Malta potential for short holidays to be promoted in Germany

The chairman of TUI AG's executive board, Michael Frenzel, forecasts that tourism growth from Germany worldwide should regain momentum in 2003.

He added that TUI would soon be launching its own low cost airline and that he would be alerting TUI AG to Malta's potential for group and short break holiday traffic.

Dr Frenzel left on Tuesday at the end of a short fact-finding visit to Malta during which he called on Tourism Minister Michael Refalo and the Prime Minister.

Dr Frenzel was accompanied by Gianfranco Selvaggi, TUI's Malta representative.

When discussing recent developments in the tourism scene, Dr Frenzel commented that Germany had followed Malta and is the second European country to acquire approved destination status for visitors from China. He said he expected the China market, as well as outgoing tourism from Russia, to grow exponentially.

Dr Refalo and Dr Frenzel agreed that TUI AG would hold one of their executive board meetings in Malta to give members the opportunity to experience and familiarise themselves well with the Malta product, the Department of Information said in a statement.

TUI AG is the world's largest tour operating conglomerate and owns Germany's number one leisure company, TUI, as well as its UK counterpart, Thomson Holidays. It has a sizable shareholding and direct managerial interest in Nouvelle Frontiere, and Alpitour, leading brand names in France and Italy respectively. TUI's other leisure interests extend along a wide range of other tourism operations in the Benelux, the cruise line business, hotel properties and airline companies.