The government is to discuss the oversupply of hotel beds in the coming days and a policy on the matter is expected to be drawn up next month.
Tourism Minister Francis Zammit Dimech said yesterday he was in agreement with a number of recommendations made by the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association on the need to control oversupply of bedstock.
Malta Tourism Authority chairman John Grech also agreed on the need to slow the rate of development but warned against any draconian measures.
A position paper on tourism prepared by the MHRA showed that a number of hotels could be driven out of business if the bedstock kept increasing.
There are an estimated 39,000 licensed hotel beds, but if the projected applications all come into being, Malta will have up to 45,000 beds within four years.
Dr Zammit Dimech spoke of the need to consolidate the market and ensure that policies were developed in line with carrying capacity reports that indicated a limit to hotel development.
Dr Zammit Dimech said he concurred with the recommendation that no new hotels should be built on virgin land.
It was important to note that the MHRA was not insisting on extending the moratorium to projects that were already in the pipeline or approved, but it had warned against new projects, he observed.
"What we can do is give a stipulated time limit within which hotels should be built. We are against the concept of somebody having the permit to build a hotel and then sitting pretty on it," the minister said.
In line with the MHRA report, he said permits for the rebuilding or refurbishment of current properties should be encouraged, thereby improving the product while retaining the number of beds.
In fact, the Tourism Ministry had last year announced it would subsidise by two percentage points the rate of interest agreed between banks and operators in the accommodation sector in a bid to upgrade products.
One could also "favourably" consider requests made to the government by operators that would like to switch operations, from, say, a hotel to an old people's home.
The government was also in favour of gearing up enforcement to ensure that hotel standards are kept in accordance with the star rating of each property.
To this effect, Dr Zammit Dimech is to have a meeting with the MTA's enforcement directorate.
According to the paper, tourist arrivals will have to increase to 1.5 million a year to ensure the sustainability of the increasing bed stock.
Dr Zammit Dimech said Malta could take more tourists, provided they are spread more evenly throughout the year.
However, it was more important to emphasise high yield tourism, an increase in bed nights and repeat tourism.
Nokia, Nike, Sony and Agip were among the large corporations holding conferences in Malta this year and this was a good sign, Dr Zammit Dimech remarked.
Dr Grech said he supported the need to recycle existing hotels, as was currently happening in the north of the island.
"We need to tone down the rate of development, though we have to avoid going to extremes, and in the process indirectly sheltering bad quality," he said.
He said other areas might require small, quaint accommodation, while there could still be space for the provision of eco-tourism facilities.