Malta must pursue better tourism, not just more tourism, The Malta Chamber says

Kyle Patrick Camilleri

Malta must offer tourists greater value while respecting what residents are willing to tolerate and preserve, The Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry has argued, saying that the country’s future lies in shifting from high-volume tourism to a higher-yield, better-managed model.

Speaking to this media house, Malta Chamber Board of Management and Council member Alan Arrigo said the organisation’s recently published tourism strategy, Rediscover to Align, is built around the principle of “Managing a Sustainable, Authentic & Resilient Future.” Its core message is that Malta should stop judging tourism success primarily by record arrival numbers and instead focus on how much value each visitor brings to the country.

While Malta has enjoyed record-breaking tourism in recent years, including more than four million tourist arrivals in 2025 for the first time, the chamber believes that raw numbers alone present an incomplete and potentially misleading picture. Arrigo argued that the more meaningful benchmark is average expenditure per tourist, adjusted for inflation. He said that authorities and operators naturally work to improve whichever metric is prioritised, and if the focus remains solely on arrivals, Malta risks pursuing “growth for growth’s sake.”

The chamber’s figures suggest that this is already becoming a concern. Although expenditure per tourist has risen in nominal terms, inflation-adjusted data tells a different story. The Rediscover to Align report shows that average real spending per tourist fell from €919.09 in 2015 to €771.01 in 2025, a drop of 16% over a decade. At the same time, the average length of stay declined by 20%, from 7.9 nights in 2015 to 6.3 nights in 2025. Total tourist expenditure still reached €3.9 billion last year, but the chamber warns that Malta is at risk of becoming a permanently high-volume, lower-yield destination if it does not change course.

For Arrigo, the answer is not simply to charge tourists more, but to offer them more. If Malta wants visitors to spend more, it must give them a stronger sense of value through a better overall experience. That means cleaner public spaces, improved maintenance, stronger infrastructure, and more curated, authentic experiences that can justify a premium price point. If tourists feel overcharged for a mediocre product, he warned, Malta risks sliding further into a downward spiral in which value perception deteriorates and higher-yield tourism becomes harder to attract.

The chamber’s strategy, published this month and containing 115 proposals, is intended as a ready-made blueprint for government. It calls for a shift towards what Arrigo described as “not handling more but handling it better.” The aim is to align operators, authorities and residents around a common objective: extracting more value from each tourist visit while improving the experience for everyone involved. If Malta handles tourism better, he said, tourists will stay longer, spend more, return more often and strengthen the sector in a more sustainable way.

A central part of that vision is the principle that tourism cannot be separated from residents’ quality of life. If it’s not working for residents, it’s not working for tourists, Arrigo said, arguing that local wellbeing is not secondary to the tourism product but integral to it. Tourists come to experience local culture and character, not a hollowed-out destination stripped of its authenticity. If residents feel overwhelmed, neglected or alienated, the visitor experience will eventually suffer too.

That is why the chamber is placing significant emphasis on preserving Malta’s distinctiveness. Arrigo said the islands’ culture, environment, landscapes and local feel are among the country’s strongest tourism assets. If these are protected and enhanced, Malta can continue to command value as a unique destination. If they are eroded, Malta risks becoming interchangeable with countless other destinations competing on price rather than quality. No-one in the world is Maltese except Malta, he said, underlining the argument that Malta’s uniqueness should be treated as a premium product.

One of the more notable concepts in the chamber’s approach is the idea of respecting what residents are willing to change. Arrigo acknowledged that overtourism can be difficult to measure precisely, but said negative public perceptions, such as those seen in cities like Barcelona, can be reduced if policymakers pay attention to residents’ tolerance levels. Using the concept of a “limit of acceptable change,” authorities can identify the point at which locals begin to see tourism’s social and environmental costs as outweighing its economic benefits.

This philosophy feeds into several practical proposals. Among them is a national aesthetic and landscape policy to safeguard streetscapes and scenery, alongside a renewed Strategic Plan for the Environment and Development (SPED), which has lapsed. Arrigo said a revised SPED should clearly distinguish commercial from residential areas, helping to preserve neighbourhood character and avoid uncontrolled encroachment. The chamber also believes local councils should play a far bigger role in shaping their localities, from the design of public squares and visual standards such as colours and umbrellas, to upkeep and maintenance. In this way, councils would represent residents more directly while contributing to the overall quality of the tourism product.

The strategy also calls for a central coordinating entity to work with residents and local councils on such matters, reflecting the chamber’s belief that tourism is a vast value chain in which the weakest link can damage the entire experience. Arrigo stressed that lower-end details, from cleanliness to visual coherence, matter just as much as high-profile attractions if Malta wants to raise standards across the board.

Another key theme is the chamber’s warning against government working in silos. Arrigo said the biggest threat to Malta’s tourism product is a fragmented approach in which ministries and agencies operate independently without understanding how their decisions affect the visitor and resident experience. Tourism, he argued, is not just the responsibility of the tourism ministry or the Malta Tourism Authority. Planning, transport, heritage, education, policing, the environment, cleanliness and enforcement all have a direct impact on the sector. If these sectors are not coordinated, “things will break,” damaging both quality of life and the tourism offer.

The report therefore urges a whole-of-government approach, involving every relevant ministry in implementation. It also promotes the use of data and smart systems to better manage tourism pressures. Examples include dynamic pricing in crowded hotspots such as Valletta to influence visitor flows, and smart bins that alert authorities when collection is needed. These measures, the chamber says, are intended to improve efficiency, manage congestion and maintain standards in real time.

Ultimately, Arrigo said Malta is at a crossroads. If it continues to chase tourism growth through volume alone, it risks undermining the very qualities that make the islands attractive in the first place. But if government embraces a coordinated, quality-first strategy focused on infrastructure, aesthetics, resident wellbeing and authentic experiences, Malta can build a more resilient and profitable tourism model. In the chamber’s view, Rediscover to Align is a strategy that is ready to be adopted immediately – a blueprint for doing tourism better, not simply doing more of it.

This is an abridged version of an interview carried in The Malta Independent on Sunday on 29 March