There is not enough time to introduce a €575 skill cards for non-EU workers by January, according to the president of the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association. 

MHRA officials were only informed of the government's plans a day before it was publicly announced, Tony Zahra also said on Friday. 

Last month, the government announced that from January 2024, non-EU workers in hotels, bars, and restaurants will need to obtain a skills card costing €575 to work in the sector. 

Third-country nationals applying for a visa to work in Malta’s tourism sector will need to pass an initial skills card assessment before their visa and work permit applications can be processed.

However, Zahra was not confident that the plans could be successfully implemented by the time these requirements are set to come into place. 

“I want to make it clear this was an idea that was developed very quickly and it won’t be introduced this January,” Zahra told the conference. 

Asked by journalists to clarify his comments, the MHRA president said that the association will be meeting with the government this month to discuss when and how the skills card will be introduced. 

“I don’t think there is enough time between now and the beginning of January to introduce the skills cards,” Zahra said. 

The association, he said, was not involved in any discussions regarding the skills cards, and that it was informed unofficially a day before the announcement. 

“We believe that the beginning of January is too soon and not feasible. We believe it is best to discuss with the government to see what can be done.”

During his speech, Zahra also raised a word of concern on overdevelopment, even taking a dig at Prime Minister Robert Abela’s wife, Lydia Abela, who has filed a planning application to turn a Xewkija farmhouse into a guest house. 

“We need to be careful, we can do better than this craze to build more and more rooms,” he said. 

“Even the Prime Minister’s wife wants to build more rooms! What will happen is that we have a lot more supply, but not the demand. We need to be careful.”

Occupancy levels of 4/5-star hotels drop in third quarter, arrivals up

Zahra was speaking during a press conference that shed light on the performance of hotels in the third quarter of the year.

According to the data, five-star and four-star hotels have seen a significant drop in occupancy rates in the third quarter of the year, compared to the pre-COVID year of 2019.  

Occupancy in five-star hotels decreased to 80%, a decline of over 10% over the same period in 2019. 

Four-star hotels registered occupancy levels of 87.2% in the third quarter, 8.2% below 2019 levels.

The findings were shared by Michael Zarb, Economic Advisory at Deloitte, who explained that the drop in occupancy was due to tourists leaning towards private accommodation. 

On the other hand, three-star hotels reached an occupancy rate of 93% in this quarter. 

He noted that quarter three registered a quasi-drop of 10% across all categories in occupancy.

The average daily rate of five and four-star hotels continued to increase.

The data shows that the average daily rate of a five-star hotel was €249.40, which increased by 24.6% compared to the same rates in quarter three of 2019. 

The average daily rate of four-star hotels followed by €156.60, an increase of 19.1% when compared to quarter three of 2019.

Participating three-star hotels reported an average daily rate of €103.70.

Zarb noted that over one million tourists arrived in Malta in the third quarter of the year, which surpassed the figure registered in 2019 by approximately 88,000 people. 

The data shows that guest nights between July and September increased by 512,000 nights when compared to the third quarter of 2019. 

Tourists are estimated to have spent €1026 million in the third quarter of the year, an 18% increase when compared to the same period in 2019.