Last week, I tried to understand the political discourse of the opposition when it comes to tourism. True, between June and September, Malta turns into a bustling hub of activity. Indeed, the island’s population surges with tourists, seasonal workers, mischievous students, and short-stay visitors. Certainly, for those who spend their time mostly on social media, it may seem chaotic, with excessive noise and accidents, because of increased traffic. However, this surge is not a crisis, as the opposition is depicting it. For businesses, and those who work in the retail and service sector, it is a privilege. Surely, this is the result of what happens to countries that are safe, connected, and economically successful.
The seasonal increase in Malta’s population is not inherently negative. On the contrary, it is one of the most important drivers of employment, revenue, and liquidity across sectors. Properties are filled, restaurants operate at capacity, and every connected industry, or better put supply chain, such as inter alia hospitality, logistics, entertainment, and agriculture, benefit directly or indirectly from the momentum. It is what we economists refer to as the economic multiplier effect. Hotels, short-let apartments, taxis, dive schools, boat rentals, wedding venues, shops, and entertainment venues all ride this seasonal economic wave. The cash flow generated in the summer often sustains businesses through the quieter months.
Of course, alongside the benefits come the inevitable social tensions, or as we economists call it, negative externalities. Some are bothered by the behaviour of certain youths, particularly late-night antics that surface on social media. But this too is nothing new. As someone who worked for over two and a half years as a night receptionist at the Diplomat Hotel in the late 1990s, I witnessed all forms of madness long before anyone could upload clips on Instagram or TikTok. Back then, things were wilder in many ways, confident that no cameras were watching us. Well, there was less visibility and less moral panic.
We tend to forget that Maltese youths were once banned from entering Ibiza, not just on paper, but in practice. There were clubs stating that no Maltese are allowed. It was a time when clubs and accommodation providers in Ibiza saw fit to prohibit Maltese party goers because of unruly behaviour. And yet today, some seem to assume we are hosts to the only misbehaving demographic in Europe. Let’s not pretend youthful excess is exclusive to foreign visitors. Youth is universal, and so is rebellion. I am not justifying bad behaviour in Malta. I am just reminding everyone what happens elsewhere. What has changed is not the nature of summer behaviour, but the context in which we view it. Malta has grown economically and prospered. Our GDP per capita has surged, employment is near full, and despite global geopolitical and energy shocks, our service economy remains resilient. But this success has exposed our systemic weaknesses, particularly in planning and spatial management.
Unless we admit to a problem, we cannot solve it. Let us be honest with ourselves. Malta is not a planning-oriented culture. Unlike Switzerland, where each change in land use or infrastructure is choreographed with clinical precision across regions. Malta, like many other Mediterranean countries, has always taken a more reactive approach to governance. The result? Our economic expansion outpaced our institutional foresight. The pace with which the country grew caught most policymakers, planners, and enforcement agencies by surprise. I reiterate that I prefer having these kinds of problems rather than having people registering for work, as they are easier to fix.
Now we are experiencing the friction. There are more cars on the roads, more demand than the cleaning schedule can handle, more events than noise control measures can absorb in terms of noise pollution, more people than public order services are scaled to manage. And all of this concentrated in a four-month window. Recently, Italian police force joined forces with the Maltese police force. Indeed, some suggest recruiting more police officers to deal with this surge. But no public service can sustainably scale up for just one third of the year. It is neither financially efficient nor logistically sensible to double the police force for summer alone. Instead, the state must explore alternative models. The state must be creative with structural solutions that respond to seasonal dynamics without compromising year-round efficiency.
One such option is a public private partnership in the field of security and enforcement. Properly trained security professionals, deployed under the supervision of the Malta Police Force, could support crowd management, nightlife monitoring, and basic tourism support. These must be trained civilian personnel hired specifically for a summer deployment. They must complement, not interfere. Their role would be clearly defined, regulated, and focused on extending the state’s capacity where it is most needed. This is not radical but pragmatic. If I recall well, cities like Barcelona and Amsterdam have adopted similar models for managing event-based or seasonal surges in public space usage.
And we must be careful with the narratives we amplify. Instead of focusing obsessively on how certain people dress or behave in high temperatures, perhaps our MPs should ask more pressing questions like why don’t we have scalable public service infrastructure for a known cyclical population surge? Why don’t we reinvest more of the tourism surplus in local infrastructure and community facilities? Why are local plans not being updated with the same urgency that the economy is moving with? No pun intended, but perhaps Graziella must leave the bikini tangas to those who can really wear them. It is ironic that just as Malta becomes more global, open, and economically confident, parts of its political class are becoming more performatively ahem conservative. The way it sounds is like a page taken out of Iran’s Theocracy. It’s only normal to see a few tourists in bikinis, barely covered, when the temperature soars to forty degrees Celsius. Often, it seems that as we grow older, we carry our own halos. We forget our own youth. The selective moralism in such discourse does not solve Malta’s structural issues. Actually, it merely distracts from them.
Unless we address the elephant in the room, we can’t solve problems. Surely, Malta’s institutions, planning regime, and policy mechanisms were designed for a country that no longer exists. Our legal and urban frameworks still reflect assumptions from a pre-Schengen, pre-budget carrier, pre-digital economy Malta. That version of the country is gone. Today’s Malta is engaged into global commerce, heavily dependent on services, and positioned both geographically and fiscally as a premium Mediterranean product. Yet, its systems are still running on 2006 logic. This is why tensions surface so easily. We are trying to run a modern open economy on an outdated architecture. And the economy is winning. The pace of growth is overwhelming our capacity. That is not a failure but a wakeup call.
The solution is not to suppress growth but to manage it. We must expediate private investment to create additional wealth, by supporting local supply chains, investing in digital and service infrastructure, and channelling public funds toward high economic multiplier interventions. Let us also elevate the discourse. A country that attracts tourists, retains its own youth, provides work for its people, and generates disposable income is not broken. Au contraire, it is functioning. What we need is a governance model that is agile enough to handle the consequences of that success without succumbing to panic or nostalgia, as sometimes, even I do.
Summer in Malta is not an irregularity. It is the most visible reflection of what we have become, meaning connected, competitive, and dynamic. And yes, sometimes noisy, sometimes chaotic. But in an economy of full employment and better liquidity, I would rather manage the chaos of success than grieve the silence of decline.
