The indecisiveness that bedevils the way the government thinks about tourism and in particular low cost airlines, which we all thought had been laid aside once Ryanair was persuaded to come to Malta, is still there.

Following the roaring success of Ryanair’s first ventures to Malta from Pisa and Luton, and soon Dublin, the government is still scared to open up more routes to low cost airlines.

Instead of offering a wide range of routes, it offered Scandinavia and Spain. It seems there is only one expression of interest, from a Scandinavian low cost airline, none from Spain.

Re-enter Ryanair into the fray. Ryanair asked for a route from Bremen, a route not covered by Air Malta, and also offered to take up a flight from Gerona, Spain.

Re-enter Air Malta, it would seem. The national airline has said (see interview by MHRA Deputy Chairman Michael Zammit Tabona to Mike Turner on Business Today, 10 January) that if Ryanair gets Bremen, Air Malta will pull out of Hamburg, where it currently flies to three times a week.

“This is very stupid and dangerous,” Mr Zammit Tabona said.

Private conversations with people in the sector not only confirm this but also reveal that the time window for the opening of a Ryanair route from Bremen and Gerona has now expired. There is simply no chance of this happening in the summer season for the simple reason that Ryanair now does not have any more planes available. The low cost giant is not in the habit of keeping planes idle to allow reluctant governments time to make up their minds or tell national airlines where they get off.

The first available window now is the 2007-2008 winter season.

As Mr Zammit Tabona told Business Today, it is complete nonsense to say that if Ryanair get the Bremen to Malta route, then Air Malta will close down the Hamburg to Malta route. The two cities are 100 km away from each other and each has its own hinterland. Furthermore, what would be the gain for Malta if one airline opens and another one closes?

Mr Zammit Tabona had a very clear message to pass on to Air Malta. First of all, the high costs practised by Air Malta and the other scheduled airlines has been a prime factor in the decrease of tourists coming to Malta, that and the lack of available seats. “One of the reasons why things started to go wrong was that Malta became very expensive,” he explained. Secondly, if Air Malta has to be restructured to be able to compete and survive, this cannot be done at the expense of the whole country. The trade unions and all parties must remember that what is at issue is not just Air Malta and the people it employs but more, primarily, the 40,000 people employed by the tourism sector as a whole.

It is not Air Malta’s nor its employees’ fault if the national airline was turned into an employment agency ever since Wistin Abela was the minister responsible for it. “When one compares Air Malta to Ryanair one finds that while Ryanair has 40 employees per plane, Air Malta has 160,” Mr Zammit Tabona said. It is obvious that it is the government’s and the unions’ responsibility to ensure Air Malta slims down. It is the government’s responsibility to look after the people it employed so many years back, so it should take them and not dump them on Air Malta’s back because it is the load that makes Air Malta practise the cost fares it does.

“The unions must ensure that our national airline carries on flying, becomes competitive, because it is an essential component within the tourism structure in Malta. It does not mean that to stop Air Malta from going down, we stop low cost airlines: we need them both, but we need them both to be successful. We need all the national carriers but we also need the low cost airlines,” Mr Zammit Tabona told Business Today.

Josef Formosa Gauci, MHRA’s chairman, has a different point to make. The government is saying that this year it will be spending more on marketing than it did last year. Wrong, it will be spending less. It is true that the overall spend will be higher, but one must factor in the money the government will be paying as subsidy to get the low cost airlines in. Once that is subtracted, it will be clear that the government will be spending less. It is for this reason that MHRA continually tells the government that the MTA must move out from the non-core business such as beach cleaning. MTA must focus on marketing and must be given adequate funds to do that. As it is, quite a substantial percentage of the expenditure goes on salaries.

Both Mr Formosa Gauci and Mr Zammit Tabona expressed agreement with the new structure that is being created in the MTA marketing division and its almost total separation from the operational side of MTA. For far too long, they say, MTA’s focus has been on its internal restructuring. It is now high time to look outwards, and to see how Malta should be marketed abroad.

The Advisory Board on which Mr Zammit Tabona sits, has been very proactively involved in deciding on the MTA advertising spend in the UK and he is well pleased that the adverts now being run are simple and easy to manage and include the price and booking arrangements, which may be somewhat effective in stopping the rot.