Malta Tourism
The Malta Tourism Authority, in conjunction with the Ministry for Tourism and Culture, launched the national e-tourism portal on the 19th of January 2007. This portal was specifically designed to serve as an additional medium to promote independent traffic towards Malta.
The principal difference between the previous informational website and the current transactional portal is the addition of an advanced, yet easy-to-use, 'one-stop shop' concept. This will initially provide a diverse, yet integrated, range of online booking facilities strategically presented within a few mouse-clicks of each other. The online booking facilities will initially consist of flight information as well as accommodation and car-hire booking. However this feature will eventually be extended to incorporate other useful services, such as booking and purchasing of online tickets for heritage sites as well as events.
Unlike the previous website, the portal has been designed to serve as a cohesive, national, marketplace that should encourage the private sector stakeholders to acquire web presence and in this manner exploit the potential of e-tourism. This is in line with the objectives identified in the Maltese Government's 'National ICT Strategy' as well as the document 'Malta's National Tourism Plan' which states that the portal "will support the industry...by providing tourism service providers with the possibility of offering on-line booking through the tourism portal."
The heart of the portal is a database consisting of more than 700 distinct web-pages of information about the Maltese Islands which are replicated also in Italian, German and French. Moreover the portal provides a set of comprehensive directories related to local accommodation, car-hire, industry specialists, meeting venues and diving schools amongst others. Future additions to the database and directories will ensure that the information remains relevant over time.
The portal seeks to promote Malta as a unique selling proposition, both as a destination as well as a tourist experience. This is achieved through the use of eight principal 'experiences', ranging from culture and heritage to diving. Different 'experiences' will be added over time in order to maintain a dynamic and interactive portal that draws new visitors and maintains a steady level of repeat visits.
In the first month of operation the visitmalta e-portal achieved a number of impressive results, including average daily visitor levels of 11,700, as opposed to the 8,500 daily visitor levels over the same period last year.
