PL MP Spots ‘Positive Trend’ In Tourists Spending More Money And Staying In Malta Longer
As Malta’s tourism industry continues to recover from the bruising blow delivered by the COVID-19 pandemic, Labour MP Randolph De Battista said he can spot a “positive trend” in the most recent data.
“I see a positive trend in that tourists are spending more money and staying in Malta longer,” De Battista said on ONE TV’s Pjazza this week. “If this trend continues, it will mean we will need fewer tourists to generate the same income. We used to keep asking how many tourists Malta can cope with, but if the trends continue, it will mean fewer tourists giving us more money.”
Recent data published by the National Statistics Office for the first quarter of 2022 showed that the average tourist stayed 7.1 nights in Malta and spent €710.
A breakdown of tourists' total expenditure in the first four months of 2022
Although this is a decline from 2021, when the average length of stay was 14.6 days and the average expenditure per tourist €905, this was a period when the Maltese government was forcing several travellers to spend two weeks inside a quarantine hotel at their own expense.
In the first quarter of 2020, which included the first two months of the pandemic, the average tourist spent €607 and stayed six nights in Malta.
In the first quarter of 2019, the average tourist stayed 6.5 nights and spent €666, both lower than the 2021 figures.
A total of 429,841 tourists visited Malta in the first four months of this year, up from 43,433 in 2021 and 370,216 in 2020 but still far away from the 670,264 who visited in the corresponding period in 2019.
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