Sustainable tourism indicators for the Maltese Islands : recommendations for the improvement of tourism in Malta

Abstract

The introduction of this dissertation illustrates the need for a sustainable tourism management in the Maltese Islands. It also gives a description of sustainable development and sustainable tourism development. To reach the goal of sustainable tourism, sustainable tourism development should be operationalised before any tangible process can be made. Sustainable development meets the necessity of the current situations without compromising the capability of future generations to meet their own necessities. At the Earth's Summit in 1992 a set of sustainable development principles were adopted in Agenda 21. The main functions of sustainable tourism indicators are to quantify, simplify and to communicate them both to the public and policy - makers. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) observes that indicators reflect the extreme objectivity of policy making. These can also be used as an early warning to the tourism managers. The performance of the Maltese tourism industry in 1997, was positive and a revival of the industry arose with just over 1 million tourists visiting the mini-state. Between 1990 and 1997 there has been a considerable increase of 239,385 tourists. Tourism is viewed from three aspects being, the economic, sociological and environmental attitudes. An increase has also been in the tourists expenditure per capita; in 1990 being Lm 180,600,000, while in 1997 it reached Lm 217,300,000. Sustainable tourism is seen as being a leader to the resources management in such way that economic, social and pleasant needs can be achieved while sustaining cultural and ecological principles, biological changes and life support systems. Tourism and environment "experts" agree with sustainable tourism indicators and find them as a useful tool to tourism management. But one major problem is the fact that there is a lack of data availability. Therefore, it is appointed that tourism authorities should work on the indicators' information and use indicators themselves. The general overall point is that, there is a strong support for a planned managed approach to the tourism sector. Sustainable tourism indicators all have different indications and they have both the negative and positive aspects. The problems that were encountered from the respondents are concluded with several recommendations which should make it easier to the policy-makers. A considerable number of public and private organizations could help in the gathering of data which seems to be the worst problem.