Tourism-avoid opening our parachute seconds before crashing

This week at a quarterly meeting of hoteliers lobby group and government officials attending a regular Deloitte presentation of the hotel scene a furious Tony Zahra exclaimed in a hoarse voice that quote: “The whole of Malta is going up in flames because our power distribution system is not working”.   

Tony Zahra, as the president of MHRA was referring to hours-long power cuts across Malta and Gozo in recent weeks. “We cannot go on building more hotels and more rooms. It’s crazy” he said to a captivated audience which remained silent.  A doomsday reminder that the island needs to welcome some 4.7 million tourists per year if accommodation occupancy is to reach 80% throughout the whole year, was the solemn remark from an exemplary capacity report published by Deloitte in 2022.  

Peccadillos, include never-ending traffic, littering, waste management, sewage outflows to sea, and poor urban environment, namely overdevelopment and uglification, as well as lack of authenticity flagged by stakeholders as persistent problems that accompany an increase in demand.  Three years ago, as remarked in a Deloitte study, it was already evident that sewage was a key problem, with stakeholders saying sewage networks are operating “vastly beyond designed capacity in certain key tourism areas”.  

Tony Zahra metamorphosis, as he is not famed for criticizing Castille; has now turned a new page.  His association has paid top dollar to Deloitte to produce a scientific study styled ‘Carrying Capacity Study for Tourism in the Maltese Islands”. Sadly, its most important recommendations were not heeded and now, it is all water under the bridge, as the tourism product is waning.

In September 2022, various stakeholders were interviewed by Deloitte who inter alia, highlighted a dire need for improved tourism management and pointed to focused investments required to sustain growth.  On the bright side, a brilliant idea to improve service within the sector is the imposition of a skills card to be presented by non-EU workers.  

As can be expected this feature creates a financial strain on temping agencies and on the applicants themselves so Malta Enterprise is to launch a tax credit scheme intended to assist local enterprises opting to pay the courses and assessments required for their existing employees to obtain the pass. As stated earlier, a serious fly in the ointment is power cuts.

Frankly speaking tax payers as innocent parties, hoteliers, catering establishments are bearing the full cost of the failures of others.  Business and industry are having to pay the cost of a decade of neglect in investment in power and distribution infrastructure, together with a lack of planning to match energy demand increases with a rapid rise in population.  

Since a decade, there was no serious investment in attracting green energy from renewables, yet Castille focused mainly on giving bank guarantees to a speculative Electrogas - burning LNG.  Some find it purile for energy minister to offer residents compensation for power cuts - the tourism product situation cannot be patched by repeated compensation payments. Only recently, prime minister was interviewed about such inconveniences and he partially blamed them on the introduction of a shore-to-ship service to cruise liners and use of electric cars. 

But the latter, only account for a mere 3.2% of the entire ICE fleet - all 430,000 spewing carcinogenic fumes.  A novel facility to provide a clean emission free environment in grand harbour was announced with much fanfare before the June MEP elections - using 80% of EU funds.  As facts stand, we notice how thousands of passengers aboard the MSC World Europa experienced a power cut last month while the cruise liner was berthed in the Grand Harbour and connected to the shore-to-ship power system. 

Power went out at around 3pm. This created disturbance among passengers by locking them in elevators and bringing all operations and services aboard the cruise liner to a halt.  An official explanation from the authorities explained that power aboard the cruise liner went out sporadically during routine testing.  

True to its credit, since the sixties, inbound tourism has grown as the biggest exporter with annual gross revenues exceeding 3.1 billion euro. So, why are we cozying to property baron’s unbridled desire to exploit seaside plots in building new hotel towers. Another major fault is lack of indigenous labour supply.  Deloittes found that the total number of Maltese working in the sector dropped to 5,964 in 2019 from 7,974 in 2010. One expects that recent data will show an even higher penetration of third country nationals serving in hotels, kitchens, food deliveries, airport, hail-rides and serving in most catering outlets. 

Sadly, the low number of Maltese workers reduces the authenticity of the tourism product, excessive demand adds infrastructure pressures such as increasing the need for more residential dwellings to house foreign workers (this pushes prices of flats). It is amply evident that the sewage infrastructure has not caught up with a slew of permits for new hotels and catering outlets, yet the Water Services corporation which tests bays on a regular basis; has told media that it ruled out any contamination through its network, attributing the contaminations in bays to third-party activities.  Here are some reported instances of popular bays that were not recommended for bathing this summer.

The Environmental Health Directorate is advising that bathing is no longer recommended in the Tal-Għażżenin area of St Paul’s Bay “due to sewage overflow affecting the bathing water quality and presenting a risk to bathers health”.  A similar situation occurred in a popular Balluta Bay last summer: the bay was deemed unfit for swimming for weeks after microbiological contamination was identified in 2023.

Another instance is St George’s Bay in St Julians, again this was found to be unfit for swimming due to the presence of Escherichia coli and intestinal Enterococci. In summary, this year, the island will welcome close to 3.2 million visitors (best 2019 - 2.78 million) which is expected to add a handsome cash boost to tame our national debt and plough back the surplus on improving the island’s attractions now close to the proclamation of the Santa Maria feast celebrated in parishes with much aplomb this month.