Tourism recovering positively from a terrible 2009

MHRA President Mr George Micallef said that the results for the first quarter (Q1) of this year are showing signs of recovery, and are “managing to claw back some lost ground”.

The Conference was kicked off by Mr Raphael Aloisio, Advisory Partner at Deloitte, who explained the findings of the survey. The prosperous years of 2007 and 2008 were compared against a worst off 2009, and a slowly improving 2010.

Aloisio explained how the key performance indicators are all on the increase this year compared to 2009. Tourist arrivals are up by 7.1%, guest nights by 6.3% and tourist spending by 17.6%. These improvements are a positive recovery for 2010, but fall short of the achieved performance of 2008.

“The 5-star category was the primary beneficiary from the increase in guest nights,” Micallef said, managing to restore around 50% of the drop in occupancy from the 2009.

Between January and April this year, a 32% increase in shorter stays of 4-6 nights has been registered. Micallef also noted that increased costs combined with pressure to drop rates have made it difficult for hoteliers to recover. Strong cuts on hotel rates, even in peak times such as August, are partly due to the increasing trend of late booking, which sees hoteliers fall into panic mode.

Micallef appealed to the Government to “cut induced costs in the immediate and short term".