The weather is forecast to be sunny. Happy days are back for hotel owners, umbrella hirers and hamburger joints. In lavish ad campaigns we had invited the holidaymakers of the world to dream about our islands while isolated at home.

Now we are ready to tell them that their dream has come true. Malta is not only sunny and ready, sort of, it is also safe – with nine fatalities we are on a par with Cyprus and Greece. Incarcerated of the world: come!

A majority of us is wary of the advertised hooray, though. We fear that the sacrifices of the last 100 days could be at risk.

On July 1 our airport will reopen to international travellers. At least to some of them: sensibly we have at least for the time being limited arrivals to countries that have brought the pandemic under control, like Iceland, Israel and Estonia.

It stands to fear that hotel owners, desperate to salvage what is left of this year’s business, will lobby hard to extend our invitation to countries still ravaged by COVID-19, like the US, northern Italy, or the UK, which comprise the bulk of our package tourists.

The UK government has fared appallingly in controlling the spread of the virus. As of May 25, it vies with Belgium, Spain and Italy for the top spot as the deadliest country in Europe. On a per capita basis it has almost twice as many fatalities as the US – a country without a federal government to speak of.

For the time being the UK has answered travel limitations imposed by other countries with a 14-day quarantine for everyone arriving in the UK from abroad. ‘We might have failed’ seems to be the motto, ‘but we for sure have our pride’. So even if Turkey, Spain and Malta would unhinge their gates to  welcome the English, there will be few holidaymakers from the British Isles willing to pay for a week’s vacation with a fortnight of incarceration.

Do I hear a sigh of relief? Knowing our elites, this may be premature. Too much money was channelled into catering for the undiscerning masses. This business model, albeit self-devouring, might have reached the point of no return.

The crux of the matter is our sole focus on price competition. Since places like Egypt, Tunisia or Turkey had become hotbeds of terror, Malta’s tourism industry was experiencing galloping growth. After ‘September 11th’ ever more people chose Malta as the perfect place to unwind with cheap booze and to acquire terrible sunburns at the lowest possible cost.

Last year, 2.8 million visitors spent almost 20 million nights in our hotels. These figures do not even include cruise ships. More planes, more people; alas, these visitors spend a little bit less every year in total – depending on nationality (Americans, Swiss and Australians spend the most).

Visitors to Malta spend an average of €800 per week, with Brits just shy of half of that. This includes business meetings, language schools and honeymoon trips. Package tours are therefore hard-earned money for the privileged few who are in the hotel business. They have to import cheap supplies and cheap labour to balance the books.

Even without a re-profiling of our business model, visitor numbers will tumble, for the foreseeable future. This crisis has hit the poor yet again disproportionately

As we do not have that many beaches, most guests spend their days around the hotel pool. The typical visitor is a package tourist. She does not shop for groceries, rarely goes to a local restaurant and does not rent a private room or a house with character. Apart from souvenir shops our tour­ism business bypasses Malta.

This is the time now for a re-think. Paris has committed to build 650km of cycle lanes in the city centre. Many other cities, like New York, London or Vienna are following suit.

It is hard to imagine how Malta would look like if hikers and cyclists took over the place instead of soot-belching heavy-duty vehicles and cars. If only rural land and architectural heritage would be treasured, instead of building ever more office buildings, wider roads and hotel bunkers. Imagine tourists who’d arrive in lesser numbers willing to spend more!

Even without a re-profiling of our business model, visitor numbers will tumble, for the foreseeable future. This crisis has hit the poor yet again disproportionately. While savvy investors were hardly grazed by the economic collapse, most people will have a hard time to escape a widening debt trap.

With income prospects in peril it is hardly a time to splash out. Fewer people will fly in, limited not only by country curfews, but by safety measures reducing the aircrafts' loading capacity. Many are still wary of the deadly virus, avoiding planes, crowded spaces, airports and the afar. Only the tourists we have chosen to ignore, the wealthy, would have the means to holiday now.

Malta is vulnerable to any change in the status quo. Our economy rests on tax arbitrage, real estate and tourism. The latter two are facing difficult times. Landlords have to cope with struggling shop owners, restive tenants and a steep drop in office demand. Construction is stalling.

The crisis has taught us that people can meet virtually, can learn online and can work from home. Office buildings will be less in demand than we ima­gined three months ago. Many of us don’t miss the office.

Skyscrapers are a thing of the past, like flying Concord. Even our golden passport business, inducing artificial demand for high-end property, may prove less popular with globalisation and international trade in retreat. Supply chains will become shorter and more local.

Resilience is the new virtue, not efficiency. There’s not much need for a ‘golden’ Schengen passport now, whether you are Chinese, Arab or Russian, with nationalism on the rise and unexplainable wealth scrutinised.

The world’s stock market indexes are admittedly not a reliable gauge for the health of the economy. While businesses are collapsing everywhere and hundreds of millions are still unemployed, the S&P Index, com­prising the biggest US companies, has hardly budged. After the precipitous fall in March it is almost back to its previous peak and has gained 15 per cent over the last 52 weeks.

That our own Maltex index, representing lopsidedly banks, real estate, shopping centres, hotels and the airport, has fared less well is not much of a surprise. A loss of 15 per cent over the last year should be read as an early warning sign.

Even exuberant, blindly optimistic investors who put all their faith in the fiscal and monetary wizardry of the G7 countries or the Communist Party of China seem to hesitate when it comes to Malta risk.

The purpose of this column is to broaden readers’ general financial knowledge and it should not be interpreted as presenting investment advice or advice on the buying and selling of financial products.

andreas.weitzer@timesofmalta.com

Andreas Weitzer is an independent journalist based in Malta

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