Cruise liners drop Malta

More than 140 regular cruise liner calls to Malta, carrying an estimated 180,000 passengers, have been cancelled for this year, according to the Federation of Associations of Travel and Tourism Agents (Malta).

The federation believes several cruise liners decided to cancel Malta as a port of call because the island will lose the attraction of tax-free shopping on joining the European Union.

"Under European tax protocol, cruise liners are only allowed to operate tax-free concessions if their itinerary includes a port of call outside the EU," it said.

The federation pointed out that this advantage alone used to be enough to offset Malta's competitive drawbacks arising from higher port charges and passenger taxes in comparison with many other ports within the EU.

The cancellations will take a big bite out of normal business. A total of 293,139 cruise liner tourists visited Malta between January and September last year, according to latest figures published by the National Statistics office.

The federation believes there will be further cancellations and is calling on the authorities to review the present structure of charges and taxes to ensure Malta can compete with neighbouring ports.

When contacted, Chris Falzon, chief executive of the Viset cruise terminal consortium, confirmed that Malta was this year expecting to lose 100 cruise liner calls. However, he said Malta's port charges and passenger taxes were among the lowest in the world.

On the contrary, Mr Falzon believes that one of the core issues behind the problem is the "poor quality" and "high cost" of Maltese excursions.

"We are hearing from international players in this field that Malta's product is below standard. Ships will only visit the island if they can operate at a profit."

The elimination of Malta's previous advantage of tax-free shopping exacerbated the problem, he said.

Mr Falzon insisted that all the players in the local cruise liner business had to understand once and for all that they were competing on an international scale against 90 other ports.

"We also all need to understand that ships will only come if we make it worth their while and offer value for their money. We also have to realise that though we have one of the nicest harbours, few people know where Valletta is," he added. The Malta Cruise Network, set up recently by the Malta Tourism Authority to promote Malta as a cruise liner destination, should hopefully achieve these goals.

Viset is hoping to offset the situation by transforming Malta into a home port. It is in the process of constructing a Lm10-million cruise liner passenger terminal which should be fully operational by next year.

"We believe our port is ideally situated to allow operators to start and finish their cruise in Malta. Our position allows us to offer every single itinerary in the Mediterranean and include cruises to North Africa. We also have an excellent airport and good quality hotels to be able to put this idea together," Mr Falzon said.

When asked if these cancellations had been anticipated, Tourism Minister Francis Zammit Dimech said that though a couple of operators had indicated they would drop Malta as a port of call upon EU accession, it was only recently that they had openly mentioned it.

"We will obviously review the matter and we are willing to discuss innovative ideas with these operators to make Malta more attractive," he said.

Dr Zammit Dimech also mentioned the concept of transforming Malta into a home port for cruise liners, which would eventually mean more visitors.