Today last year, the tourism industry was still haunted by the threatening Omicron variant. Our airport was still with restrictions, a grand harbour deprived from cruiseliners. Hotels, restaurants, bars, taxi drivers, souvenir shops and our own beaches, promenades craving for tourists. For some type of activity.

This was pretty much a year ago today. The movement of persons and travelling was at a standstill in the face of uncertainty. However, we kept believing. We kept working. This profound resilience was the major attribution to the steady recovery that we are all living in today. Our people working in the hospitality industry were the true frontliners who shored up Malta’s tourism industry in the best possible manner.

On a national level, tourism brought hope to our country. We all remember last summer seeing again the activity that we dearly missed. Fast forward and in a few months, our touristic avenues were once again up and running. In a nutshell, hospitality is alive once again.

In 2022, 2.33 million tourists visited the Maltese Islands. The significance of these sterling results is attributed to the fact that while at European level there was a 79 per cent recovery when compared to the last year before the pandemic, Malta’s recovery surpassed the continent’s average reaching 84 per cent.

Significantly, these result stem from the efforts to recover and grow Malta’s connectivity to pre-pandemic levels were air seat capacity in 2022 has exceeded that of 2019 for 12 source markets and was almost similar for an additional 10 source markets.

Last year, tourists travelled to destinations closer to home which also explains the record of inbound tourism results achieved from the relatively neighbouring countries such Italy and France.

More good news is on the way. This trend is expected to remain in 2023 as tourists are expected to increasingly seek value for money in response to the challenging economic world environment.

Despite the recent, relatively short successful recovery we cannot sing victory yet. Henceforth, the direction will be shifted towards a more sustainable tourism activity which equates enhanced visitor satisfaction and host population derived benefits within the delivery of an improved quality experience at all levels of the value chain. Sustainability is a necessity not a choice. It means having tourists visiting our island on a year-round spread. It needs to be complementing partner of sustainability rather than in conflict with it. We have our challenges to achieve this. But we must embrace them head on to the extent that in the coming years we beat seasonality for good.

Clayton Bartolo is Minister for Tourism