When director Ridley Scott was being interviewed about Gladiator II, he praised Malta’s architecture, but added the damning comment: “I wouldn’t advise going there on holiday.”

Predictably, all hell broke loose (and, to be fair, any nationality would have had the same reaction if someone had slagged off their country so publicly). The indignant patriotism was out in full force, sometimes excessively so – but there were also those who applauded Scott for his brutal honesty, taking it as another opportunity to bash Malta (and, by extension, the Labour Government, although it deserves it for allowing so much of the country to be ruined.)

But the jibe particularly rankled because the production house had received a record €46.7 million rebate for filming the sequel in Malta. And just to be clear, and to squash the misinformation which is going around, Ridley did not personally pocket all those millions, but some of it went towards paying his salary, that of the main cast and the film crew. The rest was to cover the cost of equipment, costumes, props and all the many other expenses needed for a movie of this scale.

Should he have been more gracious towards the country which was used as his filming location? Yes, probably. On the other hand, we would be naive to think that giving these generous rebates means that anyone is obligated to go around promoting Malta as a quid pro quo. Those in the film industry are not ad hoc tourism spokespersons, and if they don’t like what they have seen, they will say it.

Enticing tourists to come here is the job of the Malta Tourism Authority and, as we know, the best marketing campaigns, whether it is a restaurant or a destination, are word of mouth recommendations. You can spend lavishly on TV adverts, features during morning shows, flying influencers here to promote the island to their followers – but if, when the average tourist comes here, he is deeply disappointed by the experience and warns friends and families not to come, then all the money in the world cannot recoup the damage caused by such a bad review.

The hype and rage against Ridley Scott’s comment will eventually die down (unless someone tars and feathers him first), but unless our big spender Film Commissioner Johan Grech learns his lesson from this, it will just be one of those incidents which will end up in some Panto. The bottom line is: you can’t buy good publicity, it has to be earned and this can only happen when your product is so excellent it will speak for itself.