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Matthew Vella
hoteliers have warned that a decision on Ryanair’s proposals to fly to more UK and European airports must be taken within four weeks, if the low cost giant is to start its new flights by September.
Hotelier Michael Zammit Tabona, vice-president of the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association, has cautioned against any “suicidal” decision that could see the Irish carrier bypass Malta after this summer.
“We cannot keep on dreaming,” he told this newspaper. “We need a decision immediately. Low cost airlines are willing to operate, and it is up to government to take the decision.”
Ryanair is proposing new routes to Malta from Glasgow Prestwick, Bristol, Doncaster, as well as Madrid, Bremen, another German airport close to the Dutch border, and an Eastern European airport. Also included are Venice and Trapani.
The new routes, MHRA has warned, are crucial for the industry to sustain positive figures after the summer season, due to declining tour operator business.
Peter Sherrard, Ryanair’s head of communications, would not comment in detail on the proposals: “We’re always interested in growing, but I cannot say anything at this point.”
The airline currently flies to Luton, Pisa and Dublin. The MHRA claims Ryanair has already pushed up tourism arrivals since starting operations in November 2006, with figures for March already 10 per cent up from the same month last year.
“The maths is simple,” Zammit Tabona says. “With three flights a week, carrying 187 passengers each flight, every week, tourism in Malta would explode. It is suicidal that government keeps on digging its heels in the ground.”
MHRA president Josef Formosa Gauci has also stated that it is the Prime Minister who must take the crucial decision. “Government needs to take a decision within the next few weeks. When we tell the Prime Minister to ‘take up the challenge’, this is the challenge we are talking about,” he told sister newspaper Business Today this week.
Hoteliers are claiming that operators could well encounter a crisis in winter, if no new low cost routes can make up for the decline in tour operator business over the summer.
The MHRA claims the new routes enjoy the support of the Malta Tourism Authority and the tourism ministry, and have insisted the airports are not core markets for national airline Air Malta.
“Air Malta should embark on a restructuring programme that shifts excess staff elsewhere and not on the cost of seats, (as well as) operate a fluid pricing policy and concentrate on increasing the quality of service and food. There is absolutely no way that MHRA will agree to grant core routes to LCCs,” Zammit Tabona says. “But airports like Prestwick, Doncaster and Bristol are not core airports. As MHRA, we are four-square behind the increase in low cost routes and the survival of Air Malta.”
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt |
