Christmas time is shopping time!
Christmas is around the corner! My friends in Germany are already pile-driving their way through online shopping, and in the meantime, I must sneak out of work to drive to Tigne Point after work. I might make it to another shopping mall after that (of which there aren’t many over here!) The reason gift-shopping is so painful in Malta is the dire lack of efficiency when it comes to online-shopping. What works in Germany and in most of Europe is simply not possible on this island. There a few online shops around, yes, but the choices are very limited. Whoever is used to the ease of online shopping in Germany faces a very different, much grimmer reality here.
Using Amazon UK, one can get purchases delivered to Malta. Yet the options available are a far cry from the whole package. Inclusive to the limited selections are the mighty shipping costs involved. More importantly, you will first have to confirm whether or not the goods can even be shipped to Malta, and if so, under what conditions.
Online shopping in Malta- forget about it
There is one thing that the loving rays of Malta’s sun will not spare you from -namely due to its island status- it’s that the shipping expenses can truly be costly. If these shipping costs weren’t so high, there would be little profit to be made for the company selling their product. And so we are met with these exponential prices that may cost even more than your order does. Come Christmas time, you can at best try and get away with gifting your loved ones a Maltese souvenir that only looks about halfway generic.
This is just another reason for why 90% of retailers, local and international, who set up in Malta with the hopes of saving money on tax are doomed to fail. As a general rule of thumb, there is no reason why a company would set itself up in such a location where there are so many disadvantages to deal with in the first place, due to the aforementioned location.
Maltese government pushes for improvement in the wrong place
The government here has gotten wind of the issue at hand and is currently working on fixing this lack of online presence for Maltese companies. New, government-funded programs have been designed to train entrepreneurs in the field of online marketing. Too many local companies know too little on the subject. I’m skeptical as to whether this method will be a big hit over here, when the real issue actually lies in the infrastructure, but unfortunately I don’t see the traffic flow in Malta being refashioned any time soon.
