Applications for hotel extensions, new hotels being considered
Video: Matthew Mirabelli
The Dolmen Hotel in Qawra is going through a continuous refurbishment programme through which it invested €4.1 million between 2008 and 2011 and is investing another €3 million between this year and next year.
The hotel had already invested €5.5 million in a major refurbishment programme in 2004.
Hotel general manager Alex Pace told Tourism Minister Mario de Marco during a visit this afternoon that the hotel had refurbished
200 rooms and installed 49 solar water heating panels. The cost of the panels was €180,000 but the hotel benefitted from a government grant reducing the cost by 50 per cent.
It was now refurbishing the remaining 200 rooms and other areas. To further support the environment, the hotel will do away with tablecloths at its restaurants, saving on water and energy. The hotel door has been replaced by a revolving one allowing for better climate control.
The hotel had also replaced its old five chillers with two, more energy efficient ones.
Through the measures it had taken, it was using 20 per cent less fuel and 22 per cent less electricity.
Mr Pace noted that the hotel had benefited from €725,000 in tax rebates.
Dr de Marco said that, rather than subsidise hotel bills, the government had opted to help hotels invest in something that would help them save in the long term.
November, he said, was the eighth consecutive record month indicating a positive year ahead.
The minister said that the first record achieved was in 2007 when 1.2 million tourists visited spending a total of €1 billion.
Up to October this year 1.3 million tourists had visited spending €1.2 billion.
He noted that the Malta Tourism Authority currently had 100 applications related to tourism - 30 for hotel extensions, 70 for the development of new hotels.
Popular Stories
Update 3: Marsa murder - Police looking...
Update 2: Three arrests after flamingo...
Former Judge Ray Pace found dead
Where’s Everybody staff is given notice
Revealed...the face of a Maltese woman...
Update 4 - Eddie Fenech Adami stable...
Update 3 - Woman trapped as car crashes...
Updated - Two bodies, capsized boat,...
Franco Mercieca doing routine eye ops at...
In Discussion
Update 2: Three arrests after flamingo...
Enemalta seeking minimum five year gas...
Mario de Marco, Zammit Dimech concede,...
Chinese company to study Malta-Gozo...
Updated - PM reacts to Labour anger on...
Franco Mercieca doing routine eye ops at...
No appeals board for first part of power...
Updated - PM comments as Franco Mercieca...
BBC site highlights illegal hunting in Malta
14 Comments
Post comment
Please sign in or create your Account to post comments.
M. Attard
Dec 6th 2012, 21:46
maybe there are more than 70 applications to change the present Hotels into Elderly Homes...... as already many did.
Joe Grech
Dec 6th 2012, 20:14
It was about time some of Malta's hotels got a real refurbishment. Some were just going to the dogs!
Minister de Marco must surely know that tourists come here at real cheap prices. They pay the lowliest of fares and even have drinks included. Not much generation of capital.
And we Maltese are of course subsidising Tourism through our own pockets! What a deal!
HENRY FENECH AZZOPARDI
Dec 6th 2012, 18:41
30 for hotel extensions and 70 for new hotels and all this according to the PL we have instability so how much more applications we would have had if there was stability? How much applications we would have had if Gonzi gave in and called an early election and the PL was in Government?
If the PL was to be credible and win some votes for the coming elections it should at least abstain.
Robert Gauci
Dec 6th 2012, 21:24
Let me tell you this Dear Henry, with the Pn good or wrong the economy rolls. With the Pl the economy halts. It tradition, so it may repeat itself.
T Mifsud
Dec 6th 2012, 17:33
Incredible how the Hon De Marco knows all those figures by heart!
Moaners when tourism is bad, and now probably same moaners when there is record tourist months forcing investment. Unbelievable!
Alexander Brincat
Dec 6th 2012, 17:11
70 hotels?? Brazilian hotel groups perhaps.
Try another one, Minister.
Mr Joe Micallef
Dec 7th 2012, 06:31
Let’s see, record on record in tourist arrivals! Record on record in money spent by same! All this in a context where the world’s going to the dogs and without actively poaching tourists from a country fighting for it’s basic human rights!
Does that shutter your bubble?
Jo Woodall
Dec 6th 2012, 16:50
No more building!!! Of hotels or blocks of flats!! We have plenty of empty ones already.
Chris Sammut
Dec 6th 2012, 17:47
Well said! Agree!
Edwin PACE
Dec 6th 2012, 16:44
Any chance for any of these 70 applications be diverted for development in the Southern Part of Our Island or the south cannot offer any tourist attraction? The only hotel on the south was the Jerma Palace and all of a sudden was closed and remains there abandoned, serving as a eye sore.
M. Agius
Dec 6th 2012, 16:39
Go for a walk in Bugibba, the amount of decaying empty hotels makes it look like a ghost town. It is nothing short of disgusting, its so shabby and MTA is bragging that new applications were submitted?
Joseph Vassallo, (Bugibba)
Dec 6th 2012, 17:54
I only know of one decaying empty hotel, i.e. the old "International". Can you please tell me which other ones you know of so that I can look them up? Thanks and I hope this wasn't a hyperbole.
Charles Grixti
Dec 7th 2012, 04:07
I agree, two summers ago I visited Bugibba and Qawra and in the height of summer July-August and no body was swimming, hotels empty and decrepit. Not at all like I remembered it 10 years ago. Besides the International hotel, the rest were nearly empty and unkempt. It was a real shock for someone who remembes this place in its heyday.
Mr phil sam
Dec 6th 2012, 16:01
Where are these 70 new hotels going to be built ? In the Qawra area there are hotel buildings standing empty,
Please choose the reason of your report below: