MIA reports best ever April

Guzi Abela

May 5th 2012, 19:34

@ Mary Anne Borg
Rising number of tourists to Malta? Dear Ms Borg, that is not what MIA is reporting. Read the above statistics attentively. They say that when you compare the first 4 months of this year (2012) with the same period last year (2011), you observe a decrease of 2.6 per cent. Victor A. Vella is right. It's the total number of incoming tourists for 2012 that counts, not individual months. Unless, of course, you are expecting an
election before the end of 2012, in which case full year results are useless for purposes of political marketing. If the incumbent is re-elected, negative full year statistics will not matter much. If the
incumbent is not re-elected, news of a bad whole year 2012 will not matter much either. One good (and possibly unrepresentative) month in 2012, however, comes in handy to keep followers such as Mary Anne Borg in denial. A case of April fool?

Mary Ann Borg

May 4th 2012, 22:38

@ Peter Murray: You have been forecasting doom and gloom in the tourism industry for ages. Each time, these last four years at least, you have been proven wrong, grossly wrong too. The bottom line is that Malta is hostage to what is happening abroad and the figures clearly explain such situation where tourism from Spain, England and Italy decreased whereas the one from Germany increased. This says a lot of how directly hit we are affected by the economies of EU and other countries. Malta is a beauty, the government works hard to achieve such results and MIA continue to improve their product too, having been declared the best airport in the world in its category. But of course, for you all this is nonsense. Much as it is to me whenever you write about tourism and insist on the same thing even if your proven wrong time after time.

M. Micallef

May 4th 2012, 17:51

The most important figure however was not the snapshot for April but "Passenger movements between January and April decreased by 2.6 per cent, with aircraft movements registering a decrease of seven per cent over the same first four months of 2011." Passenger demand should be growing at around 3% within the EU so again, Malta is under-performing by almost 6% in Q1 2012. Seat capacity decreased by 7.9%!
Congratulations to all those involved, a well deserved pat on the back.
To illustrate, Lufthansa published their Q1 results on the 3rd May and Passenger revenue was up 5.6%. This does not mean passenger numbers increased proportionately but passenger volume has increased around that figure.

Peter Murray

May 4th 2012, 17:22

Ms.M.A .Borg,

Who cares about the rising number of tourists?Well ,if it was true you should and everyone else most certainly should as it would significantly effect all of us.However,the Easter Holiday factor was never mentioned by the MIA or the Minister in announcing this slight increase and this fact was cavalierly circumvented.The end of the year figures will be the acid test so lets wait until then before we all do the dance of joy shall we -all that this except Mary Ann Borg who apparently and quite inexplicably couldn't care less!

Victor Vella

May 4th 2012, 16:33

Good, but compare year-on-year figures for April 2012 with those for year-on-year first four months 2012. To get a better idea of what is happening, let's wait for year-on-year first six months 2012 and, even better, end of year results 2012 on 2011.

Victor A. Vella, Germany

Mary Ann Borg

May 4th 2012, 16:05

Well done to all involved in the tourism industry, not less MIA of course. But who cares about the rising number of tourists to Malta? What we should really focus on is that we have a minister for Justice that is part of the oligarchy and is costing the people of Malta a lot of hardship, or so Franco's dictum goes. And of course, Lejber is in agreement. What a surprise!

Mano' Xerri

May 4th 2012, 15:32

I wish they make up their minds up, one day they tells us its down and guess what the next day they tells us its the best april on records, i just take everything i read now with a pinch of salt, as half the time i do not believe the baggers at all. Its like either a brainwash kind of news media or propaganda for the forth coming elections, I don't believe for one minute that the Maltese are naive or stupid, they can read between the lines. Ah well back to sleep.