I refer to the report entitled Malta Takes Hardest Knock Of All In Last Four Months Of 2008 (March 12), under the header Tourism In The EU. In the report it is stated that "Malta had the worst drop in tourism figures in the EU during the last trimester of 2008, according to statistics released by Eurostat."

It is to be pointed out that this statement is somewhat misleading for a number of reasons:

i) The Eurostat statistics referred to by The Times do not refer to tourism figures per se. They do not even refer to total tourist bed nights, but are limited to the number of bed nights spent in hotels and similar establishments in the EU 27;

ii) Tourist bed nights include not only nights spent in hotels and similar accommodation a.k.a. as collective accommodation, but also nights spent in private accommodation e.g. rented flats, farmhouses, etc. In this respect it is to be noted that, in 2008, nights spent by tourists in Malta in private accommodation accounted for 29.2 per cent of total nights and nights spent in collective accommodation accounted for 70.8 per cent. The Eurostat statistics referred to by The Times do not include nights spent in private accommodation;

iii) Moreover, it is to be pointed out that, as stated in a footnote to the Eurostat report, the said report is based on incomplete data for the last four months as, by the time of the report, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Italy, Cyprus, Hungary, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom had submitted data only for September. Belgium, Estonia, Greece, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia feature data only for September and October, while Germany, Spain, Malta, Austria, Portugal and Slovenia, feature data for September, October and November.

NSO statistics, on which Eurostat reports are ultimately based, show that for the last four months of 2008 the total nights spent by tourists in Malta amounted to 3.348 million, i.e. an overall decrease of 4.1 per cent over the same period in 2007. The same statistics show that, for the whole of 2008, the total bed nights increased by 2.2 per cent over the same period in 2007.

The Malta Tourism Authority is closely monitoring the situation in collaboration with all stakeholders.

A monitoring committee headed by the Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism, consisting of representatives of the MTA, MIA, Air Malta and the MHRA, has in fact been meeting since October to examine the situation regularly and to take whatever remedial measures may be necessary and feasible to ensure that the industry emerges from these challenging times with the least damage possible.