Gozo as an off-season tourist destination

Abstract

This paper attempts to give an evaluation of the attitudes of tourists who visit Gozo during the off-season period, which for the purpose of this study is defined as the November to March period. It is government policy to spread as much as possible the inflow of tourists to Malta throughout the whole year, and the analysis of off-season tourism is therefore important. The paper is based on a survey, which was carried out by the present author and Ms. A. M. Zammit. Not much information is available on off-season tourism in the Maltese islands, and the survey was intended to fill this gap. The survey focused on Gozo because this island would seem to have a very good potential for attracting tourists in the winter and autumn months. Two groups of tourists were identified, namely Maltese and international. The respondents, chosen randomly, were asked to fill in a questionnaire (see appendix). The number of Maltese tourists who filled the questionnaire was 120, while the number of international tourists was 141. It is not easy to estimate what these numbers represent in terms of percentage of the total, because the number of off-season tourists to Gozo is not known with an acceptable degree of precision. The analysis carried out in this paper describes the results of the two types of tourists and ends with some recommendations.