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Anna Mallia, in her crudely titled “Lickers” (5 November 2006) fails to grasp that low fares are the only immediate effective policy cure for the Maltese tourism industry, and that the warm welcome given to Ryanair last week only partly balances the lack of interest and objective economic assessment that dominated the preceding years of missed opportunity.
The introduction of Ryanair to the Maltese market is not a matter of ‘clinging to an icon’. It is simply a deserved welcome for a low cost carrier whose commercial ambitions coincide with the national interest. The country needs and deserves a healthy tourism industry and though there are many problems to be solved the issue of sufficient seat capacity at affordable prices is an essential pre-condition before any other policy initiative stands an earthly chance of succeeding. Ryanair was and is the only large low fares airline with enough patience and goodwill to strike a deal. By doing so, the airline has given new momentum to the solution of many other issues.
Air Malta now feels real competitive pressure and as a result is serving the needs of the tourism industry and outbound travellers better than it has done for many years by offering a fairly good service and a limited availability of seats at competitive prices.
Hotels and other tourism operators now have more confidence in the future which will have a positive impact on willingness to make the necessary investment and stave off closures. This not only means building new hotels, but refurbishing hotels, keeping hotels open in winter, training staff, etc.
Speaking about training, it has now become much cheaper to send tourism industry employees to Italy or the UK for training, and internationally trained staff will become part of the solution for the tourism industry rather than untrained staff being the cause of its problems. Even the impact of more Maltese citizens travelling abroad will bring domestic political reality to the disparity between what is the accepted norm for timely service, safety, cleanliness and maintenance in the places Malta competes with and what is currently tolerated here. The property market will also benefit from the potential inflow of foreign holiday residence owners who can now afford to hop over for a weekend.
Perhaps Malta’s skewed economic dependence on excessive construction and empty properties sustaining asset values will avoid being popped if there is rapid development of more low cost routes, particularly from the UK which has the most advanced market for overseas property purchases driven almost exclusively by low cost airlines.
These are just a few obvious examples. Many problems remain, but the new impetus given by low fares provides the incentive and market-driven need for change and improvement, without which Malta will not fully be able to exploit this new chance to compete with other destinations.
One must however agree with Anna Mallia that Robbie Borg deserves more respect than he has received. At the same time, this does not mean that airlines like Ryanair should be treated with disrespect which at times prevailing attitudes came dangerously close to and remain so in certain quarters, now thankfully in a minority.
Philip Lingard
Attard
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