Last year the Malta Government announced a set of incentives to attract low cost carriers to Malta. They are being granted, however, for selected destinations only. Now the government has been urged to let Ryanair fly from Bologna as well.
It would be "suicide" for the tourism industry if the government did not give Ryanair the Bologna route, which Meridiana has just dropped, and allowed for the shedding of a single route in winter, the president of the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association, Josef Formosa Gauci, insisted yesterday.
Expressing major concern, Mr Formosa Gauci strongly appealed to the government to give Ryanair what it was requesting as part of its package "not to jeopardise its operation" and disrupt the positive trends.
Mr Formosa Gauci was speaking during the launch of the BOV-MHRA hotel survey conducted by Deloitte, which saw all key performance indicators up for the second quarter.
Occupancy levels, average achieved room rates and, as a result, gross operating profits for every hotel category were the highest in the last six years, and tourist expenditure had also increased, the survey revealed.
Tourist arrivals had grown by six per cent in the second quarter (6.4 per cent from January to June) and, at just under 502,000, arrivals for the first six months reached the highest level in the last six years.
Mr Formosa Gauci described the results as "very encouraging" and a confirmation that the collective efforts of the industry's stakeholders were paying off.
Source: The Times of Malta