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TOURISM MINISTER PROPOSES NEW INCENTIVE PACKAGE FOR TOURISM
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11/09/2001
11/09/2001
| Minister for Tourism Michael Refalo announced that he would soon | submit a new package of incentives for the tourism industry for discussion by Cabinet. The Minister was speaking at Westin’s launch of the "Heavenly Bed", at Palazzo Parisio, in Naxxar. |
| Minister Refalo welcomed more investment in facilities and amenities | available in Five Star properties and was pleased that the Westin Dragonara Resort was included in the chain’s introduction of a special kind of bed, tailor made for business travellers’ needs. |
| The Minister said that the Heavenly Bed launch was an appropriate | occasion for him to reflect on the performance and prospects of hotels in the Five Star category. Dr. Refalo recalled that over a decade ago when he had urged investors to put their money into this segment of the accommodation sector, he had been severely criticised by the Labour Opposition for being elitist and for irresponsibly letting loose of a number white elephants. |
| "Time and experience has proved me right. Labour has sensibly | come round to understanding that failure to offer a full range of hotel establishments would have meant the loss of high rated business, conference and meetings traffic. Although we do have the occasional odd ball who lives in a time warp and still prattles on about five star hotels at these prices, five star hotels with no star service and five star hotels in a one star environment, results clearly show the opposite and underline the excellent performance of the Five Star sector." |
| The Minister than referred to the MHRA report commissioned from | Deloitte & Touche which had been presented that morning. Dr. Refalo said that although 2001 had been forecast as a difficult year for Malta’s tourism industry, Deloitte & Touche’s findings for the second quarter, based on data supplied by the trade itself, proved that against all odds, the industry had held its own and moreover that the performance of the Five Star sector, both in Malta and in Gozo, had surpassed all expectations. |
| "In the second quarter, when compared to 2000’s outturn, | average Five Star hotel occupancy increased by 5% with hotels in Gozo registering a 12% improvement. A number of Five Star properties reached a 90% average occupancy for the whole quarter. Average achieved room rates for the sector improved as did F&B costs and payroll expenses as a percentage of turn over. |
| "The Minister said that MHRA’s next survey asks hoteliers to | provide more detailed information on conference and meetings. The Minister added that although MTA’s estimates of an annual influx of 65,000 delegates was a pretty accurate guestimate, the information, which DMC’s understandably denied due to particular business interests, would be available to MTA and most useful for planning purposes. |
| Minister Refalo emphasised that what he had recently said in Gozo | about new hotel projects applied to the whole country. The number of 5 Star registered beds is presently 3750 and there are 1,500 more coming on stream in the next couple of years. |
| "That should be enough to see us through till the end of the | decade. What we need now is much higher air seat capacity and an improved seasonality profile to enable the trade to full those beds and increase occupancy. EU membership will help the trade meet these two very important targets. If we fail, we will spend the next two or three years speaking about empty beds, not Heavenly beds". |
| Minister Refalo then referred to the draft incentive package that he | would be recommending to Cabinet. "The thrust is not on incentives for new hotel building. What we need today is to see that plant is kept up to standard and a greater emphasis on diversification. |
I will be proposing incentives with four different objectives. Firstly to promote product upgrading and improvement. Secondly to stimulate the development of ancillary facilities in the leisure, recreational, entertainment and cultural sectors. Thirdly to support good environmental practices, including the institution of a Tourism Environment Award, and finally incentives for projects that will further highlight and differentiate the specific Maltese identity of our tourism offer."
The Minister said that the new incentives would substitute the package which had been designed in the early sixties when tourism was still in its infancy.
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