Ryanair gave the first concrete indications yesterday of what they can offer Malta, and also extended an olive branch to Easyjet, saying that there was enough demand to fly to Malta for both airlines to operate to and from Luton.

The charismatic deputy CEO, Michael Cawley made this claim during a breakfast briefing to announce the low cost carrier’s plans if it gets to service the three routes for which it has applied.

But one would surmise that not all is what it seems.

Mr Cawley and Ryanair have consistently used colourful and rather loud calls for Malta to open its doors to low cost carriers. Easyjet, on the other hand, have been very quiet, but equally active.

But perhaps the best news to come out so far is that Ryanair is confident that both carriers will be awarded the Luton route as well as the others for which they have applied.

People might ask why this is good news, and the answer is simple. Two carriers will probably mean more or less double the number of arrivals that the one would bring, as well as the fact that it would create competition to offer better prices for outbound tourists from Malta.

Mr Cawley stated what is, in our opinion, nothing short of the obvious: Malta’s problem is not its lack of appeal, but a lack of accessibility. We are not a particularly expensive destination to visit, but we are very expensive to get to. One only has to walk past tourist operator windows in the UK to see that a seven-night holiday in Malta is in the region of £100 more expensive than a trip to, for example, Corfu.

Mr Cawley is also reported to have bucked up the spirits of hoteliers and entertainment establishment owners no end in a post-briefing meeting. He told them that Malta has tourism potential and that it is a better overall package than other places. No offence to Mr Cawley at all, but the message has to go out to our tourism sector operators – did we really need an Irishman to tell us this? Did he really need to tell us that we are simply too expensive to get to? If one did some very light brow-furrowing, the answer would have to be “of course not, we knew that already”. If we, the Maltese, find flights out of the island too expensive, them why would foreigners wanting to visit not feel the same? If you were offered a Lm100 seven-night holiday in Cyprus or a Lm200 seven-night holiday in Crete, which would you choose? The answer should be very simple.

We have now heard Ryanair’s plans, and we will obviously hear Easyjet’s in due course, but in the meantime we wait with bated breath. Government must not ponder for too long – this year has been disastrous for tourism and we need arrivals in these late months desperately. There are some hurdles left to overcome, the first of which must be the revision of handling fees, or alternatively some form of reimbursement for the carriers.

Let’s take a leaf out of Mr Cawley’s book. We are stuck in a deteriorating situation – we should not be afraid of competition.