Malta Tourism Authority appoints UK director
The Malta Tourism Authority has appointed Tolene Van der Merwe as UK and Ireland director.
Her role will focus on leading a London-based team to further develop and cultivate partnerships with tour operators, airlines, travel agents and niche specialists as well reaching out to the UK public with PR and marketing initiatives.
Accounting for a quarter of Malta’s tourism arrivals, the UK market is the largest for the destination.
Van der Merwe began her career in the tourism industry at Exclusive Getaways, the luxury South African operator and later joined London-based tour operator African Affair Travel.
She joins Malta Tourism Authority following five years as the hub head for South African Tourism for UK and Ireland.
CMO and deputy CEO Carlo Micallef said: "MTA is delighted to have secured the services of Tolene van der Merwe to join a strong highly professional team in London and continue building on the success achieved under Peter Vella’s stewardship in the past 4 years.
"Malta’s tourism industry continues to enjoy record performances year on year and MTA together with Ministry for Tourism have a strategy of further market diversification, route connection development, tourism product enhancement as well as Malta brand identity growth to ensure that the success continues."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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