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A new air terminal which will remain under Gibraltar's control and sovereignty is to be com pleted within the nexttwo years and the new road structure, which will provide a four-lane subway beneaththe Eastern Beach end ofthe runwaywill be built in parallel,Tourism Minister Joe Holliday announced during a presentation in London during the seventh annual Gibraltar Dayfinancial and social gab-fest. Andthough no costforthe proiect has beenfinalised, it would "run to tens of millions of pounds," Chief Minister Peter Caruana told me later.

Part of the cost of the tunnel and road network feeding it will be borne bv the developers of the D50-million Sovereign Bay devel opment, 1 understand. However, one hurdle still has to be crossed — the feeder road from the tunnel to the new air terminal buildings on the frontier side of the airport will cross Ministry ofDefence land which has not yet been released to the Gibraltar Government.

Holliday's disclosure was part of an extensive tourism package which he presented to an audience of UK travel writers, during which he also unveiled the final destina tion details of the Robert Noonan Fly Gibraltar airline scheme and figures which showed a massive hike in Gibraltar's revenue from tourism — up by 89 per cent in less than a decade to provide a re cord £209 million spent by visitors last year, though, with 7.5 million visitors arriving during the course of 2005, this represents a spend of less than £30 a visitor. Neverthe less, visitor arrivals have increased by 30 per cent since 1997 Holliday pointed out.

"We have also made it our aim to increase arrivals by sea and in par ticular from the cruise market," he added. "In 2005 thehighest number of arrivals in this sector since 1973 wasrecorded and wewexpect there to be 207 cruise ship visits this year with 226,890 passengers and the expected numbers in 2007 arc even higher."

It was evident that the Gov ernment's tourism policies had achieved "impressive growth" and it now aimed to sustain that growth... something the Septem ber tripartite agreement would facilitate.

Outlining the main sectorsofthe agreement Holliday added that although these were essentially "political issues", aspects such as the promise of improved frontier flow and the enhanced use of the airport would have a direct im pact on tourism and "the tourist product."

And, briefly wearing his other Ministerial hat as head of the Department of Trade Industry & Communications he pointed to the growing investor confidence reflected in property development and by the mass of investment proposals received post 18th Sep tember [the date of the Cordoba entente].

"These will not have been dreamed up in a few days or weeks, they are obviously plans forprojectswhichhavebeenonthe drawing board or in the pipeline for some time — and the outcome of the agreement has encouraged them to seek approval" he said.

"In response to the expected growth in leisure and business activities, the Government is now considering 11 new hotel projects in Gibraltar," he continued. "These include a major hotel in Sovereign Bay, a hotel at Buena Vista, a bou tiquehotel in thecitycentreand the extensions to the Eliott and Caleta hotels."

There were also five other hotel projects about which he could not give details for reasons of com mercial confidentiality, but between then the eleven could potentially triple the current hotel slock in the next three to five years.

There were also a number of leisure and property development projects that had either started or were about to start that would offer "exciting new products" to leisure and business visitors. These

GiUraltar's revenuefromtourism—up by89 percentiulessthanadecade toprovidea record £209 miiiiou spoutbyvisitors lastyear

included Sovereign Bay with up to 2,200 apartments, underground car parks, a yachting marina, a 300 bedroom four-star hotel, as well as retail, commercial and office accom modation.

"This represents an inward in vestment in excess of £1-5 billion, the largest ever in the history of Gibraltar by a very long way," Holliday said. Greg Butcher's multi-million Ocean Village{which Holliday described as "one of the largest complexes being built in Gibraltar " would also "bring new retail and leisure attractions to Gibraltar's tourism product";while the Government's own develop ment of the King's Bastion leisure centre which would be completed bv August next year and the beauti'fication and refurbishment of Orange Bastion would both add to Gibraltar's attractions for visitors.

Holliday also expects that the first flights between Gibraltar and Madrid, which are part of the Cordoba deals package, will start in December with others to "other European" destinations following soon afterwards." Final details of theFlyGibrallarschedule—which comes into operation next April were also released. Each week there will be 11 return flights to Stansted airport near London, five to Man chester and Birmingham, four to Bristol and three to Dublin.