Re-Opening the High Street

Mellieha bay as it was in the 1960s

by Julian Zarb*

In 2008 I was working for the Government of Malta when I was commissioned by the Office of the Prime Minister to prepare a draft local tourism plan for one of the island’s most established resorts in the northern part of Malta, Mellieha.  I carried out this project by working with the community rather than for the community.  I set up my office during this period at the Local Council in Mellieha.  It took over six months to work on the local tourism plan but it was really invigorating because this was not about writing an administrative report  for politicians and businesses, but it was about really seeing how the community felt about tourism and their locality.  This was a locality where the sense of belonging was still relatively high, it was a locality where 25% of the local residents were involved in tourism – directly or indirectly.  It was a locality where the local resident and the visitor community shared services and experiences. 

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Post-Pandemic Tourism: Recovery or Reform?

Oia, Santorini, Greece. By User: Bgabel at q373 shared, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22682391

by Dr Heather Skinner

Almost overnight the travel and tourism industry has gone from focusing on the problems of overtourism to undertourism, and in many cases, the real prospect of no tourism at all in 2020 due to the current Coronavirus pandemic. However, as the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) recently warns that international tourism could fall by as much as 80% in 2020[1] and as many countries have started to ease their strict lockdown measures, it is time to think about what we want for the future of post-pandemic tourism when we come out the other side of this crisis. By number, well over 90% of all tourism businesses are categorised as Small and Medium sized Tourism Enterprises (SMTEs), and many of these are micro-businesses employing few if any others outside of immediate family. The demise of tour operator Thomas Cook in 2019 hit many of these businesses hard. Now in 2020, tourism business have been hit by the response to COVID-19, an unprecedented global crises that has brought about travel bans, border closures, event cancellations, closure of tourist accommodation, and the grounding of flights all over the world.

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