The 50c bed tax is being shelved and replaced with a €3.50 eco-contribution per tourist payable upon arrival, irrespective of the length of stay, Parliamentary Secretary Mario de Marco announced this morning.
He said this would increase the government’s revenue by an estimated €3.5 to €4 million which would be reinvested in the tourism industry through a number of initiatives aimed to encourage hotels invest in tourism.
The first initiative was an increase in the number of routes serviced by Malta. Sixteen new routes were to be introduced this year by a number of airlines, including Air Malta, Ryanair and Easyjet, he said..
The fact that Ryanair would have a plane based in Malta meant the introduction of six new routes by this airline. The 16 new routes were expected to increase seat capacity to Malta by 7.5 per cent, Dr de Marco said.
Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said another initiative was aimed to encourage hotels invest in alternative energy. €3 million to €5 million were being allocated to help hotels invest in alternative energy to reduce consumption.
Hotels were also being helped with energy audits to enable them to know what they were consuming. The government was also considering the possibility of soft loans to finance part of this investment.
The government was also helping hotels expand, refurbish and upgrade through schemes with Malta Enterprise. Currently, the government subsidised up to 1.5 per cent of hotels’ interest on their loan. This was now going up to three per cent.
The government was also extending the budget for joint marketing schemes through which it matched the money invested in marketing.
Dr de Marco said the government was extending the possibility for hotels facing difficulties to approach a government task force for assistance.
MHRA president George Micallef said the association was pleased with the agreement reached and although this year would still be a challenging one, especially due to price sensitivity, the schemes would not yield short term but long term results.