Hotels across Malta and Gozo reported improved results this summer when compared to last year, as the prospects for the last quarter of the year remained positive.
According to a survey commissioned by the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association and carried out by audit firm Deloitte, four- and five-star hotels registered increases in occupancy levels and profits while three star hotels saw marginal declines.
Between July and September, there was a 7.3 per cent increase in tourist arrivals and a 5.2 per cent increase in guest nights, resulting in an increase of 5.4 per cent in tourist expenditure.
Hotels collectively reported a 1.4 per cent increase in occupancy but while three- and four- star hotels reported improved occupancy, five-star hotels registered a marginal decline in occupancy of 0.2 per cent over the same results in the same months last year.
Average achieved room rate improved across all hotel groups while gross operating profits per available room improved for four- and five-star hotels. Three-star hotels registered a marginal decline.
On a year-to-date basis, hotels reported a 1.2 per cent improvement in occupancy levels as well as improved room rates. For the first nine months of the year, hotels in all groups registered improvement in gross operating profit levels per available room.
While the UK remained Malta's main market, with 27 per cent of tourists, the three months under review saw the arrival of nearly 11,400 more tourists from Italy and almost 3,000 more from Germany, while tourists from Spain decreased by just over 2,000 tourists. Tourist arrivals this quarter increased by nearly 40,000 over the corresponding quarter last year.
Addressing the conference, the new MHRA president, Paul Bugeja, spoke about the need of long-term sustainability for the hospitality industry.
While welcoming the pace at which the government is moving to decrease utility prices for the industry by 25 per cent by the first quarter of 2015, Mr Bugeja once again made a case for the VAT rate on hotels to be reduced from seven to five per cent as it was recently.
He said the association planned to continue pressing for this revision as it would give hotels more space to breathe and would also help them invest in the much-needed refurbishment of their facilities.