Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi yesterday hailed last year’s record tourism results, but warned against complacency in the crucial sector as, he said, “nothing could be taken for granted”.

Brandishing yesterday’s National Statistics Office press release on last year’s tourism performance, Dr Gonzi declared, “It’s official now. Last year was a record year in the history of Malta’s tourism industry.”

Preliminary indications for the first three weeks of the year cited by Dr Gonzi yesterday also presented good reason to be hopeful that this year could very well set yet another record. The first three weeks of 2008 have, in fact, showed a 23 per cent increase in passenger movements in and out of Malta.

Last year’s tourist arrivals, according to the NSO, increased by 10.6 per cent over 2006 and reached 1,243,510. But, Dr Gonzi stressed, one also had to look at items such as tourism expenditure and bed nights – both of which had also grown substantially last year.

This growth, he said, has translated into additional growth in the cottage industries surrounding the tourism sector and well as in employment prospects.

“The government’s strategies for the sector have produced both the numbers and quality of tourists desired,” Dr Gonzi remarked yesterday during a visit to two hotels currently expanding their premises.

The Hilton Hotel aims to have a 110-room extension ready for its first guests in April following a Lm5.5 million investment. The Hotel Bayview in Gzira, meanwhile, also recently invested Lm1.5 million in expanding its room count, and is ready to invest another equal sum once MEPA approvals come through.

Dr Gonzi added that the government, however, should not fall complacent on last year’s record figures and that it would continue to invest in the growth of the industry.

While Dr Gonzi expressed confidence that this year’s tourism could end up exceeding last year’s unparalleled results, he listed the drivers behind last year’s success as a concerted marketing drive, the use of the internet as a powerful tourism tool and the introduction of low cost airlines.

All this, he said, was no coincidence but rather the result of a clear strategy employed by the government and the Malta Tourism Authority, to which the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association had given a “constant and consistent input”.

Instrumental to the industry’s success last year, he said, was the opening of Malta’s doors to low cost carriers.

The decision, he said, was taken responsibly and in full consideration of its effect on national carrier Air Malta. The airline, however, had found its feet in the new landscape and was even benefiting from the intensive advertising of Malta by such low cost carriers. There were detractors to the line of thinking, Dr Gonzi recalled, but these have now been proved wrong.

The government, he added, has invested “not thousands, but millions of Maltese liri” in the tourism sector - funds that had not been budgeted for but which are now bearing fruit.

Malta, Dr Gonzi, said was being promoted and marketed “as a unique and unrepeatable experience” and in such a way that Malta should be an automatic choice in potential tourists’ minds.

Overall Product Malta, he said, was being invested in through various public works on roads, roundabouts, Valletta, Merchants’ Street and on a number of beaches.

The still to be approved e855 million Malta is to receive up to the 2013 in EU funding, Dr Gonzi added, will see the country investing far more in Product Malta – in a range of areas such as cultural and historical heritage, bastion restoration, new or improved beaches and fostering the in diving industry in Qawra and Bugibba.

In addition to the ongoing advertising campaign, other future initiatives include increasing Malta’s internet presence, which had proved a boon last year as European tourists were seen moving out of the traditional tour operator business in favour of direct bookings over the internet.

The Malta Tourism Authority, Dr Gonzi added, must remain flexible so as to achieve quick response times, as it had done in the last year.

Dr Gonzi also urged the industry’s participants, both direct and indirect, to give Malta’s tourists the very best of Maltese hospitality.

The government, he observed, can continue investing in advertising and infrastructure, but the bottom line is hospitality and tourists need to experience true Maltese hospitality in all tourism-related services - from hotels to restaurants to taxis and buses.