'Bed tax is nail in our coffin'

The new bed tax being imposed on visitors for every night spent in Malta is "very stupid and untimely" and will be hammering another nail in the coffin of the language teaching industry, according to the language schools' federation.

The Federation of English Language Teaching Organisations of Malta (Feltom) has joined other tourism organisations opposing the bed tax being introduced in April.

Contacted yesterday, Julian Cassar Torreggiani, a Feltom board member and owner of a language school, said the tax would not only affect hotels but also host families and self-catering apartments, which were widely used by language students.

He said it was fair enough to argue that €4.50 extra for an average tourist staying in Malta for nine nights was not much. However, language students tended to stay for much longer.

"We have students from Russia, Japan and South Korea who come to study English for one or two years. We are already fighting the weak sterling and something like this will only serve to dissuade potential students from coming to Malta. We stand to lose further to our English competitors," Mr Cassar Torreggiani said.

He pointed out that the industry accounted for 13.5 per cent of the total guest nights and the tax would only place Malta at a disadvantage at a time when competition was fierce.

"We strongly oppose this new tax. It simply does not make sense to come up with it at a time when the industry is suffering because it is losing clients to the UK, which is advantaged by the weak sterling," he said.

Moreover, several contracts for 2010 had already been signed and prices could not change now.

The tax came under fire this week from the hoteliers' and travel agents' associations, which urged the government to reconsider the move.

They were reacting to a decision by the Finance Ministry not to postpone the tax again and introduce it in April as planned.

Reacting to the angry statements by the industry, the Finance Ministry said that spending on tourism was now double what it was 10 years ago and revenue from this tax would only constitute a fraction of that amount.

But Mr Cassar Torreggiani said his industry received a pittance to market the country. "There are individual schools that have a greater marketing budget than the amount given to the industry as a whole," he said.

In 2007, he said, the EFL industry had the best year ever attracting about 85,000 students.

The following was a good year for tourism in Malta but the number of students dropped by 3,000. Although figures for 2009 are not yet available, Feltom is expecting a drop of between 25 and 30 per cent.

It is predicting another difficult year for the industry because of the weak sterling.

Mr Cassar Torreggiani said schools were already experiencing a drop in requests for this summer and that tour operators were reporting a rise in demand for the UK.