A strong first quarter for tourism was registered this year, with the number of inbound tourists even surpassing the amount in 2019.

In 2019, the country saw 425,892 inbound tourists in the first quarter while this year, inbound tourists for the first quarter amounted to 443,062.

The increase in inbound visitors is also reflected in the number of tourism nights. 2,798,282 tourism nights were spent in Q1 2019, and in the first quarter this year the number surpassed 2.9 million.

The Ministry for Tourism and the Malta Tourism Authority on Monday lauded the results. 

The Minister for Tourism, Clayton Bartolo remarked that the country is now moving to discussing the quality of the numbers obtained in the first quarter of this year, rather than by only achieving high quantities. The Minister added that “with the right mindset and with the right strategy, we can beat seasonality for good”. The tourism industry must diversify and move away from the sun-and-sea tourism to ensure a steady flow of tourism all year round, he said. The Minister commented that sustainability is our “day-to-day modus-operanda” and that we must keep these numbers high throughout all months of the calendar year. 

Having the aim to diversify the country’s tourism product is an admirable one, as spreading out tourism over the year makes sense, and the government is right in trying to achieve this aim.  The Malta Tourism Authority also said that marketing initiatives to increase tourism during the first quarter of 2023 aimed for “sustainable, responsible and eco-conscious tourism”, which should be the aim year round if it isn’t already.

One must point out that the minister’s statement regarding moving the discussion to quality rather than quantity for the first quarter should be the discussion we are having about the tourism sector in general and not just for the first quarter. The country cannot just aim to attract more and more tourists year on year. It isn’t sustainable. 

Malta has some excellent hotels and restaurants which tourists enjoy frequenting. The country is full of heritage sites and fortifications. There is a lot for tourists to do, and Malta does attract many tourists because of this. But what attracts higher quality tourists isn’t solely dependent on these factors. Being stuck in traffic, overcrowded beaches, seeing streetscapes which are an eyesore with hotchpotch designs and heights are all factors that can have an impact.

There are so many travel destination options that we must ensure that our whole product is of the highest quality. 

Last year, a study by the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association showed that Malta will need to bring in 4.7 million tourists to cater for planned increase of hotels. This is almost double the 2.8 million tourists Malta received before the Covid-19 pandemic. But this would not be sustainable at all. Just imagine what the country would look like in summer with such high tourism numbers. What would our beaches look like? 

Continuing to aim for higher tourism numbers year on year would mean more hotels, restaurants and tourism-related businesses will be needed, which means more construction and more workers which the country doesn’t currently have. This could lead to more traffic, and more construction, and given the way Malta has been building over the years, will not make our streetscapes any nicer to look at. 

We need sustainable tourism numbers that ensure that a good income is being brought into the country.