Visitmalta.com, the Malta Tourism Authority’s destination website, registered a record number of visitors last month with 215,062 hits which equates to a daily count of 7,168, a statement issued by the authority announced.

This brings the total number of visitors to the site in the first six months of the year to over 1.1 million, a 24 per cent on last year.

The site has English, Italian, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese versions. Swiss travel agents recently voted it the second-best travel website, placed after that of their own tourist offices’ site. Visitmalta.com was described as the “best example of how a small destination can produce an excellent website”.

In 2004, most of the site’s visitors were Italian (18.7 per cent of hits), French (13.7 per cent), Dutch (11.6 per cent), British (11.4 per cent), Belgian (7.4 per cent) and German (5.4 per cent).

So far this year, the Carnival and a Good Friday procession were streamed live on the page. There are also plans to stream a recording of this year’s Jazz Festival.

The most-visited pages on Visitmalta.com remain those related to “What to see”, “Where to stay” (including the related search facility) and “What to do” (including “Holiday Ideas”).

The pages containing practical information, the picture gallery and the 360 degree images were also very popular with visitors.