New MTA portal visited by over 13,000 a day

The Malta Tourism Authority's new e-tourism portal is already showing encouraging results, the regulator said yesterday.

The redesigned visitmalta.com was launched two weeks ago. Whereas the monthly average of daily visitors to the portal in January 2006 was 8,406, the first week's figure for the e-tourism portal reached 13,615 - an increase of 62 per cent and a record.

This is even higher than the annual daily average of more than 11,000 visitors registered over the whole of last year, the MTA said.

Despite its apparent success so far, the authority's portal has been somewhat controversial. Inspire Ltd, operator of choosemalta.com, has filed a judicial protest saying the MTA's booking engine constitutes an abuse of power and a conflict of interest because the MTA is the regulator of the industry. In a counter-protest, the MTA said hotels, travel agents, tour operators and car rental firms had agreed on the setting up of the portal.

The MTA said yesterday the most active day was January 25 when 16,279 visitors made use of the portal. The most popular download was the online document listing travel specialists and information about carnival was accessed more than any other single event.

The vast majority (96.7 per cent) of visitors to the portal were from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Italy.

On average, visitors spent 12.5 minutes browsing the portal. The most popular feature so far has been the interactive map of the Maltese Islands, closely followed by the Events And Recommendations segment.