Quality tourism and Sliema’s Fort Cambridge

In the first quarter of 2025, Malta registered strong growth in inbound tourism translating into an 18.9 per cent increase on the previous year, reaching close to four million guest nights. This follows a trend of increasing numbers, now projecting towards four million visitors this year. While these figures are regularly forthcoming, little is manifest as regards quality tourism, in spite of continuous socio-political discourse on the subject, without much success.

Very often, one reads about the risks of overtourism which, in its turn, has locally been triggering overbuilding in order to meet the growing volume of tourists. We have been frequently told that if all present and pending permits to increase beds – mostly in high-rise hotels – are activated, the islands would need double the current number of visitors to fill them all up.

It does not take orbital engineering to conclude that such projections would rather generate more record numbers with little planning for the quality sector, including wishful quality of life for the autochthonous population.

Quality tourists do not only demand five-star accommodation

Sensible appeal win

Sensibly, through an exhaustive appeal by Din l-Art Ħelwa and residents, a PA permit of one such projected high-rise, Fort Cambridge, in Sliema, was recently revoked by its Appeals Tribunal, based on the 2005 development brief that had been ignored when a 31-floor hotel was given the green light in 2023.

Why wisely? Not only because this tower in a narrow one-way street risked threatening a protected British military barracks of 1906 but it would also have been environmentally aggressive towards a residential community, already placed between two of the biggest shopping centres on this slender peninsula in Tigné.

Covent Garden in London: a scene that could easily be created inside the big yard of Fort Cambridge.

Furthermore, this rare rational sentence from the authorities in the worsening concrete urban jungle that is altering the very Mediterranean landscape that originally had put us on the tourist map might, who knows, lead to open our eyes and, perhaps, help us pause before further damage is done in the preservation of the Maltese islands’ lure to city people overseas.

The Tourism Strategy for 2030 and the Vision for Malta 2050, among other sources, advise that quality tourists do not only demand five-star accommodation and starred restaurants. The environment is a priority in such planning but attractions that the destination could offer, especially in a small country, must not lag behind.

Progress on the latter, alas, has been negligible. While almost every garage or old town house in Sliema has been turned into an eatery, a pub, a guest house or hotel, nothing has been done to create attractive places of interest in this major tourist hub on the island.

In 2023, Sliema became the most densely populated town in Malta, with almost 20,000 people per square kilometre, almost as densely peopled as Paris.

Only two miniature squares in Sliema

Unfortunately, the similarities with Paris stops here. The Light City is home to over 140 theatres and show venues that offer major productions, historical reconstructions, musicals and much more. In Sliema, we find none.

So much building has taken place in this urban area since the 1880s, mostly to exploit the presence of the British services in offering accommodation to their families, that every square metre has not been spared, leaving the town with just two miniature squares, namely St Anne and Annunciation.

The town boasts of four Catholic parishes and an Anglican church but none have any space in front; some, indeed, like the Nazarene church at Tigné, are already dwarfed by high-rises around it.

Dwarfed by high-rises, the Nazarene church in Tigné is now hardly visible.

In Sliema, there is no cinema, just one promising small theatre (Salesian), relaunched with great effort recently, and no attraction that can entice the young and the old to any artistic or entertaining venue. It is just eateries, accommodation, high-street shopping and the seashore in summer.

A quality attraction venue

Fort Cambridge, instead of another monstrous tower for additional tourists to sleep over in town, could possibly host something similar to Covent Garden in London or parts of the Parc La Villette in Paris, right in between two shopping centres with a reach of thousands daily.

Such a stimulating complex could host an artistic hub, including a dance hall, a small theatre, exhibition galleries and other musical venues. It could also house a small cinema showing films which have been shot in Malta and Gozo to serve as a postcard for the archipelago.

Fort Cambridge could be turned into a place where, as a break from shopping mostly garments and shoes, one could acquire souvenirs and Malta-made crafts and produce – from honey to handmade lace – but also a small museum, perhaps illustrating the history of the barracks (both of the Order in Tigné and the British), something which was sorely missed some years ago when planning Tigné Point.

Art adds colour at the Parc de la Villette in Paris.

A coffee and tea shop with sun-roof terraces and lots of greenery, as in Milan, Barcelona and Palermo (the trees in front of the building could be saved), should offer a great respite to the traffic hassle of the town, which is fast being run down.

If the state offers the right incentives, who knows, whoever is leasing the premises might discover a different kind of investment that would not only add value to quality tourism but also turn out to be a more lucid venture than the clichéd tourist accommodation.

Charles Xuereb is an author and historian.