In May, inbound tourism was estimated at 102,740, a decrease of 8.7 per cent over the corresponding month last year. Tourists departing by air were estimated at 101,940, recording a drop of 9.0 per cent when compared to May 2005, the National Statistics Office reported yesterday.

The German, British and French markets, altogether making up a share of 58.0 per cent of the total, all registered decreases.

In total, such markets went down by 15.7 per cent when compared to the same month last year.

Other decreases included those recorded from the American, Belgian and Danish, as well as from a group of “other” markets.

Year-on-year, tourists from the Dutch and Italian markets went up by 13.6 and 13.0 per cent respectively, jointly accounting for a share of 12.8 per cent of the total.

Other increases included those from the Russian, Austrian and Swedish markets.

Purpose of visit

The number of holiday tourists was estimated at 83,448, a drop of 11.7 per cent over May 2005, whereas business tourists went up to 11,129.

January-May 2006

In the period under review, total tourists reached 364,297, a decrease of 1.4 per cent over the comparable period last year. Tourists departing by air decreased by 1.7 per cent.

Across air and sea, decreases were recorded in the German, French and Danish markets, at 10.6 per cent, 10.6 per cent and 23.4 per cent respectively.

Other decreases included those from the Swedish, Libyan and Swiss markets.

On the other hand, Italian and Dutch tourists increased by 19.6 and 10.7 per cent respectively, together accounting for a share of 12.3 per cent of total tourists.

Other increases were recorded from the Russian, Norwegian and Belgian markets.

Accommodation

In the period under review, the number of nights spent by tourists departing by air was estimated at 3,247,494, a decrease of 5.5 per cent when compared to the corresponding period in 2005. The number of nights spent in hotel accommodation establishments went down by 2.5 per cent and accounted for 71.3 per cent of the total nights spent.

Tourists opting for an overnight stay in Gozo were estimated at 11,751 – 3.3 per cent of total tourists in the first five months of the year.

Tourism expenditure

In the period under review, expenditure on package travel decreased by Lm3.5 million to an estimated Lm58.7 million, a decline of 5.7 per cent over the corresponding period a year ago. Non-package tourists spent Lm14.3 million on airfares and Lm9.8 million on accommodation thereby increasing total expenditure on non-package travel by approximately Lm0.7 million or 2.9 per cent.

Other expenditure from both package and non-package tourists remained practically at the same level as a year earlier at Lm41.0 million.

Overall, in the period under review total tourist expenditure decreased by Lm2.9 million or 2.3 per cent.