Tourism spending tops €3.9bn as Malta welcomes four million visitors

Tourists spent more than €3.9 billion in Malta last year as the number of inbound visitors surpassed four million, new figures show.

Inbound tourism rose by 12.9% in 2025, from 3.56 million visitors the previous year to just over 4.02 million, according to the National Statistics Office.

Tourist spending increased at an even faster rate, climbing by 18.6% from €3.29 billion to €3.90 billion.

Visitors spent a total of 25.4 million nights in Malta, an 11% increase over 2024.

Most tourists stayed exclusively in the Malta region, with 3.83 million visitors choosing it as a single destination, up 13.2%.

They spent close to €3.7 billion, an increase of 18.9%, and accounted for more than 23.7 million nights.

A further 94,578 tourists stayed exclusively in Gozo and Comino, a 6.4% rise over the previous year.

Their spending reached almost €101 million, up 13.9%, while the average length of stay increased slightly from 8.3 to 8.5 nights.

Another 97,443 tourists stayed in both Malta and Gozo or Comino during the same trip, an increase of 7.4%. They spent an estimated €120 million.

Low-cost airlines continued to account for the majority of visitors staying in Malta, carrying 2.63 million tourists, 19.1% more than in 2024.

The UK remained a major source market, with the number of British visitors staying solely in Malta rising by 20.4% to 795,325.

Polish tourism recorded the sharpest increase among the listed EU markets, rising by 47.9% to 370,769 visitors.

By contrast, visitor numbers from Italy fell by 5.9% and those from France dropped by 2.8%.

Tourists aged 65 and over recorded the largest proportional increase among age groups, rising by 23%, while the number of visitors aged between 45 and 64 increased by 21.8%.

Holidaymakers accounted for the bulk of inbound tourism, with their number rising by 14.6% to almost 3.38 million.

Four in five visitors staying solely in Malta were travelling there for the first time, while the average stay edged down from 6.3 nights to 6.2 nights.

The NSO said it had revised the weighting methodology used for domestic tourism estimates, with Maltese and foreign residents now calculated separately.

Figures for 2023 and 2024 were revised as a result, and the office warned against comparing them directly with data published before the methodological change.