Launch of the Malta & Gozo e-Tourism Portal
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 e-tourism portal replaced the highly successful website www.visitmalta.com which, over the last years, has achieved a consistent level of around 11,000 visitors daily.
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.’ 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, buses, the Gozo ferry service 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. Moreover the portal provides a set of comprehensive directories related to local accommodation, car-hire, industry specialists, service providers, 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.
The success of the visitmalta Portal can be evidenced by the fact that in the first month of operation the Visitmalta was visit by an average of around 12,000 daily online visitors, and achieving a peak hit-rate of 14,000 visitors at the end of February. A impressive total of 328,111 visitors made use of Visitmalta since the January launch. A third of this figure represents first-time visitors; indicating a perceptible interest by online surfer in the Portal. Moreover, the figure of 200,000 repeat visitors indicates a strong loyalty that is critical to the overall success of the Portal." Statistics for the first month of the e-portal’s operations are as follows:
Average of approx 12,000 daily visitors
Busiest days of the week: Wednesday and Thursday
Slowest days of the week: Tuesday and Friday
Busiest time of day: 4pm-8pm
Average time spent on portal: 10.3 minutes
More than 96 % were international visitors
Most ‘active’ countries: UK, Netherlands and USA.
78 % of individuals visited the portal 1 time only 6% of individuals visited the portal 10 times or more
Most popular downloads: countryside walks, archaeology brochure, bus routes and travel specialists
Most popular page: Interactive Map of the Maltese Islands
During the first 30 days of operation, the portal was visited a total of 328,144 times.
The number of unique visitors amounted to 104,407
The significant increase in online travel bookings and traffic is being reviewed in an article carried in Travelmole.com in recent days (“Surge in January travel website visits”).
This issue is available at: 0703.