Hoteliers look forward to ‘promising season’ for tourism

The Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association expressed satisfaction about the reported growth in arrivals May 2015 and again stressed that hotels should not reduce their rates as the summer is looking promising and potentially could even finish with another record number of arrivals.

MHRA said it was working closely with the Ministry of Tourism (MOT), Malta Tourism Authority (MTA), Air Malta, the Malta International Airport (MIA) and other stakeholders to enable MHRA members to be more proactive in marketing jointly Malta for niche tourism markets.

“MHRA notes with satisfaction the focus of the various stakeholders including the Ministry of Tourism, MTA, MIA and Air Malta to ensure that tourism grows in spite of the economic turmoil that is being experienced in a good number of our source markets. It is therefore clear that when all the stakeholders combine their efforts together the results are very positive,” MHRA President Tony Zahra said.

Total inbound visitors for May were estimated at 177,895, an increase of 5.5% when compared to the corresponding month of 2014. Total inbound tourists, adjusting for the cruise line passengers, reached a total of 177,203 in May 2015, increasing by 10,706 or +6.4% over May 2014.

Growth was also registered in the number of nights spent and expenditure incurred by tourists. It is worth noting that the highest increase was recorded in tourist expenditure reaching the figure of €149 million, nearly €11 million more or +7.9% when compared to May 2014. 

Tourists spent a total of 1.2 million nights in May 2015, which is an increase of 67,525 more nights than in May 2014.