Hotels in the north of Malta struggling to make ends meet are considering transforming their business into old people's homes, a hotelier has told The Times.
Robbie Borg, who owns Qawra's Inn Hotel, said friends in the business suggested he convert his hotel into such an establishment.
Although Mr Borg has decided against this, he yesterday said a handful of other hotels in the area were considering this option as business dwindled and a number were closing shop for a few months.
"The situation has become so bleak certain hotels and restaurants in the Buġibba and Qawra area are not only considering a temporary winter closure but a permanent change of use by abandoning the tourism sector altogether," the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association said in a statement yesterday.
"The authorities and the public may not yet fully realise how precarious the situation has become for many, who have through their huge financial investment and personal risk worked hard to develop our nation's tourism sector, contributed greatly to our national wealth and created so much employment," the MHRA said.
It criticised the authorities for not doing enough to upgrade the area, saying that although a series of "sorely needed" embellishment works were completed last June, the surface had barely been scratched to transform the area into an attractive holiday resort.
The government, in reply, said that while the MHRA statement gave the impression that the majority of the hotels in the area were closing, those closing for maintenance works represented only four tourist properties out of 61 licensed in the northern area. More than 90 per cent had chosen to operate throughout the year.
The closure of some hotels to carry out refurbishment and maintenance during the low season had to be seen within the context of the government's drive to encourage operators to invest in upgrading programmes, it said.
The government statement, issued by the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs and the Parliamentary Secretariat for Tourism, referred to an article published in The Times Business on Thursday which reported that five hotels in the Buġibba area would be closing down for winter.
The MHRA, they said, failed to point out that one of them, the Qawra Inn Hotel, had been ordered to close in terms of an enforcement order issued by the Malta Tourism Authority because it had been left in a state of neglect. This enforcement order is being contested in court by Mr Borg, the owner.
Others would be closing for specific periods to carry out general upkeep and maintenance.
As for the state of the area, a programme of road surfacing and major patching worth €500,000 was carried out apart from various projects to improve the general product, the statement pointed out.