When, last November, Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association president Kevin De Cesare said that hoteliers were worried about the foreseeable decline in tourism figures – he mentioned a potential drop of 20 per cent – tourism authorities chastised The Malta Independent for reporting the statement on the front page.
They claimed that this newspaper was alarming the public – when we were just faithfully reporting what the MHRA president had said, something that must have escaped their attention during the said speech.
Yet the hoteliers, and consequently this newspaper, were proved right because the first tourism figures for this year show that the MHRA was, unfortunately we may add, not far from the truth.
In fact, the National Office of Statistics reported that there was a 19.1 per cent decline in tourism figures for January, coupled with a downturn in hotel occupancy and, of course, a decrease in income from the industry.
This was expected. Few were the optimists who thought that Malta would weather the storm, and that the local tourism industry would only be marginally affected by the financial crisis that has hit everywhere since last September. And this is why a concerted effort was needed to limit the damage as much as possible. And this is why the MHRA was right in trying to pre-empt the problem by insisting that the authorities take the bull by the horns.
We cannot agree with the Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism, Mario de Marco, who, in reaction to the January figures, said that the tourism industry is still holding its ground. How can this be so when there was such a drop? Yes, we are talking about January, not a usually solid month in terms of arrivals, but what if the 20 per cent downward trend continues all throughout the year? What if we lose 20 per cent of August arrivals?
During the same event where Mr De Cesare made his point about the projected decline, Dr de Marco had said that Malta was faring better than average and better than most of its direct competitors. Is Malta still doing so?
On New Year’s Eve, when Dr de Marco visited a number of hotels where employees were preparing for the celebrations marking the start of 2009, he had spoken about efforts that were in hand to market Malta as a destination of quality and that these were expected to help the industry to keep up with past records.
Yet, it seems that these efforts are not working properly. Dr de Marco, in his statement to comment on the January 2009 figures, said that we are eating into the gains made in 2008, considering that the 2009 figures were more or less similar to those of 2007. But we should aim to retain what we earned in 2008, and not go back to 2007.
The government seems confident that the tourism figures will pick up in the second quarter. Both Dr de Marco and Finance Minister Tonio Fenech – the latter addressing a business breakfast on Thursday – said that the industry will see an upturn as from April onwards.
Let us hope they are right, but predictions elsewhere are that the negative effects of the financial crisis will continue all throughout the year, and that all of 2009 will be worse than the last quarter of 2008. Last November and December, the consequences of the recession had already left their mark on what was a record year, and now the effects have spilled over to January.
We do have our strong doubts that Malta will keep up with its past records.
Tourism is one of the mainstays of the local economy, and thousands of jobs depend on it. Just as much as the government is doing its best to see that employment is not lost in other sectors, it should work harder to see that what was gained in the past is not lost. Or at least to limit the damage.