Malta, like the rest of the countries across the world, is facing an unprecedented challenge as the tourism sector has been brought to a sudden halt due to the COVID 19 pandemic and related travel restrictions which have been imposed across almost every country in the world.
MHRA President Tony Zahra states that, “Tourism in Malta last year accounted for 2.1 billion euro out of a total GDP of circa 12.5billion euro. With the sudden lockdown, MHRA is expecting significant losses spilling over to the coming months. The Government support measures agreed to with MHRA to help liquidity and ensure job security across the tourism sector have been an important development, and currently, an extension of these measures and actions are being discussed to address the latest developments and realities.”
MHRA believes that the tourism sector will be a critical economic sector to once again relaunch Malta as a small but successful economy forming part of the EU.
MHRA welcomes the initiative being spearheaded by the Minister of Tourism and Consumer Protection and Malta Tourism Authority to support various online training opportunities being offered for free to employees working across the travel, tourism and hospitality sector. Mr Zahra asserts that, “Whilst now working hard with the various stakeholders on strategies needed to bring back our economy to normality, we support the initiative spearheaded by Minister Julia Farrugia Portelli to provide opportunities of upskilling and reskilling of the workforce operating across the tourism sector in order to be better prepared to meet the new challenges that our sector will be facing in the coming months. This indeed is a world-class action.”
Towards this end, amongst others, MHRA will be making available over 1,800 free online courses delivered by seasoned tutors and experts from Forbes Travel Guide and various other leading international learning organisations. Free study bursaries will also be offered for English language courses for tourism operators and specialisation courses in Governmental and Institutional Travel and Tourism accredited by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and offered by the Spanish GITT Institute. Free career counselling will also be offered. For more information on how to access for free these online courses, one can visit https://winning.mhra.org.mt or call on 21318133.
A webinar explaining details about the WINNING online training programme will be organised, so those interested to attend are kindly requested to register on https://winning.mhra.org.mt/register- your-interest/