Interview with the Ambassador of Malta to China

Valletta is the city member of WTCF and the country’s Ambassador, John Aquilina, stated that “I think that there’s a lot more that Valletta can do, Valletta is reaching out and obviously like the rest of Malta, it’s looking for new horizons.” In addition, he also said “In 2018 Valletta will be declared the cultural capital of Europe; many more people will want to go to see just exactly what an experience Valletta is.”

It all started when WTCF was approached by the Ambassador of Malta to conduct an interview with him. Valletta is the city member of World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) and besides Beijing and Shanghai, Malta will open 13 Visa centers in China which will make easier for Chinese tourists to visit Malta.

It was extremely hot in Beijing’s August and the weather report on the phone stated 35 degrees, but it felt more like 41 degrees when you are walking outside. John Aquilina, who was a good talker, gave an interview with enthusiasm, lively and interesting which made us curious about this small country in Southern Europe.

Interview with John Aquilina, the Ambassador of Malta to China

I’m delighted to be involved with such a professional organization, and it’s great that the tourism promotion around the world is receiving such a thorough and professional outlook. I’m a great believer in tourism; I think it’s wonderful to have people between different nations, different languages, and different cultures because when they do that, they extend the hand of friendship.

WTCF: Thank you for inviting WTCF to do an interview. Can you introduce yourself?

Ambassador: Thank you, I’m glad to be here. My name is John Aquilina, and I’m the relatively new ambassador of the Republic of Malta to China. My last appointment was as Malta’s high commissioner to India where I had a wonderful experience but now I’m looking forward to an even broader and more wonderful experience here in China. I was basically involved in political life in Australia from which I retired after a very long time, and then I was invited to become a diplomat for Malta and that’s a wonderful experience. I’m just so happy to be able to spend my life and this new career of talking about the country of my birth, a country of which all my life I have just loved so much.

WTCF: I would like to introduce WTCF quickly; World Tourism Cities Federation is a non-governmental, non-profit international tourism organization. The federation is also the first city based tourism organization in the world. WTCF’s vision is “better city life through tourism,” and the organization is committed to organizing and facilitating cooperation ventures in order to promote sustainable growth in the tourism sector.

Currently, the organization has 167 members with 112 city members, and 55 institutional members. Our institutional members include world-famous travel agencies, media organizations, airports, airlines, hotel groups, financial firms, and other tourism related companies.

Also, WTCF’s We-media platform is a specially designed marketing tool that includes the official website, e-newsletter, Weibo, magazine, WeChat, and the official APP. Through these six social media and print outlets, WTCF and its members are able to release federation updates, official tourism news, promotions, and travel information to city members and tourists alike.

John Aquilina was introducing the cities of Malta

Ambassador: I’m delighted to be involved with such a professional organization, and it’s great that the tourism promotion around the world is receiving such thorough and professional outlook. I’m a great believer in tourism; I think it’s wonderful to have people between different nations, different languages, and different cultures because when they do that, they extend the hand of friendship.

Malta is a very small country, but every year it extends a hand of hospitality to more than five times its population. Last year, 1.8 million for a country of 400,000 people, that’s incredible. It’s great to be in Malta any day of the year because, what you do is you look around and you listen to people talking and you don’t just hear Maltese or English but you hear almost every language on the planet. There are almost always more foreigners in Malta then there are Maltese on any day of the year.

When you’re sailing into Valletta today in the Grand Harbor of Malta, you see these huge beautiful limestone walls jotting up out of the sea. You see this great fortress city with architecture that is Baroque, is Norman, is Georgian, is Moorish; it has architecture from many different cultures, many different centuries and it is there to see almost all at once because it’s not a very big city.

WTCF: Can you give me an introduction of our member city, Valletta?

Ambassador: Valetta is just such a beautiful city. I mean its ancient, it’s modern, and it has everything going for it. The architecture of Valletta is breathtaking; the city is out on a peninsula which jots out onto the sea. So you’ve got virtually sea around both sides of it and it only has land at the back. You can only enter by land through a very narrow gateway, which of course made it a perfect place to fortify and a perfect place to make secure in the olden days. So when the Knights of Malta came to Malta in 1530, they decided that they were going to make their home there and they were going to make it a secure place to secure it against future invasions and future threats. And they built huge fortifications, huge bastions all around Valletta and when you’re sailing into Valletta today in the Grand Harbor of Malta, you see these huge beautiful limestone walls jotting up out of the sea. You see this great fortress city with architecture that is Baroque, is Norman, is Georgian, is Moorish; it has architecture from many different cultures, many different centuries and it is there to see almost all at once because it’s not a very big city. If you spend a week in Valletta, you’ll practically get to know every corner of Valletta but you’ll always find something new to interest you.

WTCF: Aside from the ancient buildings and monuments, what are some of the natural landscapes?

Ambassador: We’re talking about landscapes, were talking about beaches, we’re talking about beautiful coastlines, deep harbors, wonderful scenery everywhere. One great thing about Malta is from almost every point in Malta, you can see the sea. So it’s a small place and it is very densely populated but you don’t have this feeling that you’re being closed in. You don’t have this feeling of overwhelming number of people on top of you because from almost any point in Malta, you can look out and you can see the sea and the sea goes on forever.

And of course the sea is beautiful as is the climate, on average, 300 days of sunshine a year, long beautiful summer days, very warm water in summer, 27 degrees, people just love to go swimming. Even at night they go swimming because it’s so nice and warm and it’s so accessible, the other thing about Malta is it doesn’t take you hours to go from one point to another. It’s very easy for example to many things in the one day. I’ll give you an example, one of the great things Malta is noted for is its English language schools, and we have a large number of English language schools so we get people particularly in July, August and September, they come in from all over the world. Quite a number come from China, but also from Japan, and from Scandinavia and they come to study English.

In Valletta, we can have a nice pasta meal or perhaps a unique Maltese meat meal which we call Bragioli, it’s actually a meat olive filled with a mixture of egg, vegetables and pork. I’ll probably enjoy a glass of wine or two with lunch, I think that will go down very well.

WTCF: If I were to go to Valletta tomorrow, what could I do in a day?

Ambassador: I’ll give you an example of my day in Valletta, I might get into Valletta somewhere around 10 o’clock and I’ll go up to one of the many cafes that are open there for an outdoor coffee with maybe some Pastizzi, a traditional Maltese cheesecake, you can have them in either cheese or peas, and that will fill me up pretty well for some time.

Then I can go for a walk around and have a look at some of the architecture up high on a platform on the bastions overlooking the grand harbor and get a beautiful view of the huge panorama of the grand harbor, it’s still quite cool at that time of the morning so I can probably walk around for a couple of hours, enjoy the shade of some of the palm trees on the top and stroll around looking at the sites down below the bastions.

Then maybe it might be time for a bit of lunch, so I might go over and have some lunch at one of the restaurants, maybe pick a small restaurant which serves a traditional Maltese meal. Maltese meals are very similar to the meals the south of Europe, particularly Neapolitan meals or Sicilian meals. We have a great affinity with that era because obviously we’re very close. So we can have a nice pasta meal or perhaps a unique Maltese meat meal which we call Bragioli, it’s actually a meat olive filled with a mixture of egg, vegetables and pork. I’ll probably enjoy a glass of wine or two with lunch, I think that will go down very well. By then I’ll probably be very tired, it’s probably getting a bit hot so I might want to go in and find a bit of a shady spot, I might go into the museum perhaps and have a look at the Museum of Antiquities or go to the armory or visit the president’s palace and have a look at some of the great things that are there as they are so close by.

Maybe by about 4 o’clock it’s cooled down a little bit perhaps or maybe a little bit later. I’ve brought my swimming gear with me so I might duck around to one of the spots where I’ll go and have a swim. Still nice and warm, warm enough but not too hot and that would give me a great time. I would probably, if I was very adventurous, and I had a very short time in Malta, I might stay and do a bit more later on but I think I might be a bit tired by then so I’d probably go home and have a bit of a sleep and come back later, possibly about 8 o’clock, have another meal and enjoy a good dinner at one of restaurants with some family people or perhaps some friends.

Interview with John Aquilina, the Ambassador of Malta to China

WTCF: Sounds like you can do quite a bit in one day.

Ambassador: Yeah, you can do quite a bit in one day because you don’t have to walk very far and there’s a lot to see and there’s lots to do. And probably while I’m having dinner, I’m probably thinking of all the things I’ve missed so I’ll be making a plan to come back tomorrow.

WTCF: So what if I had 3 days to spend in Valletta?

Ambassador: I wouldn’t just spend more than Valletta. I’d use Valletta as my base to go somewhere else as well, that’s the other thing too. Valletta is very central so within a very short distance of Valletta there are some beautiful bays and harbors around the place and you can go out and visit these. Or Valletta is also the terminus center for all the busses that go throughout Malta. So from Valletta, you can catch a bus that can take you to any point in Malta, and you might want to a place called Mdina, which is another great city right in the heart of Malta, up high. It was the traditional bastion of Malta, traditional area where the people use to go for protection. Particularly when the pirates were invading in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, the people would go there and they would go into Mdina which has got nice high walls and would be protected and there’s lots of sea there too. That’s probably a story for another day because I could probably spend another two or three days justin Mdina.

Rabbit is Malta’s national dish. We have several recipes for the cooking of rabbit and of course it’s a very healthy food because rabbit has no cholesterol and it’s very tasty. So, we can cook it in a red wine marinade for example, or you can have it fried, you could cook it with spaghetti, there’s just so many ways of cooking it.

WTCF: So since Valletta is near the sea I would assume there is a lot of seafood.

Ambassador: Seafood, all over Malta, I mean Malta is noted for its seafood, see it’s not just Valletta, Valletta is a great harbor and you’ve got the grand harbor coming into Valletta and so much activity going on there but right around Malta you’ve got beautiful harbors and of course you’ve got beautiful fishing villages. And you’ve got lovely seafood. Food is very healthy and of course eating fish and shellfish is a great delicacy in Malta. We love our fish, we love our shellfish and calamari and it’s just wonderful. Octopus dishes you name it there’s so many, one of the favorite Maltese dishes is octopus stew, it’s sort of like a tomato saucy stew but very, very thick with octopus that’s been one truly sort of stew so it’s nice and tender. My mouth is just watering just talking about it.

WTCF: Mine is also, are there any other dishes that you recommend to tourists?

Ambassador: Look, this is one which is a great favorite for Maltese, but tourists often find it hard to get their head around it and that’s rabbit. Rabbit is Malta’s national dish, but the Maltese cook rabbit like no other country in the world can cook rabbit, I can assure you. We have several recipes for the cooking of rabbit and of course it’s a very healthy food because rabbit has no cholesterol and it’s very tasty. So, we can cook it in a red wine marinade for example, or you can have it fried, you could cook it with spaghetti, there’s just so many ways of cooking it. And it’s just absolutely delicious. The biggest problem is getting somebody to try to eat it because it’s not the sort of food which foreigners are used to but once they try it, they’re hooked, they want more. And they want different recipes. So yes it’s a great opportunity.

WTCF: Right you have to be a bit adventurous to try it.

Ambassador: That’s the part of being a tourist isn’t it, I like to travel and I travel to a lot of countries and I’ve been very fortunate to do that. One of the great things that I look forward to when I’m traveling is in tasting the food of that country. It’s all part of the experience; it’s all part of being somewhere that you haven’t been before. It’s not just what you experience with your eyes, what you see or what you feel but it’s also the smell of the food, the taste of the food. You want to expose all your sense to that experience. And of course obviously the food in the country is just one of those things.

Any day of the year, any one of the 365 days of the year, there will be more foreigners in Malta than there are locals. I’ve lived in a lot of places and I have spoken to a lot of people about Malta and literally thousands of people have gone to Malta because they’ve heard me speak about it. Not one has ever come back to me and said “You exaggerated a little bit; you made it all sound very smart but you know I went there and I didn’t have all that great of a time.”

WTCF: Malta is a really popular tourism destination, the tourism industry is a huge contributor to the GDP and in 2015, Malta received almost 1.8 million tourists, that’s almost four or five times its population size.

Ambassador: Last year Malta got 1.8 million tourists about four and a half times of its population. The only country in the world I would think that it can boast in any one year it receives four and a half times the number of tourists of its own population. I don’t know of any other country that has that. The fact is any day of the year, any one of the 365 days of the year, there will be more foreigners in Malta than there are locals. So just, think about that, I mean that must make you think well this small country, this small island country must have some tremendous advantages if it keeps attracting people to come in those large numbers. And they don’t just come once, or twice, there are some people that have been coming every year for 20, 30 years. And they keep coming back because they just love the experience there so much. That’s what Malta has to offer.

You know I’ve lived in a lot of places and I have spoken to a lot of people about Malta and literally thousands of people have gone to Malta because they’ve heard me speak about it. Not one has ever come back to me and said to me ohh, John Aquilina, you know you exaggerated a little bit, you made it all sound very smart but you know I went there and I didn’t have all that great of a time. Usually the come back the reverse and they say, why didn’t you try and tell me to get here for four or five days, I could of spent two weeks there. I want to go back now because there was so much I missed and I was only planning to spend a week or four or five days there and there’s so much more I can experience.

We haven’t even spoken about Gozo for example, Gozo is the other little island north of Malta, it’s part of the Malta archipelago, It is basically rural, very calm very quiet. Much smaller than Malta but beautiful farm houses everywhere you can spend a relaxing fort night there and just let all the worlds troubles pass you by, if you don’t want to listen to news you don’t have to. You’ve got beautiful facilities there, beautiful food you can go on long walks, and it’s just very, very calm. So there’s just so much to Malta, everywhere you go you see opportunities, you know this is very hard especially here in china because china is so big.

John Aquilina wrote down a sincere blessing in the memorandum for the five anniversary of the establishment of WTCF

And there are so many people so you start talking about a country that’s what, 14 km wide and 27 km longs and yeah, just like you they start to smile they start to laugh, they don’t want to be rude but they can’t help it. And you’re talking about a population of 400,000 people and they go oh yeah, just because it’s small it doesn’t mean that it’s not beautiful, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have things to offer. I always think of it this way, we often refer to Malta as being the pearl of the Mediterranean, a pearl is something that’s very, very small, and that’s also something that’s very precious and something that’s very beautiful

I always believed that the man who overlooks Malta can feel her beauty. So every time i think about Malta I think of the beauty, I think of the experience, what it has to offer. I think of richness. I think of enriching my life. I think of having good feelings and good thoughts. And I haven’t even spoken about the people yet because they’re really Malta’s asset.

We have the beaches, we have our coast line, we have a beautiful scenery, we have of course our architecture that goes back 7000 years, so many different types of architecture, the oldest man-made structures on Earth are to be found in Malta. The Neolithic temples we have both aboveground and underground. And we also have the people. The people of Malta are very hospitable, very warm, they’re very friendly. Why? It’s because where Malta is located. Malta is located in the middle of the Mediterranean. Halfway between North Africa and Southern Europe. It has been a destination for travellers and voyagers for 7000 years. They have been coming and going. The Maltese are used to seeing strangers there. They are used to welcoming people. And by now, also Maltese are very practical people, they know it’s their bread and butter. They know that if the tourists didn’t come, the economy would suffer. So they have to be friendly to the strangers that come there. They have to be friendly to the new people who come there all the time.

Almost everybody in Malta has 2 or 3 jobs. They may have their own trading jobs for example, they may be a carpenter or an electrician or laborer or may be stone mason or whatever, a lot of them also has some involvement with the tourism industry. They may be doing their touring in the day or the students for example may be studying but in the evening they are probably working at the restaurants. And in the morning, they might be doing cleaning jobs or doing others jobs that are essential to keep a nation moving that once located to a large passing parade of tourists from one day to the next. So the Maltese are very much in tune with welcoming people, keeping them happy, making sure that they’re going to have an enjoyable experience in Malta and when they leave Malta they are going to want to come back at some future time.

By the middle of this year, we’ve already have had almost 5 million people pass through Malta’s airport. Now for a country that size, 5 million people passing through the airport, it’s been there for the last 4 years, the 4th busiest airport in Europe. That tells you also that Malta is a great hub, great center.

WTCF: Speaking of economy, how do you think this boom in tourism benefits the local Maltese people?

Ambassador: Well of course tourism is vital for Malta. Last year, Malta had a GDP, gross domestic product of 6.5% in 2015. I mean, that’s phenomenal for Europe. It’s the same as China’s. And for Europe, it’s outstanding because if you have a GDP of 2% or 2.5%, you’re doing very well in Europe and particularly because we all know Europe has experienced some financial problems recently, Malta has been immune to that the tourist industry has more to reflect but also other industries too, it’s not just tourism. Malta has also been diversifying into other businesses and another sitting we’ll talk about that as well. But the Maltese economy continues to grow, tourism continues to grow.

By the middle of this year, we’ve already have had almost 5 million people pass through Malta’s airport. Now for a country that size, 5 million people passing through the airport, it’s been there for the last 4 years, the 4th busiest airport in Europe. That tells you also that Malta is a great hub, great center. One of the other great things about Malta is its connectivity by sea or by air. It has daily flights to almost every capital in Europe and many other capitals outside Europe as well. So if you want to go to London, you want to go to Rome, if you want to go to Paris or Frankfurt or Zurich or Berlin or Geneva wherever even Brussels, they have flights every day and in some cases several flights a day. And timings, at the very most 1 and a half to 2 hours or a bit over 2 hours. It’s even shorter than many other domestic flights here in China. So it’s easy to get from Point A to point B.

And by sea of course there are these huge ocean cruises coming and going every day. It’s a great experience at Malta at about 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning to be in the grand harbor and to watch the ships leaving and the ships arriving. And when they pass each other, there’s horns blowing, there’s bands playing, it’s a great experience, people really enjoy it. And the grand harbor is so big that it can accommodate not 1or 2 but many huge ocean liners all at the one time. Because these tourists they meet each other, they disembark, they go to Valletta, they go to spend a day in Valletta may be, may be 2 or 3 days, go inland a little bit and they meet each other from different cruises and talk to each other and many of them sort of end up meeting each other again in future cruises. It’s a great meeting point for people as well from all around the world.

Malta is that, it’s a Schengen country, so you don’t need a visa. If you are in Europe and you are in a Schengen country, you don’t need a visa to come to Malta. It’s like making a domestic flight or hop on a ferry from Italy and come down, then you don’t have to show your passport because you are leaving from a Schengen country and you are coming back to a Schengen country.

WTCF: What do you think the majority of the tourists are from?

Ambassador: The majority of them come from Europe but most of those come from the United Kingdom. Because Malta was a British colony for 200 years and English is one of their 2 official languages, Maltese a very ancient, a beautiful language is the other official language. The British in particular feel very comfortable when they come to Malta. It’s easy for them to communicate and also we are used to the British way of life, we’re used to the British people. The British navy had a naval base in Malta for 200 years. So a lot of British naval personnel will be coming and going. Many of these people they retire and keep coming to Malta for holidays, many of them are married to Maltese locals as well so you have a sort of groups of families that are related to the British as well.

But numerous other European countries also are the source of many tourists in Malta. Scandinavia for example, there are a lot of Scandinavians that come to Malta. Why wouldn’t they? They love the warm weather, they love the sunshine, they love the warm water, the sea and they come to Malta particularly during the summer months for that experience particularly when the schools and universities holidays are on like in June, July, August or September. And they flock to Malta for these reasons. The other thing about Malta is that Malta is a part of the Euro zone. So we have the Euro and consequently because we have the Euro, there’s no currency problem for the European countries. But for all the other countries the Italians and the Spaniards and the French, many of them come to Malta for holiday as well. And the other thing about Malta is that it’s a Schengen country, so you don’t need a visa. If you are in Europe and you are in a Schengen country, you don’t need a visa to come to Malta. It’s like making a domestic flight or hop on a ferry from Italy and come down, then you don’t have to show your passport because you are leaving from a Schengen country and you are coming back to a Schengen country.

John Aquilina posed for photos with WTCF staffs

WTCF: That’s convenient. Aside from Europe, what percentage of the total tourists are from China?

Ambassador: A very small percentage and that’s why I am here, that’s why I am talking to you. Because the biggest problem about Malta in China is that there are a very few Chinese who have heard of Malta. I mean, you think about it, the most populated country in the world and one of the least populated countries in the world. So at first thought, there’s very little connection there, very large and very small. And while I can say without any hesitation that very few people in China know about Malta. But I don’t have to sell to Malta to the Chinese, anything about the wonderful advantage Malta has to offer to Chinese tourists because if the Chinese were to go there, they would see for themselves; they would come back and they would want to talk to their family members, talk to their friends and say, wow what a wonderful time we had in Malta, you should go there as well.

WTCF: Have you set any certain goals to increase the number of Chinese visitors?

Ambassador: I’ve only been here for a short time, but I’m doing that; I am interviewing quite a number of travel agents in China, talking about the advantages. In 2015 1.4 million Chinese went to Italy. Well Italy is not a long way away from Malta. I think, the only reason why any of them didn’t go to Malta because they didn’t know about Malta and their agents didn’t know about Malta, so they didn’t tell them about Malta. But if the agents knew, they’d say, oh look we can go to Italy and may be go to Sicily there’s also Malta.

There are these people who go to Europe frequently, they’re going to visit the same old places every time and may be get a bit bored of visiting the same old places every time. They want to go and find a new destination, a new place, oh here it is, Malta’s there. I know its 7000 years old but for China it could be a new experience and for Chinese wanting to travel and wanting to look at something different something that’s hospitable, something that’s affordable, something that you can have huge number of different experiences for one day.

3 visa application centers throughout the heart of China and that would make it so much easier for the Chinese waiting to come to Malta. At the moment with the Schengen requirements, it requires biometrics, which means in order to get a visa you need to have your fingerprints taken and photograph taken and up until now we have only had 2 centers which were able to do that here in Beijing and also in Shanghai. We’re looking forward to the opening of these new centers and hopefully welcoming many tens of thousands of Chinese move to Malta.

WTCF: So I heard it in the news that Malta is planning to open 13 new visa application centers other than Beijing and Shanghai

Ambassador: Yes. That’s right, that’s fantastic. We’re so much looking forward to that. 13 visa application centers throughout the heart of China and that would make it so much easier for the Chinese waiting to come to Malta. At the moment with the Schengen requirements, it requires biometrics, which means in order to get a visa you need to have your fingerprints taken and photograph taken and upuntil now we have only had 2 centers which were able to do that here in Beijing and also in Shanghai. That meant that anybody else who wanted to travel to the Schengen visa to come to Malta had to travel to either Beijing or Shanghai in order to get their visas. But now we’ll have 13 new centers located throughout the length and breadth of China and that would mean that people won’t have to travel that far, it will be so much easier for them to get their Schengen visas to come to Malta. We’re looking forward to the opening of these new centers and hopefully welcoming many tens of thousands of Chinese move to Malta.

WTCF: Does anybody in Malta speak Chinese?

Ambassador: Not very many. And that is one of the disadvantages that we have. Obviously we have English as one of our official languages and there are some Chinese who are at least conversant in English, if not extremely fluent in English. I mean, there’s always that issue but we’re trying to address that. We at the moment have a Confucius Institute at the University of Malta which is tied up with Xiamen University. We have quite a number of Chinese university students coming to the University of Malta. We have a lot Chinese people coming to learn English at our English language schools.I have mentioned previously and they find that a very good way for them to learn English. As far as Chinese tourists are concerned, they probably could do more with Chinese speaking guides and maybe some Chinese speakers in restaurants and hotels.

WTCF: Dose Malta have any Chinese signs? As I know these Chinese signs really helped them.

Ambassador: We don't have many Chinese signs yet but it is something we need to address. But we are thinking of printing a number of Chinese brochures. In fact, I got a brochure here which we printed through the Malta tourism authority and this is a booklet which we will be distributing worldwide in English but because of the Chinese market we've decided to translate it into Chinese so there is great opportunity here for the Chinese. I am very happy to make these booklets available. I've got several thousands of these here actually to distribute to travel agents and to interested Chinese people. I am also writing two other books here in China pointing at the links between China and Malta. Hopefully we will be able to get more Chinese people interested in Malta.

WTCF: Currently are there any direct flights from Malta to Chinese?

Ambassador: No, we are working on it. There are many issues involved going across many nations to get from China to Malta and Malta to China. So it is not easy. But the matter is being worked upon and there are movements and things are happening. But having said that, it is not all that hard to get to Malta from China. There are daily flights going via a number of other countries. For example, one can go everyday by Dubai to Malta or everyday via Istanbul to Malta, France, Paris and London. There is a lot of ways. Malta is very connected to all of the major capitals in Europe. And China is very well connected to all major capitals in Europe as well. So getting links between Malta and China is not hard.

WTCF: With Internet came social media, how do you see social media changing the landscape on Marketing?

Ambassador: I don’t know how long is a piece of string? I really don’t know. Social media is there. It is ever evolving. It just keeps changing and growing and becoming more user-friendly.

Weibo I don't know so much about, but WeChat I am getting very quickly indoctrinated into WeChat. My staff insisted that I went online, I resisted for a little while because I don't respond very quickly to new social media but I am in there now and I'm probably drowning in it as well. It is a wonderful experience.

WTCF: With social media becoming a daily part of our daily routine, has this impacted the way company's marketing technic and strategies?

Ambassador: Interviewee: Absolutely social media has completely changed the whole dynamics of the world. Today the world is a shrinking place and we say that almost every day and that is true. The world is shrinking every day because social media is bringing us all so much closer together that everything is so much more immediate. It doesn’t matter today whether you are talking to someone next door or talking to someone 10,000 kilometers away. The meeting becomes immediate discussion. I can open up on my Facetime on my mobile and I can talk to my daughter who is 12,000 kilometers away and she'll say “Hi dad” and it's as though she is next door or in a next room. It is just wonderful the way things happen like that. But also that makes us desirous for us to want to personally associate and meet people, experience, feel, smell and touch and social media increases that awareness and with that increase awareness our desire increases to want to do these things personally and physically.

WTCF: Are you familiar with the two most popular social media platforms in China, Weibo and WeChat?

Ambassador: Weibo I don't know so much about, but WeChat I am getting very quickly indoctrinated into WeChat. My staff insisted that I went online, I resisted for a little while because I don't respond very quickly to new social media but I am in there now and I'm probably drowning in it as well. It is a wonderful experience. It is so immediate and complete and there is so much information one has to be careful to filter the information and be selective otherwise one can spend every minute of each of the 24 hours a day just on social media.

I think that there’s a lot more that Valletta can do, Valletta is reaching out and obviously like the rest of Malta, it’s looking for new horizons In 2018 Valletta will be declared the cultural capital of Europe.Many more people will want to go to see just exactly what an experience Valletta is.

WTCF: Valletta has been a member of WTCF for more than 3 years now, have you seen the membership improve Valletta and Malta as a whole?

Ambassador: I think that there’s a lot more that Valletta can do, Valletta is reaching out and obviously like the rest of Malta, it’s looking for new horizons and I suppose one can accuse Malta up to a recent time of being a little bit of “Euro-centric,” basically concentrating on the rest of Europe and reaching out to the rest of Europe. But now, there is a realization that there’s a much more of the world beyond Europe and there’s an expectation that we need to attract the interest of people outside of Europe to Valletta. In 2018 Valletta will be declared the cultural capital of Europe. This is fantastic; it’ll put the focus culturally in Europe on Valletta and there’ll be lots of cultural events, lots of activities, manymore people will want to go to see just exactly what an experience Valletta is so I expect our tourism intake to increase substantially. But as the ambassador to China, it is my hope that it’s not only tourists from Europe who go to Valletta in increasing numbers, but we also attract large numbers of tourists from China.

WTCF: Many Chinese families are now traveling with their children to go abroad, are there any special facilities to accommodate them?

Ambassador: Absolutely, I would say Valletta is an idea place for family travel; we are very well geared up not only in Valletta, but throughout the whole of Malta for family visitors and a substantial amount of our tourists are in fact families, not just individuals or couples. Our hotel rooms are well equipped for families, our dining facilities, our resorts, our entertainment facilities, our beaches.

Hotel rooms for example, it’s very easy to find a hotel room that will accommodate a family, not just an individual or a couple of people. A lot of the activities that one can do in Malta are family oriented activities. For example, the sight-seeing, the beaches, the carnivals, and the festivals that are there. These are as much as a delight to the children as they are a delight to the adults, so yes, by all means we are a very family oriented country, we welcome families to come there and also we believe that by welcoming families to come were are investing in the future because those children will come with their mothers and fathers will grow up one day and we’d like them to come back and bring their children to our shores as well.

WTCF: The emerging middle class in China is also starting to go abroad a lot; would you say Valletta is suitable for them to go?

Ambassador: Absolutely, we welcome the increased affluence of the Chinese and we’d like them to become adventurous and to seek out new destinies and Malta is one of those destinies. I can promise them one thing that they won’t be disappointed, no matter how high their expectations may be, they will come to Malta and they will be fascinated. It’s got activities, adventures beyond their expectation and on top of all that, it’s affordable. It is a very affordable place in fact in comparison to the rest of Europe, it’s very competitively priced and its part of the euro-zone so there’s not much of an issue in terms of currency

WTCF: So you use the euros?

Ambassador: Yes Euros, we’ve been part of the Euro-zone since January 2008, the euro is a well-established currency in Malta and very easy to negotiate anything in Malta using euros.

WTCF: UnionPay, is a member of WTCF and is a very popular cash payment system in China, has that been implemented into the country?

Ambassador: Not yet, but we’re getting there. We’ve had discussions now for some time going on, the central bank of Malta has been well into discussions with the Bank of China here about UnionPay and I don’t believe that it’s too far off, so although yes we don’t have it at the moment, I don’t think it’ll be too long before we start to see ATMs around Malta that are able to use UnionPay debit cards.

A Word to WTCF

The World Tourism cities Federation is such an outstanding organization, in such a short period of time its achieved so much, its helping to bring people together, its helping to bring cities of the world together. That’s got to be a great thing, a great thing for the world, a great thing for tourism.