Departing Italian tourists accounted for 10.9 per cent of all tourist departures. In the same month last year, these fell by 6.4 per cent. Other falls in tourist departures by air were recorded in, amongst others, the Austrian, German, Swiss and Libyan markets.

Purpose of visit

In the period under review, holiday tourists accounted for 89.5 per cent of all tourists while business tourists accounted for 2.3 per cent. This shows a decline in the proportion of business travellers to Malta, compared to the same period last year, when 3.4 per cent of all tourist departures were business tourists.

Tourist departures: January – August

In the period under review, tourist departures by air increased by 1.4 per cent over the same period last year, reaching 764,523. In the comparable period last year, tourist departures by air amounted to 753,851.

The French market, which accounted for approximately 8.1 per cent of all tourist departures during the period under review, increased by 3,767 tourists or 6.5 per cent. Other markets recording increases in tourist departures included the Belgian, Danish, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian and US markets and a group of “other” markets.

Around 39.8 per cent of the tourists departing by air during this period were British. Over the same period last year, this amounted to a fall of 3.3 per cent. Other declining markets included those from Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Libya.

Accommodation

It is estimated that in the first eight months this year, the number of nights spent in the Maltese Islands by tourists departing by air amounted to a total of 7,629,652, a fall of 1.8 per cent over the same period last year.

The number of nights spent during this period in hotel accommodation accounted for 64.4 per cent of the total nights spent. In the period under review, a total of 568,807 tourists, or 74.4 per cent of all tourists, stayed in hotels: an increase of 12.2 per cent over the previous year.

Tourism expenditure

In August this year, total tourism expenditure was estimated at Lm73.4 million, an increase of Lm2.3 million or 3.3 per cent over the same month last year. In the first eight months this year, expenditure on package tours to the Maltese Islands was estimated at Lm150.7 million, a decrease of Lm4.1 million, or 2.7 per cent, over last year. Non-package tourists spent Lm28.1 million on airfares and Lm18.1 million on accommodation, a fall in total expenditure on non-package travel of approximately Lm3.8 million or 7.5 per cent over the first eight months of last year.

Other expenditure accruing to both package and non-package tourists increased by Lm0.01 million to Lm98.92 million, from Lm98.91 million in the same period last year.

In the period under review total expenditure declined by Lm7.9 million, or 2.6 per cent, to Lm295.9 million. As a result, per capita expenditure fell to Lm193.5 compared with Lm201.5 for the same period last year.