Belleair Holidays to close after more than 40 years

Tour operator Belleair Holidays is to stop selling holidays on Monday (October 31).

The company, which has been operating for more than 40 years, has posted a statement on its website to announce its closure.

It reads: “After 40 years, the time has come to call it a day. We will stop selling holidays after October 31, 2022.

“We thank all our customers for giving us this opportunity to arrange their holidays, we truly shared many amazing journeys together.

“We also thank our employees and associates – it would not have been possible without you.”

Belleair Holidays’ website said the operator originally started selling holidays to Malta before growing “to become a top provider of worldwide holidays with our expanded portfolio of destinations from the Mediterranean to the Far East providing land holidays, cruise holidays and niche holidays such as Formula One inspired stays”.

According to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) website, Crownshield Travel, which traded under the names of Belleair, Belleair Cruises, Chevron Air Holidays, Chevron Cruises and Malta Direct, had an Atol licence of 1,500.

The same statement has appeared on the Chevron and Malta Direct’s websites.

Nigel Borg Cardona, co-owner and director, said: “After 40 years we have decided to close. Everything is against small operators and we felt it was not worth continuing.

“We stopped selling winter holidays some time ago so we do not have many [customers abroad]. It’s very few. All we’re doing is stoping selling holidays on Monday, and then we’ll go into liquidation.”

On learning about Belleair’s closure, OTA Cruise Circle’s head of product Mark Godden tweeted: “Oh that’s sad. I remember selling them quite a bit when I started out in travel.”