As Business Malta reported earlier, the number of guest nights spent in rented accommodation establishments — such as Airbnb — have been growing at a much faster pace this year than that of spent in collective accommodation establishments, such as hotels. The tendency resembles international trends; rented accommodation establishments essentially appearing to lure over customers from hotels.

The most recent figures published by the NSO show that rented accommodation growth in terms of guest nights have continued to expand aggressively in August, further narrowing the gap to collective accommodation establishments, as the cover image in this article shows.

Total nights spent reached nearly 2.9 million, up by 5.8%. Nevertheless, figures by the NSO reveal that the difference between rented and collective accommodation establishments shrank below 300,000 nights in August. Beyond expenditure and traveller figures, the index of guest nights is probably the most important numeric that hotel managers look at.

Furthermore, in August, to little surprise, the number of inbound tourists peaked at an estimated 338,758, growing by 6.7% as compared to the same month a year earlier, with the vast majority of travellers arriving in the island nation to enjoy their holiday sojourn in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Since the beginning of the year, a total of 1,848,935 travellers are estimated to have arrived in Malta by the end of August, a 4.7% growth over the same period a year earlier. Figures reveal a strong start for the second half of the year that raises optimism for last year’s 2.6 million inbound tourists to be exceeded. These figures compare to the approximately 460,000 population of Malta.

The increasing number of inbound tourists have been accompanied by rising expenditure. August alone saw an estimated €329.6m spent in Malta, a year-on-year increase of 2.8%.

By the end of August, inbound tourists are estimated to have spent more than €1.5b since the beginning of the year; an increase of 3.9% as compared to the same period a year earlier.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The present article is based on figures published by Malta’s National Statistic Office (NSO). Publications used in the present article are of Inbound Tourism in 2019 for January, February, March, April, May, June, July and August.

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Out of the arrivals in February, 103,655 inbound tourist trips were spent for holiday purposes, and the rest 14,776 for business purposes, according to figures by the NSO.

The number of tourists arriving from European Union member states was up by 1.7% to 107,744, as compared to February 2018. The majority of visitors (41.1%) was aged 25-44, followed by the 45-64 age bracket (31.5%)

Total nights spent was up by 3.5%, amounting to 774,569 nights, with the largest share of guest nights (58.6%) having been spent in collective accommodation establishments.

Total tourist expenditure was estimated at €71.2m, a decrease of 2.8%v over the corresponding month in 2018.

The full report including charts and visual representation of data is available for download at the website of NSO.

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