The 27th of September was declared World Tourism day by the United Nations. In order to celebrate this day and also given tourism is one of the world’s most important and resilient industries, a Business Breakfast was organised by the Ministry for Tourism and the Malta Tourism Authority.

Addressing the business breakfast, Minister for Tourism Edward Zammit Lewis stated that recent UNWTO Barometer results published for the first 6 months of this year confirmed that Malta continued to outgrow its competition in this sector. While international tourism grew by 4% compared to last year,

The Minister referring to Gozo, said that the island adds value to our destination as a whole, as it is considered as a differentiated product to mainland Malta. Last year Gozo was visited by more than one million international visitors. This means an increase of more than 6% than 2013, he said.

The Minister pointed out that what was need was a holistic plan to market the sister island as a unique destination.

“Malta registered a 5.3% growth. Malta also outperformed its competitors in the Southern European Mediterranean region, which registered a lower growth than Malta at 4.6%. These encouraging results clearly indicate that we are on the right track, but we surely cannot be complacent and need to continue working hard, especially when faced with the challenges of seasonality.”

The Tourism Minister emphasised that tourism to the Maltese Islands mainly depends on air route connectivity where our country has been successful in this regard. During summer, Malta is directly connected with 94 airports while for next winter seat capacity shall increase by approximately 5% on last year through direct connections to 57 airports. The Minister also stressed that Air Malta still remains a main contributor to the tourism winter business. In fact, for this winter, our national airline will operate an extensive schedule of routes with direct connections to 22 destinations and circa 700,000 seats on offer, excluding charter operations.

Minister Edward Zammit Lewis noted that quality is another key success factor that is becoming increasingly important for this sector and is a key influencer for current and future travel choices. Achieving quality is about ensuring that the customer’s perception of the service provided meets, and preferably exceeds the customer’s expectations. In this respect, the Institute of Tourism Studies has kept close contact with all the industry’s stakeholders and has contributed actively to the tourism and hospitality industry by providing highly professionally trained individuals to deliver a high quality service to tourists, the Minister said.

The Minister for Tourism expressed his satisfaction in noting the positive response by operators within the tourism sector that is materialising into millions of Euro worth of new investment in the shape of extensive refurbishment programmes and development of new projects.

“This augurs well for the future and is crucially important to ensure our future competitiveness. Furthermore, the Government will ensure that the country’s overall image is improved and will enhance the major factors associated with tourism mirror value, particularly in the tourism zone areas.”

Cruise Passenger market is another complementary activity to the international tourism flows attracted to Malta. Valletta Cruiseport is expecting to register a total of 325 port calls that would bring about 640.000 passengers to Malta until the end of this year.

The Minister for Tourism Edward Zammit Lewis thanked the different speakers for their valuable contributions to this morning’s seminar. He concluded by stating that ensuring sustainable growth is a key challenge that requires cohesive efforts by all players, not just governments, but including all industry stakeholders, the host community and tourists themselves. “We must ensure that we follow a strategic process that leads to sustained growth, as only this can guarantee continued success in the longer term.”

At the end of this business breakfast the Ministry for Tourism launched the official video to further promote Malta as winter tourism destination.

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