Reference is made to the article published on 30 March, titled ‘Malta hotel rooms rank among most expensive’ as reported in the annual Hotel Price Index issued by hotels.com.

This information as published by hotels.com cannot be further from the truth. From time to time the local media publishes press statements issued by foreign organisations without asking local trade organisations for their comments, and consequently such reports may give a very distorted picture of matters, as has happened in this case.

The actual achieved average hotel room rate (AARR) for Malta for year-end 2010 was €59, which is a far cry from the quoted €143 rate.

In fact the highest average achieved rate for 2010 was of €98 in the 5-star category, which still is hugely lower than that quoted by the hotels.com index.

So why is there such a discrepancy? MHRA gets its results from a scientific and independent survey carried out every quarter by Deloitte. The survey results normally also reflect the trends published by the NSO independently.

We are not aware of the precise methodology adopted by hotels.com, other than it should have represented a weighted average reflecting the size of the quoted market. What we – MHRA is a member of HOTREC and World Tourism Organisation – are sure of, is, that hotels.com have no access to rates that are negotiated between Maltese hoteliers and tour operators who represent close to 60% of the occupied room nights in Malta.

In the case of online bookings, which represent less than a third of occupied bed nights, the rates quoted by hoteliers are all real time and are adjusted almost on a daily basis to reflect the availability or otherwise of rooms in the hotel. The way this market works is that a hotel will bring down its rates when it has rooms available and put up its rates when there are a few rooms or no rooms left. Given the market mix in Malta, it is the lower rate that is achieved and not the higher rate, and consequently the achieved average rate is never anywhere near that advertised online.

To substantiate this point, one may refer to Chapter 6 of the quoted report, which lists a number of countries where one can book hotels for less than €100 a day, but Malta does not feature anywhere there, suggesting that hotel rates in all the hotel categories in Malta, charge higher than the €100 average.

The MHRA would like to say that if the quoted rates were anywhere near those mentioned by hotels.com, we would have a thriving hotel industry, a healthier economy, and certainly no reason to be concerned, but regrettably the facts are very different.

George Micallef

President

Malta Hotels & Restaurants

Association