Stress on short stays and long high season

Laying more stress on short breaks on the island and selling Malta's "long summer and long autumn" seasons will be high on the agenda of both the tourism authorities and Air Malta in their bid to attract more visitors.

"We must lay stress on short stays on the island," the chairman of the Malta Tourism Authority, Sam Mifsud, said during the ITB international travel tourism fair, in Berlin, last week. He said Air Malta was already working on the promotion of such short holidays, offering discounts to boost interest.

Figures released by IPK International as part of its European Travel Monitor show that short trips of one to three nights in length rose by 10 per cent in the first eight months of last year as against zero growth for longer trips of four-plus nights.

The monitor attributed this to an increased demand for low-cost/no-frills flights.

The International Passenger Survey, the official national survey of inbound and outbound travel conducted by the UK Office of National Statistics, notes that the opening of new points in central and eastern Europe by low-cost/no-frills airlines has stimulated demand for short breaks to emerging destinations in the region.

The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) notes, in relation to British holidaymakers, that more people are choosing to tailor their own trips, either packaging complete holidays or booking individual elements of their trips separately.

Aware of this worldwide trend, the MTA has now adopted a different approach and is working closely with operators and reaching out directly to the end user. "We are focusing more on direct bookings, at the same time collaborating with operators, and this is yielding results. Indeed, we have managed to halt the haemorrhage since November. Our ultimate aim is Destination Malta," Mr Mifsud said.

He said the MTA would concentrate on the market while at the same time work on the product. "There are things that need to be changed but we must be willing to acknowledge that there are aspects of Product Malta that are good, are unique to us, and so are an asset."

Mr Mifsud said he was fully in agreement with the "no winter" idea being promoted by Air Malta. "We must all push that concept," he insisted.

Brock Friesen, Air Malta's Canadian chief commercial officer, is adamant that the island should be sold as a destination which has no winter but a long summer and a long autumn. "Indeed, Air Malta's summer schedule extends between the first week of March and the last week of November. We can then sell December, January and February as the non-summer period," he said.

A problem that was dogging the Maltese tourism authorities last year was a shortage of capacity, that is air seats. This was mostly evident on the German sector, and Germany is Malta's second largest tourism market.

Tourism Minister Francis Zammit Dimech was very open about this problem when he addressed the German press on the Malta stand at the ITB fair. He called it "the most obvious problem" in the case of the German market. However, he was quick to say that the situation had been addressed by adopting a three-pronged approach: Air Malta has increased the number of seats exponentially; the island was making the best of a code-sharing agreement between Air Malta and Lufthansa and agreement was struck with German Wings to start operating a service from Stuttgart and Cologne at the end of this month.

The minister took the opportunity to inaugurate the German version of the MTA portal, which includes about 800 pages of information, an interactive map and a search and booking engine. The portal's details were explained to the German press by MTA's chief executive officer David Mifsud.

Arthur Grima, Air Malta's manager in Germany, said that this summer capacity was estimated to increase by 50,000 seats, or about 25 per cent, taking into consideration additional/new flights being operated to and from Frankfurt, Cologne (charter), Munich, Düsseldorf, Berlin and Hamburg. This summer, Air Malta will be operating a daily flight to Frankfurt.