It is a balmy afternoon and the inner courtyard of a hotel is shady and welcoming, with the sound of people splashing about in the pool and some background music.

But over every other noise, there is the tick, tick, tick coming from excavations being done next door.

This is the first year this particular hotel has been free of construction work on one side, only for excavations to start on the other side.

The time has come, an irate hotel owner told this newspaper, for the government to change the building trade regulations: society must take into consideration the impact of construction work, especially excavation, on the normal running of hotels.

People just cannot say: I have a permit and proceed without taking into consideration the principle of neighbourliness. It is fine for people to make a profit but why should the owner of the hotel next door lose money at the same time?

When construction work takes place in the immediate vicinity of a hotel, the tour operator immediately issues a notice to inform potential visitors, bookings go down and the hotel starts losing money.

There are some hotels that have even been emptied because of this. And in today’s world, customers of a hotel immediately post their unpleasant experiences on dedicated websites, which are read by potential customers and people end up boycotting that hotel.

Excavation should never be allowed in the summer months, MHRA vice-chairman Michael Zammit Tabona feels. They must be planned to begin around November.

MEPA should not just issue a licence for excavation: it must also specify the time excavation should start and the date it must end.

The government’s draft regulations are too lenient in this respect: it is simply unacceptable that excavation work is allowed from 7am to 7pm. The times when it is allowed should start from a relaxed 9am and end by no later than 5pm

MHRA suggests one should also start thinking of compensating hotels for the losses they suffer when building work take place around them.

If the building industry’s argument is that everyone has the right to build, the hotel industry can easily reply that people can also lose their jobs. It is pointless to put up rules and then not enforce them.

MEPA should also consider an upper limit placed on development work in a specific area. Only one, at most two, big development projects should be allowed in one and the same area: the others must wait their turn.

And, to paraphrase a tourist, is there a tower crane for every person on the island? Why shouldn’t MEPA insist on day cranes for small developments instead of having tower cranes in the same place for two years in a row?

Another suggestion made was that excavators use rippers rather than diggers: the former are easily available and not so noisy.