The Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association said it would like to re-confirm its concern regarding the damaging article which appeared in the Travel Section of the UK Sunday Times last Sunday 6th April. MHRA immediately made the necessary contacts with reliable sources to be able to react to the erroneous conclusions drawn by columnist Mr Mark Hodson.

MHRA said it has concluded that Mr. Hodson's claim of a 10 per cent increase in prices of tourism related services, due to the introduction of the Euro is unfounded and without basis. Furthermore MHRA is convinced that no such increases have occurred for whatever reason, as clearly indicated in the recently published Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices report, which states that the twelve month moving average rate of inflation of the Maltese Islands stood at 1.2 percent whereas the annual rate stood at 4.0 per cent, at the end of February.

MHRA added that it is obviously concerned at the weakening of the Sterling which has lost 16% of its value against the Euro in the past few months. It has also however noted signs of recovery over the past few days. The UK is and remains one of the Islands' strongest markets and the weakening of the Sterling is not good news although this has to be seen in the context that all Euro zone countries are affected to the same extent by this currency movement. This is therefore not a problem that is exclusive to Malta. Operators in the tourism industry need to be well aware of such currency instability when trading for the UK market in order to retain the necessary competitiveness with neighbouring and competing countries.

In conclusion MHRA said it would like to state that its members have not reported any negative movement in bookings despite the movement in currency mentioned above. On the contrary the majority of our members are reporting a healthy forward booking positions and MHRA maintains its previous forecast that this year will see an increase in business over last year. MHRA also cautions against unnecessary alarmist reports and would like to encourage all concerned to continue focusing on the key elements that drive demand for our Islands.