The changing demands of European tourists in Malta

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to assess how hoteliers have responded to change and development of the tourists' needs along the years. Furthermore, the research question is to observe whether European tourists' demands have changed or not during the past decade. For this study, 100 questionnaires were distributed to European tourists who were visiting the Maltese islands which then were analyzed so as to establish what are the changes in demands as well as were to evaluate if tourists' satisfaction has changed along the years. In addition, in-depth interviews were also carried out with 5 different hoteliers from five different 5-star hotels in Malta with the aim of evaluating how hoteliers have responded to the increasing tourists' demands and to find out whether hoteliers were willing to keep up with these demands. Results from this study have shown that nowadays tourists are being more demanding as regards to what facilities they look for when they stay in a hotel. Moreover, from the data gathered, it was clearly evident that all hoteliers try their utmost to meet tourists' demands. Nonetheless, all hoteliers' interviews showed that they try to respond to the increasing demands in diverse ways. Additionally, several limitations were encountered and so recommendations were given which may help hoteliers' to have more guests satisfied.