Swiss Air to blame for drop in tourists

By a Staff Reporter

Tourism Minister Michael Refalo yesterday reiterated that Malta did not live in a vacuum and whatever had an impact on the rest of the world also affected the country pointing out that the decrease in incoming tourism was partly due to the closure of Swiss Air.

Referring to certain disparaging remarks that were levelled recently, Dr Refalo said that Swiss Air’s replacement, Air Swiss did not fly to Malta. This meant that the country not only lost revenue from Switzerland, but from the whole Scandinavian peninsula as most people from the northern countries used to come to Malta via Swiss Air. Dr Refalo explained that traffic from North Africa had also suffered as a result of the 9 September tragedy. After the lifting of sanctions, Libya had also diverted to other destinations, decreasing its flights to Malta.

Dr Refalo spoke yesterday at the Corinthia Palace Hotel on the occasion of the Annual General Meeting of the Rent-A-Car Association.

The minister said that timely action should ensure that the tourism sector should have a good, if not exceptional, summer.

Quoting from statistics, Dr Refalo said that incoming tourism from the UK was slowly increasing in real terms, even when keeping in mind last year’s setback. Traffic from France and Germany was also looking up.

Dr Refalo said he was confident that the tourism sector was awakening, in spite of the fact that hightened exposure of other Mediterranean countries might take away some incoming business from our shores. He predicted a tourism population of 1,100,000 and said he wouldn’t be surprised if the figure actually turned out to be larger.

Dr Refalo also referred to the change and modernisation of the legislation governing the Tourism Appeals Board. The new legislation will make it easier for those who want to appeal to the board about decisions taken by the Tourism Board.

Dr Refalo closed his address by reiterating that he was confident that the tour operators this year would have a good, if not exceptional year.