Tourism to Malta grew more than in any of its Mediterranean competitors this year with a 12.5 per cent increase, to reach 1.33 million visitors who spent €1.13 billion, both record figures for the island.
Despite these figures, Tourism Parliamentary Secretary Mario de Marco was only cautiously optimistic on prospects for 2011, saying the economic problems in many countries, coupled with austerity measures introduced in some, would definitely affect people’s travel and disposable income.
“The coming year will be a challenging one for the tourism industry because a number of Malta’s markets are facing economic problems. We have to see how people will react to the austerity measures introduced in the UK, from where Malta gets 33 per cent of its tourists. Spain still has an unemployment figure of more than 20 per cent,” he pointed out.
Air Malta’s restructuring and the efforts being made for the airline to become commercially viable was another challenge for the country’s tourism industry.
“We want Air Malta to be commercially viable in the long term and not just next year,” he said.
Accessibility, he said, was key to the country’s success in 2010, with the number of routes increasing from 54 three years ago to 76 today.
Asked about the 12 flights from the UK, representing 40,000 seats, which Air Malta had decided to cut next year, Dr de Marco said this was a commercial decision taken by the airline.
“Politicians have to stay at an arm’s length from these decisions. We cannot impose for an airline to continue operating flights which it believes are not commercially viable,” he said.
He added that efforts were being made to replace these seats. Ryanair had started flying from Birmingham, EasyJet will start flights from Belfast in February, Lufthansa will add a flight from Munich in April, while Air Berlin will start flying from Basel in Switzerland and Nuremberg in Germany also from April.
Throughout 2010, he said, Malta registered growth in tourist arrivals every month compared to the same month last year, except for April because of the disruption caused by the Icelandic ash cloud. This cost the country an estimated 13,000 tourists. This month, another 1,400 cancelled their trips to Malta due to the bad weather which hit a number of countries.
This year was also a record one for the number of guest nights, which increased to 11.1 million from the 9.9 million in 2009.
Tourists spent an average of €850 each, raising the total expenditure by more than €205 million or 22 per cent. The amount spent on restaurants, services and museums was higher than last year.
Dr de Marco said Malta had registered increases from all its major markets, including Italy, Spain, Scandinavia and the UK, with only Germany seeing a marginal decline. On this, he said outbound tourism in Germany had not increased this year while that in the UK had fallen by eight per cent.
Malta fared better than any of its competing Mediterranean destinations, with only Morocco coming close with an 11.8 per cent increase over 2009. Turkey and Portugal registered a 6.3 per cent increase while Croatia registered a rise of 4.8 per cent. Spain and Cyprus saw a mere 1.3 and 1.8 per cent growth respectively while Tunisia dropped by 0.9 per cent.
He also noted that 490,000 passengers had visited Malta on cruise liners by the end of the year and this figure was not included in the 1.33 million tourist arrivals.
Meanwhile, figures issued earlier yesterday by the National Statistics Office showed that tourism grew by 8.4 per cent in November, with visitors showing an increasing preference for short breaks. The number of inbound tourists totalled 78,605, with the majority being first-time visitors, although an increase in repeat tourists was also recorded.
The majority came from EU countries, particularly from the eurozone, with the UK and Italy continuing to be the main markets.