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Scathing comments by hotelier and former Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association president Winston Zahra Jr have galvanised government to come forward with a middle of the road proposal on low cost airlines.
A meeting with the MHRA planned for April 10 and spearheaded by the Prime Minister is seen as a clear attempt to support the present MHRA leadership, considered by government to be more moderate than its predecessor.
The meeting will effectively pronounce a middle of the road solution for low cost airlines with an emphasis for the shoulder months. “New destinations and more tourists in the low months is what we need,” one government spokesman told MaltaToday. “Few seem to comprehend low cost airlines will only come here if the government brings down the landing fees at Malta International Airport.”
Zahra, who runs three major hotels on the island, has effectively been spelling out the need for low cost airlines in the light of worrying figures in tourism arrivals.
But the hotelier has also openly criticised government policy, angering senior ministers who had not expected him to be at the forefront of such heavy-handed criticism but expecting him to be more understanding.
Seen as someone who openly supported the Nationalist government most especially in the run-up to EU accession, his brand new hotel at Golden Sands was the venue for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held last November in Malta.
And a vast garigue area behind Golden Sands is now earmarked for a mega golf course, although this now seems to have been suddenly shelved.
“Low cost airlines is all about subsidy, subsidies and subsidies. We have a decision to make here, do we undermine our national carrier and other carriers and face 1,200 job losses. Winston Zahra is the government’s appointed director at MIA: he for one should not know what we are talking about,” a senior government official told MaltaToday.
But Zahra’s argumentation for low cost airlines has widespread public support. Many of those who welcome low cost airlines are unperturbed by the prospect of national airline Air Malta becoming extinct in the worst-case scenario.
One government official told MaltaToday the attitude was highly typical: “We passed through weeks of tears of fear over Sea Malta, a company that was responsible for 0.5 per cent of all Maltese merchandise, but not a word for Air Malta that represents 67 per cent of the whole incoming and outgoing flights.
“Low cost airlines do not want new destinations, they want to take over the routes that are serviced by our national carrier and other airlines. The problem is not seating capacity in the shoulder months from October to May, but that Malta needs to be sold more effectively by the tour operators. When Air Malta and British Airways increased their seats and changed their pricing structure in these months, they failed to fill all their seats and lost money,” he added.
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