Malta can no longer cope with "excessive development of hotels", the head of the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association warned a tourism conference on Friday, describing the situation as "crazy".

Tony Zahra was reacting to a comment that hotels needed more workers to cope with growing demand.

“The whole of Malta is going up in flames because our power distribution system is not working,” Zahra said, referring to hours-long power cuts across Malta and Gozo in recent weeks.

“We cannot go on building more hotels and more rooms. It’s crazy,” he said, as the audience remained silent during his intervention.

Over the weekend, the MHRA already urged the government to stop encouraging the development of new hotel rooms and review rented accommodation and catering licensing protocols.

The association warned that the rapid growth has led to overcrowded destinations and anti-social behaviour.

If Malta continued building more hotels, the island would need more tourists and more arrivals. 

“How will we handle it? Are we going to have more sewage in the sea? Are we going to have more foreign [workers]? Are we going to have to build another hospital?” Zahra reiterated on Friday.

He said the government was “crazy” to expand the economy the way it did, however, businesses must now focus on improving the situation.

“If we do not do that, there won’t be any industry left,” he said. 

“How many times are we going to have people coming to Malta and say, ‘we cannot go swimming’,” he asked.

Over the past weeks, tourists expressed their frustration over the two-month closure of the popular Balluta Bay, due to E-coli contamination.

Zahra said the MHRA’s 2022 carrying capacity study, which claimed that Malta would need 4.7 million tourists to sustain its current occupancy availability, had been ignored. 

“You know what people did with [the study]? They put it in the bin. If you read that report, you would see that we have reached overcapacity.”

Country needs a shift in tourist profile

Addressing the conference earlier, Zahra said one of his main concerns was the country’s shift in the tourists it was attracting. 

He said instead of seeing more families and elderly tourists coming to Malta, the airport arrivals were full of younger visitors.

“This is a good thing, and we don’t mind it of course, but we must focus on the tourist profiles that will contribute the most to the economy,” he said. 

"We have the numbers and we cannot take more. If we take more tourists, we will have more problems than we already have."

Zahra also reacted to the decision by the popular ride-hailing platform Bolt decision to increase the fares as a result of the government's clampdown on work permits for third-country nationals. 

“Mr Bolt, by going against our government (...) you are turning people into slaves,” he said. 

“Bolt, please remember that you are a guest in Malta, and this is not our traditional way of doing business.”

The Employment Minister Byron Camilleri has also warned Bolt to stop inflating prices in an attempt to import more workers. 

How many people visited Malta between April and June?

According to data published at the conference, the second quarter saw an increase in tourist arrivals and their expenditure, when compared to the same months last year.

Close to one million tourists arrived in Malta during these months, an increase of 152,000.

They spent around €850 million, a 17 percent increase from the comparable period of 2023.

When it comes to occupancy levels, four and five-star hotels saw a slight decrease over 2023.