Seven thousand years of living history have been lost to the public as the Gozo Heritage museum in Ghajnsielem was forced to close its doors last week, with one former senior employee citing the inability of independent Gozitan attractions to compete with the low rates that Heritage Malta offers tour operators.

Former Gozo Heritage director Brian Mizzi, who conceived the idea of the museum, said that it had been losing money for the past four years and they "stuck it out" for as long as they could, but were just not getting enough business. The number of day-trippers visiting Gozo with tour operators has gradually decreased, and companies organising the tours are reluctant to include paying attractions to optimise their profit, he said.

He acknowledged that the Gozo Heritage could not compete with the rates offered by Heritage Malta to tour operators but said he accepted that the national heritage organisation needed to be competitive. The Heritage Malta-run temples at Ggantija are a popular destination for tour operators, as well as the Citadel in Victoria, which contains the Heritage Malta-run Gozo Museum of Archaeology and the Old Prison.

A former senior employee, who declined to be named, said he was "very hurt" by the closure, which led to the loss of 10 jobs. According to him, the museum never recovered from losing significant business due to the reconstruction of the Mgarr-Ghajnsielem road in 2006 and 2007. The road works caused tour operators to stop visiting the museum, and they did not return when the works were complete. No compensation was offered by the government for the loss of business caused by the road closure.

Gozo Heritage officially opened in 1988 and was housed in a large house on the Mgarr road in Ghajnsielem. It consisted of a journey through a sequence of areas, each of which presented an aspect of Gozitan history from the past 7,000 years using model reconstructions with atmospheric lighting and sound.