be marked walking paths.

Instead of putting readily available underused human resources into action to solve these problems, we invent new ones, such as fiddling with the schedule for the Gozo Channel ferry service and the suspension of the trolley service on the same ferries.

A tourist travels long distances to get here, aided all the way by luggage carts, conveyor belts and trolleys only to be foiled in the last mile: he has to haul his luggage out of the ferry and walk through a construction zone unassisted.

One would have thought that problems in a small island would be small in size. This holds true until one looks at the traffic situation here. We have the heaviest vehicle pollution in all Europe: the smoke emissions from our vehicles put off the tourist completely. There are no speed limits, there is no semblance of orderly flow of traffic and vehicle owners vie between themselves for the dubious 'honour' of having the noisiest car.

It is ironic that while we are lagging so far behind our European partners in the control of noise and smoke pollution, we are on course to lead the way in banning smoking from all public places including places of entertainment.

The prospective tourist is going to be confused. How is the pub or nightclub owner going to explain to someone that he cannot smoke inside when the quality of the air is so poor outside obviously due to lack of concern by the authorities?

One could go on. The point is that Gozo is afflicted by so many chronic problems that can easily be solved with a little bit of attention, effort and expense and the application of common sense, yet nothing whatever gets done. This indicates that we do not have a clue about how damaging these problems are to the tourism industry here; and about how fundamental matters such as the environment, cleanliness and order are to form a marketing plan for Gozo.

Mr Rapa is the managing director at Grand Hotel, Mgarr, Gozo