Malta's economy has, traditionally, been significantly reliant on the tourism industry. Tourists coming to Malta have been a backbone of the country's fortunes for decades - but it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Last year, Malta welcomed a record of 3.5 million tourists to the country.  This year, that record is well on track to be broken again. The latest National Statistics Office data shows that 1.4 million tourists had already visited the island by May - up by 14.3% when compared to the same period in 2024.

If that trend were to sustain itself throughout the year, it means that Malta will have welcomed something close to 4 million tourists in 2025 - an increase of half a million compared to 2024.

If the same increase was to then happen in 2026, we would see 4.5 million tourists in Malta - the same number of tourists that the government is aiming to be welcoming annually to Malta by 2035... just they'd be here nine years earlier.

The government has long spoken about the need to readjust Malta's touristic appeal and move the island towards "quality" and not "quantity" - yet it appears that the quantity is rising at a breakneck speed, while we're still getting gutter-worthy quality.

It is still mid-July, but there has already been plenty of coverage and reports on the less desirable behaviour on the part of tourists that the country is attracting.

This week alone: a teenage tourist was handed a suspended jail term for spitting on pedestrians and assaulting police; three French tourists were handed suspended sentences for assaulting someone at a club; a Colombian tourist was charged with causing slight injuries to a police constable; and videos and images shared on social media showing tourists spraying fire extinguishers over pedestrians, and another hanging off a roof wearing nothing but a speedo.

None of these are hallmarks of quality tourism, and none of these will do any good to attract quality tourism.

There is then the infrastructural and quality of life impact that this particular period has on residents.

Localities known to be touristic hotspots are already having to contend with garbage being dumped indiscriminatingly on the roadside and left to fester in the sun until the day it's meant to be taken out comes around.

There have already been several swimming bays - including one in St Julian's on Monday - classed as not fit for swimming because of things like sewage overflows, and therefore by extension a failure of the current infrastructure to keep up.

Malta's electricity requirements have already exceeded record levels and summer still has another two months to go.  Power cuts so far have been minimal - but it's residents who are suffering the inconvenience of having their roads dugs up, sometimes more than once, throughout the year in order for the power grid to keep up.

Couple these issues with the increase in population that Malta has seen in the last years and we have an infrastructure that is not improving enough to keep up with the needs of a population that is growing, and growing.

We need to consider that Malta's population in this sense is not the 574,250 people that the NSO reported it is last week - but the tourist population needs to also be taken into consideration.

The country is chasing numbers - but at what cost?  Records are being broken, but is that always a good thing? When should enough really be considered enough?