Think with Google: Futurist Gerd Leonhard on Travel

Futurist Gerd Leonhard spoke August 23, 2013 in Brazil about Travel at one of Google's Think events. Take a look:

FDI in Malta doubled in 5 years

Found on MaltaIndependent on August 27th, 2013: "PN deputy leader Mario de Marco, spokesman for the economy, welcomed the NSO statistics showing that foreign direct investment in Malta more than double over the past five years, from €5.7 billion in 2008 to €12.3 billion in 2012.

This increase in investment was no coincidence, more so when considering that in the last five years the world had the biggest economic and financial crisis for 100 years, deadening the will for investment and creating unemployment.

Dr de Marco said investment in Malta doubled because of different schemes and incentives which the government launched. And investment was attracted from different sectors, including financial services, gaming, educational services, information technology and aviation.
In manufacturing investment increased by more than 20 per cent over the same period, attracting value added work to Malta in sectors such as... read on."

Malta with the Eyes of Opera star Joseph Calleja

Maltese Tenor Joseph Calleja wrote on the Daily Mail Online on August 24:

Lend us a tenor: Opera star Joseph Calleja explains the beauty of his home island Malta

"As one of the world's leading tenors, I'm lucky enough to perform in many beautiful places.
But when I feel the need for a deserved rest, there's only one place to recharge my batteries – Malta.

I was brought up in Attard, in the centre of the island, but Malta is very small – it is just 17 miles long and about ten miles wide – so you can get around the whole place very quickly.My childhood home was a 15-minute walk from the lovely old city of Mdina.

Most people in Europe know Malta. After all, it's a popular holiday destination boasting 7,000 years of history. But when I travel to the United States and tell people where I'm from, they sometimes say: 'Is that Malta, Ohio?' There is a Malta in Ohio, by the way, but it's not as good as my one.

Unfortunately, I had to leave the island as a young man as it's not possible to sustain a professional operatic career in Malta, even though we have one of the oldest...read on.

A Visitor's View: Malta 2013

Malta 2013 from alica gurinova on Vimeo.

Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival August 29-31

Gozo.New.com reported yesterday: "The Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival has now become a successful annual event. It is now in its eighth year and will be held on Thursday, 29th, Friday 30th and Saturday the 31st August, at the Msida Bastion Historic Garden, in Floriana, opposite the Central Public Library, at 8 pm.

This year’s participating writers are Angela Bonanno (Sicily), Tsead Bruinja (Netherlands), Maria Grech Ganado (Malta), Khaled Khalifa (Syria), Mazen Maarouf (Palestine), Nikola Madzirov (Macedonia, FYROM), Immanuel Mifsud (Malta), Denisa Mirena Piscu (Romania), Monique Roffey (UK), Karl Schembri (Malta/Gaza), and Fahredin Shehu (Kosova).

There will be a food and drink stall and a book stand. Live unconventional music will be played by Jes Psaila, Justin Galea and Michael Galea (Thursday and Friday) and Joe Debono and Manuel Pulis (Saturday). Short films from Reel Festivals will be shown on every night.

Readings (and interviews on stage) will be in many languages, but mainly in English and Maltese. The festival is organised by Inizjamed with the support of various partners, namely Din l-Art Helwa, the British Council, Middlesea Insurance, the European Commission Representation in Malta, Reel Festivals, and the Culture Programme Success Scheme run by the Cultural Contact Point of Malta. Entrance to all events is free.

Full programme and details at www.inizjamed.org or write to inizjamed@maltaforum.org"

Malta's Success in Tourism Serves as Good Example

The Malta Independent wrote on August 22nd, 2013:

Libya hopes to emulate Malta’s tourism success

Malta’s success in tourism is an example that Libya wants to follow, according to Libyan Tourism Minister Ikram Bash Imam.

Ms Bash Imam is on an official visit to Malta at the invitation of the Maltese government, and she met her Maltese counterpart Karmenu Vella for talks today, in what marked her first official visit to a foreign government.

Mr Vella had accompanied Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on a visit to Libya last June, although on that occasion, the Libyan Tourism Ministry was represented by under-secretary Abdulsamea Mahboob.

The focus of today’s talks was improving cooperation between Malta and its southern neighbour, including through a revision of an agreement on cooperation in the tourism sector which had been signed in 1995.

Other items on the agenda include the development of...read on.

Malta in Figures 2012

The NSO National Statistics Office Malta has published a comprehensive statistic survey about Malta, a good too for everybody who is looking into doing business in the Maltese Islands. Download the 76 pages catalogue 's free PDF » here.

Malta - Best Climate in the World

We knew it all along, in the Maltese islands we enjoy one of the best climates on the world. This is what «International Living» wrote in January 2011, and the weather has not changed a bit since then. Promised.

International Living’s 2011 Quality of Life Index Reveals Best Climate in the World

"Two countries have tied for first place with the best climate on earth in this year’s Quality of Life Index, published last week in International Living magazine.

Climate is one of nine categories that go in to calculating the countries with the best quality of life in the annual International Living index. Sharing top scores for climate in the 2011 index are Malta and Zimbabwe.

Of the two, Malta is our favorite, says International Living magazine Editor Eoin Bassett. “But with 5.2 hours of sunshine a day, a stable government and economy, Malta is a very strong draw for expats. And it’s English-speaking.

Anchored almost in the center of the Mediterranean Sea, 60 miles from the Italian island of Sicily, frost and snow are mostly unknown in Malta, and the temperature nudges 70 degrees Fahrenheit even in November.

The five islands that make up Malta aren’t on everyone’s radar, and are mostly unheard of by Americans. About 500,000 Maltese live on the largest, more sophisticated main island (ed. 417'000 on all islands) , and most have a lively urban lifestyle. Homes and apartments here attract an international set as do the historic...read on."

Festa Season in the Maltese Islands

During the months of July and August in particular, the Maltese villages honour their patron saints. Each village starts to prepare for the "festa" days before the main event. Streets are being decorated with garlands, banners and emblems, Christian figures crown decorative statues in the piazzas around the church, the community's brass band is busy rehearsing and petards greet the saint three times per day, topped with a beautiful firework on the day of saint's appearance.
Attard is one of the "three villages" (with Lija and Balzan), located right in the center of the island of Malta. This small community celebrates rather modest compared to other communities, but equally impressive. Santa Marija is their parish\47s patron saint, and her day is August 15th. The night before, the brass band played their best from religious tunes to songs by Lucio Dalla and Hans Zimmer, accompanied by fine soloists, while all chairs were taken, and children sat on the banister around the piazza. People met in the restaurants for a drink and the parish center's large yard had been turned into an open air restaurant.

August 15th and the days prior to the event, many blessings were given and masses celebrated by the parish priest's to honour Santa Marija. In the evening of the day of Maria Assumption, her statue was carried out of the church by eight strong men and helpers, accompanied by a catholic symbols and parishoners. The brass band played, a choir sang, and a baritone gave the Maltese version of the Ave Maria. And Santa Marija danced to the tunes, while her statue was slightly swayed to the music, before the procession took its route through the village.

See the islands through ‘My Maltese Guide’

There's a new App available for the dedicated traveller of the Maltese islands. Business Weekly had a look at it, and I, too.

This App is primarily audio. Not bad. It suggests a number of tours that are narrated (in English only). The onetime charge is minimal, and it is certainly suitable for the first time visitor. Here's what Business Weekly found:" Travellers are constantly on the look out for new, exciting and cost-effective ways to see the places they visit. As a result, in-app travel guides that can be downloaded to mobile phones or tablets quickly and easily have soared in popularity.

Launching Malta’s most dynamic travel app to-date, Stephen Place, the entrepreneur behind the successful My Irish Guide app that launched last year, explains that My Maltese Guide is a perfect fit for tourists to our islands.

“The ethos behind our guides is that they need to be great fun and very useful,” he says. “I have been living in Malta for around eight months now and have become very familiar with it.

“So, when I saw how many people were enjoying the innovative mix of audio and text on My Irish Guide in Ireland, my team worked on a niche concept for Malta. The results are hugely promising and we’ve already seen a surge in downloads from people around the world.”

Between research and development, it took around three months to put the app together. The team chose to take an innovative and light-hearted approach, with snappy audio walk-throughs, easy-to-read...read on."

Diversity in different sectors of the tourism industry

Dr. Roberta Lepre wrote on Business Weekly 8 August 2013: "Tourism is undoubtedly a pillar of the Maltese economy. Data shows that tourism is growing, therefore efforts need to be made to ensure that the industry is managed well in order to enable it to prosper, ultimately benefiting all those who are directly or indirectly impacted by it. Thus, the effective management of people working in the industry is key.

Effective people management in the tourism industry is a principle with which all stakeholders agree. However, the implications of this are not clearly and coherently understood. In particular, the management of diversity within the tourism industry is a craft that still needs to be grasped well in order to allow it to reap its full benefits.

The need for managing diversity in the tourism industry stems from the fact that, due to immigration, globalisation, and contemporary tourism trends, people both working in the industry as well as its consumers, tend to come from diverse backgrounds, thus creating a collective mixture. In hospitality for instance, it is obvious that a substantial number of people working in the industry are non-Maltese. With low cost airlines linking Malta to an ever- increasing number of other countries, customers also come from all parts of the world. The same can be said for the travel and leisure industry, where one can spot a milieu of...read on."

Malta Motor Madness

Stepping out of our home in Malta, it seems as if we lived in a huge parking place:

Malta (and Gozo) is just full of cars. Every household owns an average of two cars, if not more, and even short distances are often not walked but driven (scroll down for some statistics). Children are being delivered to and picked up from school by car. Too dangerous for walking or biking say their mothers. Understandable, as you can see for yourself every day how many red lights are being jumped. And indication lights are just decoration on the chassis. Public transportation is widely available, but due to the chaos at rush our in particular (caused by too many cars). Arriva's on time rate is as poor as 70%. And since London's mayor Ben Johnson dumped Arriva's bendy buses from London's narrow streets, they replaced the picturesque old Maltese buses the same year and now struggle with the road system in the Maltese Islands. Needless to mention that complaints about the bus system amongst the Maltese are omnipresent.

How to solve this? I guess any politician who wanted to restrict the number of cars per household to 1 (just like Bermuda) would commit political suicide. At the moment. So we will continue to sit in traffic jams and wait for an ideal solution to fall from the skies ...

Some Statistics:
Increase in motor vehicles by June 2013
Article by: di-ve.com news

At the end of June, 2013, the stock of licensed motor vehicles stood at 318,720, up by almost 1% over the previous quarter, of which 79.3% were passenger cars, 14.5% were commercial vehicles, 5.1% were motorcycles, while buses and minibuses accounted for less than one%.

New licences issued during the period under review amounted to 4,514. The majority of new licences (3,561 or 78.9% of the total) were issued to passenger cars, followed by goods-carrying vehicles with 448. Newly-licensed ‘new’ motor vehicles amounted to 1,977, or 43.8% of the total, and newly licensed ‘used’ motor vehicles totalled 2,537. This increase may be due, in part, to a reduction in the rates of registration tax for passenger cars and goods carrying vehicles with euro 5 or 6 engines, and the reduction or abolition of the registration tax for motorcycles. The new rates were announced in quarter one.

In the second quarter this year, 36 vehicles were exported. Garaged vehicles amounted to 1,867, while scrapped vehicles totaled 1,254.

As at the end of June, 194,446 vehicles, or 61.0%, of the total had petrol engines. Vehicles with diesel engines reached 123,721, or 38.8% of the total.

Malta Eyes Stronger Ties With The GCC

As Cyprus battles with a collapsed banking system, fellow Med-island state Malta is pushing for investment.
GCC: Gulf Cooperation Council or Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf

By Meghna Pant on Gulf Business, 04 August 2013: "Recent events in relation to the collapse of the Cypriot banking system and the Eurozone’s unprecedented plans for its restructuring programme have brought to the fore questions about other supposed European tax havens, such as Malta and Luxembourg.

Malta, in particular, has borne the brunt of comparisons, due to its similarities with Cyprus. After all, both are Mediterranean island states, members of the European Union (EU) and the Eurozone, and both have a strong track record in financial services.

Yet, on closer examination, these comparisons seem fundamentally flawed. Not only do Malta and Cyprus have different economies, but also their banking systems are quite different from one another. The Cyprus crisis has been compounded by the high exposure of Cypriot Banks to Greek debt. This was exacerbated when the EU introduced a haircut on Greek bonds in 2011. And since the island’s financial sector constitutes almost 40 per cent of the local economy, the ripple effects of a banking system shutdown were felt across the economy.

Malta’s banking system, on the other hand, paints a different scenario. The local banks have strong solvency ratios, and, with capital adequacy ratio above...read on."

Four Heritage Malta sites receive TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence for 2013

Heritage Malta published on August 2nd, 2013:

Four  Heritage Malta sites have received a Certificate of Excellence for 2013 by TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel site

The National War Museum, the National Museum of Archaeology, the Inquisitor’s Palace and the Grandmaster’s Palace (which includes both the State Rooms and the Palace Armoury) have received the award which is given only to establishments that consistently achieve outstanding traveller reviews on TripAdvisor.

Sleeping Lady

As stated in the official website www.tripadvisor.com, “Winners of the Certificate of Excellence are located all over the world and represent the upper echelon of businesses listed on the website, with only the top 10 percent receiving the prestigious award.” This means that these four Heritage Malta sites have constantly featured as top attractions by those who visited them...read on.

Longest dining table: Malta breaks Guinness world record

The Maltese are full of ideas: "The 'Dine Along the World's Longest Table' event, organized by the Żabbar local council, together with its Culture Action Team, was held on 27 July at Sanctuary Street in Zabbar, Malta; at 359 metres long, the dinning table used during the event beat the previous Guinness World Records' record of 302 metres and sets the new world record for the Longest dinning table, according to the World Record Academy: www.worldrecordacademy.com/.

First, a substantial number of bricks were placed along the main road. These served as the base for the table, The Malta Independent reported. Then on next morning, planks of wood were placed, paving the way for the longest table in the world to take shape. At 359 metres long, it beat the ... read on."

Visit Malta ....

Some cool takes of Malta and Gozo on this short clip - for your entertainment: