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The Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association welcomes the announcement by government that it is issuing a call for low cost travel from four further destinations. The Association hopes that the routes being proposed will all be taken up and will be operated as soon as possible. It is particularly positive that Bremen has been included following lengthy deliberations.
The experience of the last few months has strongly indicated the position the association has been advocating. The arrival of LCCs in Malta has been a major contributor to the turn around of the monthly decline in arrivals we were experiencing in the first 10 months of 2006.
However, MHRA has been saying all along that so far we have only been scratching the surface of this fast expanding mode of travel. We are now taking another important step in the right direction and accepting the changes that are developing in the global market place.
It is important that the travel trends are monitored carefully to ensure that any changes that come about are noticed, considered and decisions taken to keep our product offer competitive. Josef Formosa Gauci, the President of the MHRA, highlighted that today more and more European travelers have changed the way that they look for a destination, book their holiday and ultimately travel to that destination.
More than 50% of UK travelers alone now book their holiday over the web and use low cost airlines as their preferred choice of travel to the destination. Other markets are following the same trend as that in the UK and this is the reason why the MHRA has strongly advocated the change in direction of the way we market the Island and the importance of the introduction of low cost airlines to the island and overall growth of seat capacity to the island from as many routes as possible.
The MHRA also stated that the new routes could add substantially to the exposure Malta gets as a destination within these markets. It will also undoubtedly increase the number of visitors from these destinations. Concurrently the MHRA stressed the importance of continuing the strategy to grow the number of low cost routes into Malta and to include additional routes from the UK, the market within which penetration into low cost travel is the highest within Europe. |
