MIA considering second Sky Parks

MARKUS KLAUSHOFER, CEO of the Malta International Airport, was recently interviewed by Air Transport News

Which are Malta Airport priorities under your leadership?

The main priority for us is to keep the high quality achieved so far. We won the Best Airport in Europe for two consecutive years in ACI’s Airport Service Quality (ASQ) benchmark. Following that, we definitely will continue developing our network: new destinations, better frequencies, new airlines and what is even more important for us - and a lot of good work was done in the past in this area - is the diversification to increase the retail & property segment’s contribution to the overall performance of the company. We have a new office building, the SkyParks Business Centre, which is a beautiful landmark. We also did very well with the shopping concept at the airport. So these three points are definitely our priorities.

You decided to rebrand Malta Airport in 2010. Why and what is the focus of this rebrand?

I think that from time to time – maybe every 10 to 15 years a company needs to refresh its brand. For us, it was definitely the time to do it, with the previous branding launched in 2000. The idea was to give it a more dynamic, smarter look and also to be charming and positive. This was the idea of rebranding.

The targets are the same for the future?

Given that our mixture at the airport is 80% tourists and 20% Maltese, the target group are mostly tourists. It is certainly important for locals since is the airport is the islands’ main gateway to the world but when foreigners arrive, they need to see an airport which is smart, with friendly and welcoming staff.

What is the percentage of business travellers?

Since Malta is ultimately a tourism and leisure destination, business travelling when compared to other airports is quite low, and hovers around 20%. What about cargo? When discussing cargo, one needs to put this subject in the perspective of the fact that Malta’s population is around 410,000 people. The main exports consist of microchips and some tuna fish and crustaceans. Most of this traffic, tuna traffic for example to Asia is done with Emirates and when you have a daily flight on an Airbus 340-300 or a Boeing 777-200 is more than enough to cover the needs of the daily cargo.

On the other hand what I believe is that Malta is a very interesting place for integrators to create a sub hub because of its location at the cross roads of the Middle East, Africa and Europe: you are still in Europe but it is so far south that in less than 30 minutes you are in Libya. But Maltese and export cargo is not large enough to fill a freighter so it would not make sense. But it would make much sense for an integrator to serve the Mediterranean region because we have 24/7 operation, two runways and all the right technology and infrastructure in place. On top of that we have the space to provide for a cargo centre close to the runway so I believe this could be very interesting in the next couple of years.

How has the economic crisis impacted your airport?

When we look at our figures we have record figures almost every month, with four record years out of the last five. Obviously there is an impact of the economic crisis. On the other hand, with the problems in a number of countries in the Mediterranean there are many people who are shifting their holidays to Malta. They are a bit scared to go to North Africa or in the Eastern Mediterranean with strikes. When on holiday, a tourist does not want to worry on whether he will get stuck at the airport for hours or days at an end. Malta is a very sta- ble destination with proper infrastructure geared to work and provide the necessary services to a very demanding tourism industry. This has enabled to benefit from the crisis, . What we have noticed - and this is a direct result of the crisis - is that people and tourists spend less in restaurants so they are going for fast food or pastizzi than spending in restaurants. Hotel managers also inform us that people are getting very price sensitive. Notwithstanding this, people still want to go on holidays… but they just want to spend less. In Malta, we have the right product, the right mix of the retail at the airport so at the moment we are doing definitely well.

What about the low-cost carriers? What is their percentage?

It is around 34%, which admittedly is relatively high. I think low cost carriers gave a bit of a kick to the island’s tourism industry since more people are coming. For the Maltese people it is also good because they can travel at affordable prices. For the airport it is good to have a mixture: we need legacy carriers, which for good business class are very important, especially a stable home carrier. But low cost carriers serve destinations that no legacy carrier would ever fly to. Overall, I think we have a healthy business mix.

Which new markets do you want to attract? in Europe or elsewhere?

Eastern Europe and Scandinavia are definitely two regions where we see huge potential.. Our biggest markets at the moment are the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France and Spain. There is no doubt that the economy for e.g. in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands is doing well so we should focus more on these countries as well as Eastern Europe, Russia and Ukraine, amongst others. People want to travel more, and now, more people can afford to travel so these areas are our focus. In these regions, for example Moscow, there is snow and a heavy winter and here in Malta winters are sunny and very mild. We have the right product. What we have to increase is the connectivity to these destinations because we do not have direct flights from Kiev for example. Another situation which needs to be addressed is the fact that as Malta is a small country, it does not have embassies everywhere and this has a negative effect on the issuing of visas. This contrasts with the situation in other competing tourism destinations, such as Cyprus. More could be done and in the next years we will be focusing on achieving more growth from these regions.

Valletta will be the Cultural Capital of Europe for 2018. Will this affect you? Do you plan on taking any initiatives to maximize your traffic?

I strongly believe that Valletta being Cultural Capital of Europe will attract many people interested in culture and not only those interested in sun and sea. It will give the country a lot of visibility and we could market it on a very high level promoting these islands as the destination with 7,000 years of history. This is a chance to show what Malta has really to offer. We are now discussing the initiatives, and we work closely with the Tourism Ministry and the Malta Tourism Authority to see what we can do together to market Malta more. But this event will certainly have an impact on us and people will see that Malta has something valuable to offer to the traveller.

Do you plan to undertake any infrastructure expansion? A new terminal perhaps?

What we are discussing at the moment is that we need to offer better quality especially at peak time as it is quite tight. We always believed in very high standards and quality so although no real expansion is planned, we are now working on the preliminary estimates for an internal project which could see the enlargement of the NonSchengen Departures area.. We are also considering a second SkyParks, a second office building if we can get the right equation from a business case perspective, to continue building on the excellent decision taken in 2009 to go for the first Business Centre.

Do you have any additional thought you would like to share with Air Transport News readers?

First of all I am inviting everyone to come over to Malta because it is a really wonderful place and it is worth experiencing it. What we have shown - even as a small airport, with just 3.65 million passengers – is that one can have a decent airport with very good quality, notwithstanding the element of high seasonality. It is not easy to run an airport when you have all the tourists in June, July and August and then relatively low figures in January and February. This difficulty arises from the fact that because we have to have an infrastructure which can take the peak time business, we also have to invest in maintaining it in the shoulder months when the utilisation is not very high. To compensate for this one needs to achieve impressively high levels of efficiency. As an airport you always have to keep costs under control your, whilst offering good quality and this is exactly what we offer. What we have managed to achieve at Malta Airport is quite special, especially in the retail and shopping concept we have. I dare say that considering our size, we have managed to achieve results which are better than in some bigger airports. In fact, our motto is “Small is beautiful… small can be successful!”.