Ironically coinciding with Malta’s tourism peak, the nightlife industry has witnessed an advent of various enforcements the past months. Most popular of all being the enforcement of the 4am shutdown of music in bars and nightclubs.
It was understood that an agreement was reached between GRTU and the authorities whereby music was not to be heard from outside the premises in order to safeguard peace and quiet in the neighborhood. On this behalf many, including foreigners and locals, seem baffled, with licensing stipulating the limitation of sound in peak hours.
These enforcements happen daily at Fuego, St Julian’s, and on a particular occasion a burly police officer stood in the middle of the dance floor waving hands uncontrollably, leaving us to assume he was asking everyone to leave abruptly. The patrons were a conference group of 50 Swiss bankers, another Spanish conference group along with tourists from France, Italy, Germany, Cyprus, Greece, Balkans and other nationalities besides Maltese.
While we take every care to ensure our patrons’ service and cordiality both to Maltese and tourists – bearing in mind, with regards to tourists, the effort played by the local authorities and private entities to bring them to Malta – we are then faced with such elements of disservice which are not in our control.
It is understood that such laws, are non-existent in some of the respective countries mentioned earlier making this a cultural shock in a country where government and authorities preach and sell the slogan, “Merhba, Mill-Qalb”. The night life industry has been for far too long viewed as a degenerative segment of society, yet it forms part of one of the most important elements which sell our country to foreigners. In a few words: no nightlife industry makes for much fewer tourist arrivals, and as such this segment should be treated with its due respect and importance.
While we stand behind laws and fully pledge our cooperation, we would like to add the factor of the sensibility to the industry and we call on the executive to legislate laws sensible enough to help, and not destroy our industry, and to live up to tourists’ expectations and maintain our competitive edge with other countries in the Med.

Mark Grima
St Julians