Overtourism has officially reached Malta, according to the findings of a paper by two University of Malta academics.

“The main conclusion of the paper is that overtourism can lead to various social and environmental pitfalls which could outweigh the economic benefits of tourism for the host community. The responses to this survey would seem to indicate that this is the situation in Malta at present,” reads the abstract.

The survey found that the majority of people (51%) disagreed with the statement “I wish to see more tourists in the town/village where I reside”. Only 18.3% of respondents agreed while 30.7% remained undecided.

When asked whether respondents would like to see more hotels, restaurants and other shops opened in their town or village, only 16.5% agreed, while 75.5% disagreed and 8% were undecided.

“As expected, respondents who live in high high-tourist-density localities expressed a lower degree of agreement than the average in their wish to see more tourists in their location. This was also the case of respondents aged 60 years or older. Conversely, respondents who work directly in tourism-related jobs showed a significantly higher degree of agreement with the statement than the average,” the authors Lino Briguglio and Marie Avellino stated.

“It appears that most respondents harbour the wish that the volume of tourists should decrease and that Malta should aim for better quality tourists,” they added.

When asked whether too many tourists were degrading the physical environment in their villages, 45.8% agreed, while 37.8% disagreed and 16.4% were undecided. And a similar question on social discomfort bore a similar result: 44% agreed that too many tourists created social discomfort of their villages, while 39% disagreed and 17% were undecided.

The authors conceded that the 400 respondents to their survey were not representative of the Maltese residents in terms of gender, age, educational attainment and occupation and the results should interpreted with caution.

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