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The economic arguments for having a golf course near the Verdala Hotel will fizzle into nothing should it be confirmed that the hotel is being turned into apartments.
While entrepreneur Angelo Xuereb did not deny that the Verdala hotel is being turned into apartments, the Environment Impact Assessment for the golf course had clearly pointed to the hotel as being the a major factor in the economic arguments for the success of the proposed golf course.
When MaltaToday first asked Angelo Xuereb whether he was planning to have apartments at Verdala, his reply was cryptic: “AX Holdings perceives that the Tourism Industry in Malta is going through a period of consolidation. Any new investment in the industry should, in our view, be undertaken when and where the appropriate return will accrue for the general benefit of the economy.
“Only by applying the country's resources in a productive manner can we expect to see real growth in the country's GDP.”
When MaltaToday pushed Xuereb for a clearer answer, the reply was: “We had always planned to have a mixed development at the Verdala site. Nothing has changed with regards to our golf course application.”
The EIA draws on Deloitte and Touche’s feasibility study for the hotel (December 1999) which anticipates that the proposed development “would generate in the Grand Hotel Verdala some 6,900 additional guest nights annually.
The EIA also states: “Studies undertaken by Deloitte and Touche for the applicant in respect of the Grand Hotel Verdala predict annual additional tourist arrivals of about 17,000 to the hotel of which 2,044 owe their origin to golfing holidays.”Should the Verdala Hotel be turned into apartments it would no longer attract the numbers that are needed for a successful golf course. Angelo Xuereb recently submitted a new application for a golf course on the Verdala site. When asked by MaltaToday whether there were differences between the previous application submitted in 1999 and the one submitted in June 2004, Xuereb said that a small part of land was being left out of the new application because: “the Joint Office is not sure whether the land in question had been transferred to it officially or not.”
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