The Malta Tourism Authority yesterday said that its web-portal visitmalta.com and the third-party-owned choosemalta.com were not in direct competition with each other since they do not offer the same services.
The MTA filed a counter-protest in reply to a judicial protest filed by Inspire Ltd, the operator of the website and booking engine choosemalta.com last week in the First Hall of the Civil Court against the Malta Tourism Authority.
Inspire Ltd claimed that the authority, as the regulator of the tourism sector, was abusing of its power when it launched a similar booking engine to the one it operates.
The company claimed that the activity of visitmalta.com was identical to that of choosemalta.com and, therefore, required a licence which, if granted, would have had to be issued by the MTA itself.
In its counter-protest filed yesterday, the MTA said its web-portal is a promotional site which is used to promote Malta. It has 800 pages of information about Malta in various languages and all potential tourists have access to all the information they may need about the country.
It said the portal has been designed to include the potential to be further developed into a full, online one-stop shop – consolidating and distributing a comprehensive and varied range of tourism products, providing real-time reservations, supporting both large and small independent tourism suppliers, promoting a variety of services from all those interested in benefiting from the popularity of visitmalta.com.
On the other hand, it said, the choosemalta.com website forms part of the choosetotravel group, which also promotes destinations that are direct competitors of Malta as a tourism destination.
Whereas visitmalta.com promotes Malta exclusively, on the choosemalta.com website one finds various links for sites promoting travel to Turkey, Tunisia, Croatia, Morocco, Dubai, Corsica and Libya, among others.
The MTA called on the company to stop the legal action it started against it in this regard, adding that the claims are unfounded.