Anyone living in the St Julian’s and Sliema area sees many students walking to their respective schools each and every morning, and walking the reverse direction late in the afternoon, especially during the hot summer months.

Students coming over to Malta to learn the English language have become part and parcel of the tourism industry but, like anything else, this has its good and bad points.

The fact that the number of such students continues to rise year after year means that Malta has a good reputation in this regard, that the schools are providing the right environment for these young people from all over Europe – and elsewhere – to learn English and that the accommodation provided is of good quality too. Whether the students come here to really learn English or to have a cheap holiday and make new acquaintances is another matter.

At a time when the tourism industry as a whole was (is?) passing through a delicate stage, this segment of the industry provided the silver lining to an otherwise dark cloud.

These students are giving employment to several hundred people who teach them, take care of them during and outside school hours and administer to their needs.

Many families are also making some extra cash by providing these students with accommodation and giving them food, although the recent introduction of a system whereby these families started to be taxed has put off a few of them. Some hotels, seeing that the number of “real” tourists continues to remain below expectations, have taken the cue and are offering competitive rates to host the students themselves. This exercise is no doubt helping these hotels to improve their turnover, possibly their profits too.

But there is another side to the coin. Is Malta earning the name as being simply a destination for young people wanting to learn English and is this factor keeping other, higher-spending tourists away from the country? Are students taking up airline seats that would have otherwise been occupied by tourists who have more spending power and who would therefore contribute much more to Malta’s economy than does a student learning English here? Should the English language tourism industry continue to be boosted, and this possibly at the expense of the other segments? Are tourists avoiding coming to Malta because they do not want to stay in hotels where tens of students are also residing? Are tourists being told before they come that part of the hotel is occupied by rowdy students? Is the presence of so many students on our beaches in the St Julian’s and Sliema areas keeping others away?

Private entrepreneurs have invested millions of liri (euro) to build top-quality hotels offering the right facilities to big-spending tourists and to cater for the conference and business travel market. The government has itself also invested heavily in providing a stable infrastructure, which enables these hotels – and the rest of the island, for that matter – to operate without too many problems with regard to electricity and water supply, and telecommunications facilities.

As in anything else, a balance needs to be found. While it is important that the segment of the tourism industry that caters for students coming over to learn English should be supported because, on the whole, it is heavily contributing to the country‘s economy, this should not be to the detriment of the other segments that perhaps may be bringing over fewer tourists in terms of numbers, but ones who can spend more.

Let us not forget that the summer months are the most important for the tourist industry in general, and if therefore the number of ordinary” tourists drops because the number of students increases, this could generally speaking create more problems than it solves.