Referring to a statement issued by Malta Labour Party spokesman Evarist Bartolo, the ministry said it was true that some hoteliers thought it fit to close down their hotels and convert them into apartments or homes for the elderly, other were expanding and upgrading their hotels or building new ones.

Most of them will be completed next year. They include three five-star hotels with an increase of 412 beds, 11 four-star hotels with an increase of 2,012 beds and two three-star hotels with an increase of 130 beds. Apart from these projects, two self-catering clusters have been approved by the Malta Tourism Authority and are now being processed by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority. Some Lm3 million are being invested in these two projects.

The owners of a hotel that has been neglected for quite some time have informed the MTA that the hotel will be reopening in 2006 following an investment of between Lm4 and Lm5 million.

These projects, the ministry said, did not include the Cottonera project and the Manoel Island and Tignè Point project, where Lm160 million are being invested in luxury apartments.

It remarked that between December 2002 and October 2003, the number of beds in tourist villages, aparthotels, guesthouses and hostels increased from 39,790 to 40,979.

The ministry said the government has long been sustaining that the tourism industry will start to recover in the second half of the year. In the first four months of the year, a decline had been registered in the number of tourists visiting Malta. But, in the first seven months of this year, the number of visiting tourists had reached 601,612, compared to the 596,181 tourists who had come to Malta in the first seven months of 2003.

The ministry said that while the opposition often criticised the government because hotels were closing down or being converted, it often also criticised the government for issuing permits for the building of new hotels.