New air routes to thank for record tourism figures

The proliferation of new air routes in 2010 contributed to a record year for tourism, which saw over €1.1 billion being spent by visitors, Tourism Parliamentary Secretary Mario de Marco said yesterday.

The number of routes to and from Malta increased from 57 in 2009 to 76 last year, including Turin, Naples, Liverpool, Seville, Valencia, Billund, Marseille, Oslo and Copenhagen.

Accompanying each new route was a marketing drive by the government and the tourism authority in the source country to let the public know about Malta. Dr de Marco encouraged stakeholders in the industry, particularly hotels, to also market themselves and Malta overseas, as the time when travel agencies reigned supreme was over. Today the trend had shifted towards independent travel, he said.

The parliamentary secretary was speaking at a seminar on travel and accessibility organised by the Tourism Studies Association.

In a presentation, academic Alfred Quintano compared tourist arrivals from 2005, the last year before low-cost airlines, and 2010, the last year for which statistics are available.

He attributed the substantial rise in tourism from Spain and Italy to low-cost carriers which opened routes to third-tier airports. Tourists were attracted by the option of travelling from their local airport on holiday, rather than having to drive a long way to a major airport.

He said there was no published study on which sector benefited most from the rise of low-cost carriers but when comparing hotel occupancy rates between the two years, it emerged that occupancy in three-star hotels had diminished and that in four-star hotels had remained largely the same, while five-star occupancy had increased, despite increased capacity.

Mr Quintano said that, because of these emerging markets, hotels and restaurants had to learn to adapt to a new breed of customer, which had different needs from the average British tourist, still the most common on our shores. “For instance, Spanish tourists expect luxury shopping and restaurants to be open at 10 p.m. for dinner,” he said.

Tourism in Malta had reached maturity and it was now time for the market to change or else decline, he warned.