Tourism and low-cost airlines

In Malta we have a habit of blaming someone or something when things go wrong or when they do not meet our expectations. I have been in tourism for 30 years and every time we had an incoming tourist decrease or we do not register an increase, we invariably blame something or someone. I remember the times when we used to blame the buses, other times we blamed the taxi drivers, the roads, the pavements and so on. We blame the things we hate as we deem them deficiencies that upset tourists as well. The latest trend is that we blame the government as it ought to bring in low-cost airlines.

Well, we now have new buses, more educated taxi drivers, have finalised so many embellishment programmes, including new red tile pavements etc., but we also ended up with a big hole in the government finances. We are, however, back to square one in the sense that an acceptable increase in tourism has not been registered. So now it is opportune to blame the government for the lack of low-cost airlines.

Last year I started a low-cost airline called Britishjet.com. Notwithstanding considerable investment in marketing this airline successfully with the local population, politicians, somehow, are still not aware of Britishjet.com's existence, as when they talk about low-cost airlines they hardly ever mention it. (To be honest, I was told that a few days ago the Minister of Tourism made reference to it for the very first time.)

The fact is that Maltabargains.com increased incoming tourists by 50,000 in 2005 with the start up of Britishjet.com, but in winter we had to cut 60 per cent of the flights as we could not even manage to sell seats at giveaway prices of £22 one way or at £44 return. However, ultimately, it does not matter if low-cost airlines do not solve the problem, as we will end up blaming something/someone else.

The reality is that Malta is a summer destination. In winter we do slightly better than some other Mediterranean destinations, such as the Balearic Islands, Cyprus, and Corfu, as most of them close their tourist operations in winter. Only the Canary Islands do extremely well in winter, as their winter is just like our summer.

In Malta, however, we keep missing the wood for the trees and we compare the island with the Canary Islands or with London, Paris, Rome or other northern European cities, when these have tourism all the year round. Having said that, the government must do everything in its power to reduce the heavy costs it has burdened hotels with.

High on every hotel's expense list is winter heating. To give an example, a year ago we needed Lm150 a day to heat one of our hotels and this has shot up overnight to Lm450 a day; the costs of electricity has also gone up with a 67 per cent surcharge. I fully understand that if the buses and lorries were using paraffin to avoid tax, the government had no alternative but to increase the price and bring it to the level of diesel prices, but I fail to understand why the cost of heating oil is more than twice the cost of what paraffin cost a year ago. This fuel cannot be used by buses or lorries but is only good for boilers.

During the last few years, things went haywire in tourism as at first we had the government helping with the Toss/FBR schemes and subsidising the pound sterling, but then all this was stopped and the government added fuel to the fire by penalising the hotels through heavy costs and taxes.

I am fully aware that the EU does not allow the government to subsidise the tourist industry but there is nothing to stop the government from cutting the costs incurred by the hotel and tourist industry in general, as that is the only solution there is. The problem is not the low-cost airlines; if low-cost airlines want to operate to/from Malta there is nothing to stop them from doing so, they can simply notify the authorities and they will be here tomorrow.