Enhancing
Product Malta
an interview with the Minister for Tourism Dr Konrad Mizzi
In the last Labour legislation, Minister Konrad Mizzi acquired for himself quite the reputation
for troubleshooting the Government’s more sensitive and possibly stickiest areas. In the current
legislation he has now been made responsible for an equally important package of difficult and tricky
services including that of tourism.
Hospitality Malta met the Hon. Minister to talk over and find out what is cooking on the back burner at the
moment for the tourism industry. We were particularly interested to know how he thinks his experience
in operational and management efficiency will enhance Malta’s tourism industry and its performance.
M
Mizzi’s reply to our
question imme-
inister
diately identified
how he sees his role
at this moment in time. “First of all one has to real-
ise that the great input and the results that are being
achieved within the tourism sector really come from
enterprising entrepreneurs who risk their capital, who
work to improve their product, invest in hotels, leisure
institutions, establishments to support the infrastruc-
ture..... without them we wouldn’t be in a position
to have a thriving tourism sector. Obviously Gov-
ernment has an important role here, to facilitate and
create the right environment for tourism to survive.”
HOSPITALITY MALTA
He added that his focus is generally on leadership of
organisations and as a result usually tends to focus on
a number of other priorities – organising teams, en-
gaging stakeholders, hearing them out and formulat-
ing a programme of initiatives over a three to five year
period which will hopefully result in improved bene-
fits for all concerned.
From his perspective he said he saw that one key role
that Government has is ensuring that Malta has the
right airline and connections to Europe, North Africa
and Dubai. “Unless we have the right capacity of seats
and the right connections it will be hard for tour op-
erators to essentially bring tourists to Malta” he added.
Issue 03
11