Global economic uncertainty means 2024 will be a year characterised by a “wait-and-see approach” for Malta’s tourism sector, hospitality industry specialist Nigel Spiteri has stated.

Tourism has been on a gradual return to normality following the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, which essentially put the whole sector at a halt for two years. Malta’s tourism sector managed to oversee a faster-than-expected recovery, reaching pre-pandemic levels of arrivals in 2023 instead of the previously forecast 2025.

This prompted Mr Spiteri, Cluster Procurement Manager at Hilton Malta and DoubleTree by Hilton Malta, to recently state that 2023 proved to be a “good year” for Malta’s tourism industry, registering “encouraging results”. He referred to results from the National Statistics Office (NSO) Malta, which indicated that the total number of tourists visiting Malta up to October 2023 stood at just over 2.6 million, close to the 2.8 million recorded in the whole year of 2019. He remarked that 2023 is set to be the “best year Malta has ever had” in terms of tourist numbers.

Following this, WhosWho.mt reached out to Mr Spiteri for further comment about the outlook for Malta’s tourism industry heading into 2024, and whether it is poised to be another record year.

“From a global economic perspective, 2024 will be the year of a wait-and-see approach, in the sense that there is a sentiment of uncertainty globally driven by conflicts and the political spectrum,” he explained.

He pointed out that Malta ended 2023 with just under three million tourists, and reaching similar figures in 2024 is “not impossible”.

“However, recently, we have noticed a trend where bookings are more last-minute, and you cannot say or predict what will happen in 2024 entirely,” Mr Spiteri remarked.

Mr Spiteri has more than 20 years of hospitality industry experience, having worked at some of Malta’s largest hotels in a wide array of managerial positions. He has worked as Procurement Manager at Hilton Malta for the past seven years.

Last July, he stressed the need for Malta to attract high-quality tourism and to thus increase the spending per capita, finding a way to do so without completely “abolishing and destroying the momentum the industry is experiencing”.

Another key point that Mr Spiteri touched on in his recent post is that there need to be further studies about the times of the year when tourists visit Malta. According to his research from NSO data, Malta attracts more tourists between April and October, often described as the country’s peak season, particularly due to the favourable weather.

However, he added that there needs to be a more balanced distribution of inbound tourism, with a need to create new niches to attract tourists for the remaining months and hence alleviate the stress the tourism industry faces during the peak months, obtaining similar, “possibly better” results.

Over the past few years, Malta’s seasonality has shown signs of improvement, especially when considering that Malta is mostly known for its sun and beaches, and summer is also a time when there are school holidays.

Despite this, Mr Spiteri told WhosWho.mt that when comparing 2023’s results to those of 2018 and 2019, when the tourism industry was uninterrupted, there are similarities in the percentages of tourists visiting Malta between January and April.

“If the country manages to attract ‘new tourism’ activity, which can be attractive to tourists all year round, tourists may decide to visit Malta during such periods, and not necessarily during summer,” he affirmed.

Mr Spiteri said that even though the “three Ss” of sea, sand and sun will remain Malta’s “famous attractions”, the likes of diving, art and culture, sports events, carnivals, and other niches can be “better exploited” to attract more tourists during the shoulder months.

In this respect, the conference and events (C&E) business has proven to be particularly vital.

Mr Spiteri stated that there is a “consensus” amongst stakeholders in the tourism industry that events are “critical” in order for tourism to flourish. These events are seen as “good news” as they provide the hospitality industry with “peace of mind in terms of revenues” and tend to also fill in specific periods which tend to be challenging in terms of reaching healthy occupancy levels.

“Post-COVID-19, the tourism industry needed the C&E business to recover, and 2023 was very positive,” he added.