Valletta businesses lament worst-ever Black Friday

Valletta’s commercial outlets have taken a major hit due to the ongoing protests amid the current political upheaval, with shoppers preferring to take their business to other localities.

Feedback from shops owners received by the GRTU painted a bleak picture of sales performances in the capital on Black Friday, with many saying it was the worst such period to date.

“As expected, the current political situation led to consumers avoiding Valletta and choosing other localities as an alternative,” GRTU CEO Abigail Mamo said.

The negative effects were not only felt by retail outlets, with the operator of a popular bar in Valletta telling BusinessToday that the drop in customers last week had been unprecedented.

“It’s really impacted us,” the bar operator said, “Last week was like a ghost town in terms of customers. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The fall in sales happened as more revelations came to the fore in relation to the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder investigation, with protesters gathering almost daily to demand Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s immediate resignation in the wake of a political scandal the likes of which Malta has not experienced before.

Black Friday slower overall than expected

While feedback from Valletta shop owners was undoubtedly bad, with fewer shoppers making it to the capital, in Malta in general Black Friday performance was also slower than expected and did not break any records, unlike the previous year Mamo said.

“This years’ Black Friday, overall was a busy day for business but did not reach expectations.”

On the upside, the GRTU received very positive feedback from the electronics and white goods sector, with various businesses reporting similar sales to last year’s and others expecting this day to be the best day of the year for sales. Significant discounts and well-planned advertising campaigns could be behind this, Mamo said.

Concerns on current ‘intolerable’ situation and its long-term effects

While better days were expected closer to the Christmas period, she said there were concerns about how long the political turmoil would last and the prolonged effect it could have.

“The impact of the current state of crisis we are experiencing was very much felt imminently, as soon as it started,” Mamo said.

“We are experiencing a lot of disruption and our country is barely functioning. Our worse fears are in terms of the magnitude of the problem at hand and for how long it will stretch.”

Calling the situation “intolerable”, she said developments were taking place constantly and tension was still increasing.

“Unfortunately, it seems that we have reached a standstill and the status quo is something that is being treated in terms of going away on its own with time,” she underscored.

Businesses and employees were completely absorbed by the unfolding events, she said, and Valletta’s commercial outlets, which are “in the eye of the storm”, were “experiencing great disruption”.

The capital’s businesses were bracing themselves for the news that they will have to spend most of the Christmas period closed and feared customers would migrate to other shopping areas to avoid the protests.

“What should they do? Should they send their employees home and not open altogether?” Mamo asked.

“Is that fair on all the families affected that had nothing to do with the what has caused this whole chaos? With every passing day the situation of instability is adding harm and also adding to the reputational damage, with a result which will be devastating for Malta. We are not appreciating this as yet because most of it is yet to come,” she said.

Mamo said instability is “the ghost of Christmas present” and that reputational damage would be “the ghost of Christmas past.”

She went on to call for a stop to the current instability, adding that political responsibility also meant taking all the needed steps to ensure the country was stable and functioning properly again.