It's now official, confirmed by the Minister for Tourism in Parliament and repeated at an MIA event recently to this paper: the government aims at getting as many tourists to Malta as possible.

This is the month of August and tourist numbers continue to increase. So far, we have not had instances of people sleeping rough because they did not find accommodation, even though it was a struggle to fit in the West Ham supporters who came for their game in Malta.

We usually get some 1.4 million tourists a year but this number can even be pushed up to 2 million, according to some in the industry.

Considering the new airlines that are coming here, many from areas where direct flights to Malta were not possible before, there is every reason to expect the tourist numbers to continue growing. One must also consider that Malta is an end destination, not a transit place, so the planes coming here, the people coming here, are specifically coming to visit Malta, not to go somewhere else.

We have had some hotel closures in the near past, but now we have many hotels which are enlarging and upgrading. While this is mainly true of the five-star and four-star segment, the three-star sector is still suffering from the under-investment and losses they suffered in past years.

Shaking off dependence on tour operators and relying more and more on internet bookings has done wonders for the higher segments but this novelty still has to really shake up the three-star segment and those below it.

So yes, it is possible to keep increasing the tourists coming to Malta, not just in the winter months or the shoulder months but also in summer. Whether this is the best that can be done is another matter. There is such a thing as sustainable tourism and certainly crowds wherever one turns, overcrowded buses, infrastructure that collapses under the weight, certainly is not.

Barcelona, Saturday's Financial Times told us, which increased its tourist numbers by 150% in 15 years, and became Europe's fourth most popular tourist destination after London, Paris and Rome, is now having second thoughts after its own citizens rebelled against the yob tourism which used low cost airlines for boozy weekends, bachelor parties and the like. And this in a city where tourism accounted for 1.7 million tourists in 1990 which rose to 7.9 million in 2014, where the number of hotel beds shot up three-fold over  the same period and where tourism accounts for 14% of the local economy and directly provides 114,000 jobs.

Such was the popular reaction it affected the recent local elections and steps are now being taken to enforce law and order and to regularise the mostly illegal apartment hire.

We cannot say there is any such comparable reaction here and most of the population agrees with the government to 'pack 'em in'.

What we clearly must not have is more reports like the one on the Sunday Times Travel section which highlighted the plight of a man who paid extra for a special room at a local five-star hotel with sea views only to be given a view of a car park. Or the case highlighted by a local paper of a seedy hotel with multiple disfunctions. A cursory look at the Trip Advisor website would highlight such defects and should prompt immediate action by the government bodies.

Now that we seem to have found the way to increase tourist numbers substantially we must not treat people as disposable and dare them to not come back as their place will be taken by others. In this age of mass travel, every tourist must be treated as a person, not as a disposable number.