A carrying capacity exercise should be carried out for the tourism sector, one that should not focus on the sector in isolation, the Nationalist Party's spokesperson for Tourism Mario de Marco told The Malta Independent on Sunday.

It would also need to take into account population numbers and projected growth, among other things, he said. "We need to understand how many people the country can carry, how many people the country should be seeking to attract."

The carrying capacity is not some magic number, the PN MP said, adding that it depends on how tourism is spread throughout the year and the average number of nights spent. "In other words, if the average number of nights spent by tourists is two, as opposed to seven, the carrying capacity in total numbers would be higher. It is hard to reach a magic number as to whether we should have two, three or four million tourists, as the number would depend on the average number of nights and the concentration or spread of that number of tourists throughout the year."

It also depends on whether other economic sectors are going to be labour intensive or not, he said. "If we will focus our various economic activities on labour intensive areas, then the country would have to attract fewer tourists because it effectively has less space for tourists. If, on the other hand, we move towards less labour-intensive economic activities, then the tourism carrying capacity can increase."

"The economy and population need to be looked at in general," he said.

The PN MP was asked whether the country is reaching a state of overtourism given the likelihood that Malta will reach three million tourists by the end of the year. Reaching the three million tourist milestone is a significant achievement, he said. "One cannot undervalue the fact that we will reach the 3 million figure. However, for the first time we are starting to see a negative reaction by people vis-à-vis tourism."

"This summer we have seen this reflection not only in Malta, but in other destinations across the Mediterranean, where residents complain that tourism has now become an intrusion on their quality of life."

While noting Malta's small size, de Marco said that Malta is already one of the highest densely-populated countries in Europe in terms of the number of residents per square metre. While the population increased by close to 20% in the past 10 years, he said, the number of tourists also increased. "In this case people are starting to feel the impact of tourism. Whether it is overtourism or not is something that needs to be determined, but definitely people are complaining."

Regarding talk about the need to attract higher quality tourists, he said that one of the means of addressing overtourism is by focusing on lower numbers but which are of higher quality. "At the end of the day, a country invests in tourism because it is an economic activity. Therefore, if your goal is to boost the economy through tourism, but overtourism is becoming an issue, the best approach to manage visitor numbers, while maintaining economic benefits, is to focus on attracting higher-quality, higher-spending tourists."

The PN MP mentioned tourism statistics, citing those for the January to July period of this year. "While we saw a significant increase in tourist numbers, there are two points which we need to look at. Firstly, there was a significant increase in tourists under the age of 24 compared to last year. It is the highest increase of all the age brackets. When you see such an increase in younger tourists, I believe we are failing in our aim of trying to attract higher-spending tourists because the spending power of people under the age of 24 is lower, generally, than the spending power of people over the age of 24," he said.

When the Isle of MTV concert was introduced, de Marco said there was an issue at the time as the average tourist was an elderly, non-spending tourist. "We heavily invested in such concerts to bring younger tourists and give a bit of a younger, cooler vibe to the tourism scene in Malta. I believe we have achieved that, but now we need to look at whether we have overachieved."

When noting that even this year the highest increase in tourism numbers was in the below the 24-year-age bracket, he said, "obviously we are focusing too much now on that category. Any plan cannot remain static and needs to be revised".

He also said that a recent study found that the real expenditure per tourist, when removing inflationary costs, has effectively gone down.

Airbnb

The PN spokesperson mentioned another issue that points towards overtourism, being the "significant increase" in tourists spending nights in non-collective accommodation.

"There is this growing trend of people coming to Malta and staying in Airbnb apartments. There has been a significant increase in this type of accommodation." He said that in hotels, issues related to garbage collection, noise pollution, and others are handled by hotel management. But, he said, in Airbnb apartments, when it comes to noise issues, if residents need to complain they do so to the police as "there is no management to address this issue".

"If you look at garbage collection, there is nobody responsible for collecting the garbage in those apartments, hence why there are complaints in Swieqi and St Julian's about garbage being left out in the streets at different times of day, which are outside the collection times."

The solution, de Marco said, is "that we need to regulate this. These issues are already being addressed in other tourism destinations like Barcelona, Amsterdam and New York, where they are trying to regulate in a much more effective manner how many nights in a year one can rent out a unit for Airbnb, what kind of units can be leased out for Airbnb, and who is responsible if there are breaches of regulations by people staying in Airbnb accommodation. Abroad they tried to address the inconvenience in different ways. We should look at what is being done abroad as ultimately we are not here to reinvent the wheel."

The PN MP also spoke about the need to find balance when it comes to issues like outdoor tables and chairs. "We need to keep the balance between the needs of economic operators and the needs of the residents who are part of the locality."

Comino

The issue of Comino was also raised. "Try going to Comino. The whole experience turns into a negative one." Abroad they have put into place "serious management plans" for Natura 2000 areas, he said, mentioning that in some places the number of tourism operators that can operate on a given day are limited, alternating days. "Many tourists go through licensed operators, and that is one means of regulating the matter. But this would need to be addressed in a management plan for Comino, which we have been waiting on for far too many years."

"We cannot give up the quality of a Natura 2000 site because it's too large a success as a tourism attraction, so we need to balance the two and safeguard and prioritise its Natura 2000 qualities."

Asked whether there should be a moratorium introduced on new hotel developments, the PN MP said he is wary of knee-jerk reactions. "Until we have a proper carrying capacity study, I think it would be a knee-jerk reaction to talk about a moratorium. As I said before, not all tourists stay in hotels. A significant number stay in apartments. Looking at the January to July period, 6.5 million nights were spent in collective accommodation and 4.1 million nights were spent in non-collective accommodation. Introducing a moratorium doesn't mean less tourists will come, all it may mean is that you may end up restricting the supply of hotel beds and as a result, shifting tourists even further from collective accommodation, to non-collective accommodation."

He went on to say that all stakeholders need to come together and come up with a collective vision for the sector. "It has to be a collective vision which could take 10 years to implement." He said it cannot just be a policy by government or a vision by the Opposition. "We need to implement it by knowing where the country is heading, what its vision is in terms of the economy, what type of population growth we want going forward, what type of development we are trying to address going forward, what kind of collective accommodation we want going forward, looking at whether we want to refocus on five-star hotels, four-star hotels or boutique hotels, whether we want to continue focusing on Airbnb. A lot needs to be discussed and unfortunately we are not discussing it. The time is now ripe to all sit down together and plan the tourism sector for the coming years as the tourism plan of a few years ago has already now become outdated. To do so there also needs to be a national vision for the economy of this country going forward. You cannot look at tourism in isolation without looking at the other economic activity sectors."