Drastic fall in WEF tourism index for Malta

Malta drops to 40th place in World Economic Forum travel and tourism competitiveness index from 24th ranking in 2013

7 May 2015, 9:01am
by Matthew Vella

1 min read

Malta has fallen drastically in the World Economic Forum’s travel and tourism competitiveness index for 2015, almost halving its global ranking from the last index in 2013.

Malta ranks 40th out of 141 nations, with a global value of 4.16, down from 24 in 2013 with a global value then of 4.92. Spain was the top ranking nation with 5.31 points, up from its fourth place in 2013, pipping Switzerland which lost its pole position after falling to sixth place.

Malta however retained a regional ranking of 24 in the southern and western Europe category.

This ranking was determined by the aggregates of its business environment, safety, hygeine, human resources, and ICT indexes, which were individually broken down by other indicators.

Malta’s individual indicators that made up the travel competitiveness index, ranking each country out of a total of 141 nations, reflects Malta’s strong and weak points.

For example, it ranked first in the world for ‘prioritisation of travel and tourism’ when it comes to government policy. But it then ranked 115 for natural resources, and disappointingly, 90 for cultural resources and business travel.

It was among the top countries for infrastructure, coming in at a ranking of 37 for air transport, 22 for ground and ports, and 24 for tourist services.

But it disappointed on price competitiveness: a ranking of 106; environmental sustainability, 64, and in human resources at 60.

It then performed positively on health and hygiene, 17. Safety at 25, ICT readiness at 33, and business environment at 40.

Malta hosted 1.58 million tourists in 2013, reaping €1.4 billion in revenue.

Matthew Vella, a freelance journalist at MaltaToday, was formerly executive editor at Malt...