Six tourists per resident: Malta among top EU hotspots for tourism intensity

Malta’s booming tourist arrivals show little sign of falling according to recently published visitor numbers, with Malta seemingly on track to beat last year’s record of over 3m visitors.

And the government hopes to keep growing this figure, aiming to hit 4.5m arrivals over the next decade, all while getting each tourist to spend more during their trip.

These figures, and the frequent complaints of disorderly behaviour, excessive noise and waste in Malta’s tourist hubs, beg the question: Does Malta receive more tourists than other European countries, given its size?

Six tourists for every resident in Malta

Official data shows that Malta received 3,563,618 tourists last year, almost half a million more than the year before.

Recently published figures show that Malta’s population stood at 574,250 people in 2024.

In practice, this suggests that there were six tourists for every person living in Malta last year, putting Malta ahead of other top European holiday destinations.

Italy recorded over 129m tourist arrivals in 2024, but this works out to just over two tourists for every resident. Greece was a little busier, with four tourists per resident, while Cyprus registered just under three.

Croatia came closest, with some five-and-a-half tourists for every resident, as the country welcomed a record 21m tourists to its shores.

Tourism intensity

But, statisticians say, a more useful way of understanding how tourism impacts a community is by also taking into account how long each tourist stays, not just how many tourists arrive.

So, the theory goes, one tourist spending a week in Malta would have the same impact on a community as seven tourists each spending a single night.

Statisticians refer to this as tourism intensity, noting that this tends to vary wildly between tourism’s high and low seasons, as well as between tourist hotspots and quieter residential zones.

EU figures show that, unsurprisingly, Mediterranean countries tend to dominate the continent’s tourism intensity charts, with four of the top five countries being in the Med.

The most recent EU data available, covering 2023, places Malta in second, with an average of just over 18 tourist nights for every resident, three times more than the EU-wide average of six.

The only country to record more tourist nights per resident than Malta is Croatia, at 24. Two other Mediterranean tourism hotspots, Cyprus and Greece, trail Malta with 16 and 14 tourist nights respectively.

Tourist hotspots double in population at peak season

A recent analysis by the Malta’s National Statistics Office (again looking at 2023) takes the formula a step further, looking not just at how many tourists were in Malta at a given time, but also at how many locals were abroad at the same time point in time.

This, NSO says, gives a better indication of how many people really were in Malta at that point, tallying up both locals who were in the country and tourists who happened to be visiting.

The NSO’s number-crunching found that Malta’s effective population ranged from some 562,000 people during tourism’s low point of December to a hefty 628,000 in the middle of summer.

Malta’s tourist hotspots almost doubled in population during tourism peaks, the report shows.

St Paul’s Bay, typically home to a little under 36,000 people hosted 51,500 in August. Valletta’s 5,000 residents suddenly ballooned to a little over 9,000 and Sliema’s 21,000 residents shot up to almost 34,000.

The worst-hit, unsurprisingly, was St Julian's. Usually home to 13,500 people, the town saw its population more than double to hit just under 31,000 in August 2023.

These figures show how Malta’s success in attracting visitors to its shores is changing the face of several of its towns. While the numbers tell a story of growth, they also raise urgent questions about how the government will manage the impacts of the additional one million visitors it says it will bring to Malta each year.