“In 2019 we had a €2.1 billion tourism industry. In 2020, we are going to lose about €1.5 billion, and remain with around €600 million in revenue,” says Tony Zahra, President of the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association.

“In 2021, we are expecting to lose about €1 billion from the €2.1 billion we had in 2019. So, in two years, we will have lost €2.5 billion in revenue. How many job losses will that translate into?”

During the latest episode of The Boardroom, the MHRA President says Malta is facing a difficult 24 months, “but we have to live with what we have. We are in a very strong position in that we had 10 years of good business, we invested a lot in our product at least from the private sector point of view, and now we look forward and see what the world will be like in three to four years and adjust accordingly.”

With the reopening of Malta International Airport merely weeks away, Mr Zahra considers this a crucial step, but does not expect July 2020 to be a successful one. “The number of flights that are going to be operated in July 2020, compared to July 2019, will not exceed 10 per cent. But we’re opening, and we have an opportunity to start promoting the island again.”

Mr Zahra says the weeks following the outbreak were extremely testing times. “18th March, the day the airport closed, we went from heroes, with a strong income from the sector, to zero. You can imagine how this affected our members and all the suppliers down the chain. The tourism industry produces an average of €2.1 billion annually in GDP, and we saw a complete meltdown.”

He adds that, during the early stages of the pandemic, and all the health scares and uncertainty it brought with it, stakeholders in the sector realised that “lives and livelihoods had to find a way to live together. Because without looking out for livelihoods, we had a very serious problem. This is why we engaged continuously with government and the health authorities to talk about livelihoods as well as lives.”

Without commenting on specific measures, the MHRA President says “whether or not the medicine we took will be more fatal than the disease is something we will talk about in due course once everything is over, but we could not afford to keep going forward with this enormous part of the economy closed down.”

As the tourism sector is experiencing a complete and unprecedented restart, Mr Zahra says that, as a country, “we really have to start thinking about where we want to be in 10 to 15 years’ time. We had an economy that was steaming ahead on what I call the Dubai model – low-skilled labour and employees. We need to have a vision, which is missing presently,” he asserts.

“Two years ago, I said if you haven’t started spending money on building a hotel, don’t do it, because there is going to be overcapacity. I was accused of putting people off from investing in Malta, but actually, I was just looking at the numbers. We need to have a vision.”

In line with this, Mr Zahra says that for an island with an area of 331sqkm, our ability to host big numbers isn’t there. “We need to make sure that every person that comes to Malta has an ability to spend money. Pre-COVID, unfortunately politics being what it is, we counted our success by the number of arrivals, and that was the push for a long time, and because more people were investing in accommodation, there was a bigger push for even bigger numbers.”

Reflecting on the feedback from the MHRA’s members over the past weeks and days, Mr Zahra says that all they are thinking about is here and now. Putting this into perspective, he says, restaurants across the islands combined have lost 50,000 dinners every single day.

“These are not going to be replaced by the Maltese consumer. The Maltese can add perhaps 10 per cent more, but it’s not going to replace the numbers we had. So yes, we are all thinking that the airport will return some normality. We are hoping and trying to ensure we survive. But the numbers are what they are – I would like to be more positive, but I think we would be doing a disservice if we are not open about the current reality.”