Letters | Sunday, 19 July 2009

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Taking the tourism product forward

I refer to Claudine Cassar’s opinion piece in last Sunday’s MaltaToday, entitled “Tourism in the doldrums”. In this regard I would like to clarify some of the issues raised by your columnist and, perhaps, put matters into their correct perspective.
For 2009 the Malta Tourism Authority’s budget was increased by more than 15% over the previous year’s. However, in the current international economic climate, every other tourism destination is likewise committing more resources towards marketing and advertising. But this has always been Malta’s lot anyway: Attempting to stand out in a marketplace already saturated with advertising messages. Needless to say, the other tourism-dependent countries being referred to by your correspondent have advertising and marketing budgets that are considerably higher than what Malta’s is or could ever be. In this respect the comparisons are obviously not ‘like with like’.
In this highly competitive environment, the MTA’s efforts have been geared towards using the resources at our disposal more intelligently and incisively rather than just adding another small voice to the already deafening advertising cacophony.
To this end the Malta Tourism Authority has striven to maximize the impact, effectiveness and longevity of every Euro spent on advertising and marketing. Aome of the measures taken by the MTA in this respect include:
TV advertising in five core markets – the UK, Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands – an absolute first for Malta. The UK TV advertising campaign has also been extended into June and July, whereas in previous years the TV campaign would end in May. Moreover, the new TV adverts being broadcast were produced by the world renowned National Geographic channel and have received remarkably positive feedback from all and sundry, overseas and even locally. In each market we have targeted a mix of TV channels to hit the widest possible spectrum of the population – ex: Canale 5, Sky, Channel 4, Pro7, ITV, France 2, N-TV, Living and others.
E-marketing in all of our core source markets, including a strong presence in tourism and non-tourism platforms (eg. news sites, weather portals etc.). Malta was one of the forerunners in this regard, being the first NTO (national tourism organization) to promote its destination on E-booking giant Expedia.com. It was precisely for this reason that the management of Expedia had hailed Malta and the MTA as “E-pioneers”.
The MTA has also embarked upon a campaign to enlist celebrity endorsers for the various markets, with popular TV presenter Nina Ruge and celebrity chef Rainer Mitze in Germany and Maltese ‘export’ Kevin Borg in Sweden. Other celebrity endorsers are set to follow in our other core markets.
As from the 2008/2009 UK football season, Malta also began to sponsor (through www.visitmalta.com) UK Championship squad Sheffield United. The impact that this sponsorship has had in the region (Sheffield is the fourth largest city in the UK) and throughout the British isles has been significant, with a direct advertising and marketing value in excess of one and a half million pounds Sterling for the first season (2008/09).
The Isle of MTV event has also been generating much interest across Europe and the MTA has been very pro-active in marketing the event well in advance across all our markets. In September the Isle of MTV Malta Special is broadcast repeatedly across all of the MTV Europe network channels whilst destination Malta advertising campaigns run across the network in different periods throughout the year. The high tourist turnout at this year’s Isle of MTV event is a good indicator that the promotion is paying off.
Other than that, and in an effort to be concise, the MTA has also embarked upon:
* Massive print campaigns in all markets – on daily newspapers, magazines – all campaigns being sales driven with a ‘call to action’
* Outdoor advertising campaigns – large billboards, building hoardings in city centres, tram-siding and bus-siding adverts, taxi-wraps, city-lights boards, poster campaigns in underground stations and various other outdoor advertising initiatives.
* A PR programme throughout the year that brings over to Malta some 700+ journalists and TV Crews to cover different facets of Malta and Gozo for top-notch newspapers, magazines and TV stations around Europe.
* Various interviews in all core source markets carried out throughout the year with MTA overseas staff and PR representatives. on TV shows, radio programmes, newspapers, magazines, websites etc.
* A strong promotional presence in 70 trade and consumer events and exhibitions together with roadshows and workshops in collaboration with tour operators, airlines and airports.
* A series of joint advertising campaigns with trade partners.
* Supporting travel agents’ familiarization visits (ex: the FTI ‘mega fam trip’ in May with 1000 German travel agents), providing travel agents’ sales incentives and Malta & Gozo ‘specialists’ training programmes.
* Joint promotions with multinationals such as Nintendo (currently in Malta).
Naturally, the MTA does even more than all this, with a good number of other segment-specific initiatives and joint collaborations that carry on throughout the year. However, listing each and every marketing initiative undertaken by the Authority would require this newspaper’s editor to give up several pages for that precise purpose. Nevertheless, should Ms. Cassar or anyone of your readers require more information about the ongoing work carried out by the MTA, one may simply send a blank e-mail to: info@visitmalta.com to subscribe to the Authority’s industry update E-Newsletter (www.mta-news.info).

Kevin J Drake
Director, Communications & PR
Malta Tourism Authority

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