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."
