Travel-sick: fatigue from overtourism wipes off the Maltese smile

On TikTok, the video of a down-and-out homeless man tearing about the streets of Paceville in an alcoholic stupor, plays to the sound of the Grand Theft Auto video-game music. 

The joke is that his unsteady gait mimics that of the video game’s characters. But the playful subtext is that frisson of crazy that runs through GTA’s crime-ridden downtown, is also alive and well in Paceville. 

30 years ago, Paceville had no gentleman’s clubs, far less tourism, and cannabis edibles apart, drugs seemed to have less of the universal appeal they possess in today’s liberal times. The brawls and lewd behaviour that gets easily captured on smartphones today scares parents and the usual, scandal-prone commentariat. 

The British tabloids (read: The Sun) think Malta could be a new Magaluf, latching onto the cheap drink, sun and sea mantra. Nothing new from a news economy that thrives on the ‘darker’ side of tourism – even Malta’s English-language industry once suffered the brunt of French TV exposés claiming that Parisian teens shipped off to Malta by their parents were only being served alcohol, sun and sex, rather than grammar and vocabulary. 

But tawdry journalism apart, the pain of Malta’s subservience to the tourism dollar is being clearly felt. Our well-worn metrics of tourism growth – more numbers, more beds, more money – certainly tell us little about the way this wealth has become severed from its alleged trickle-down in an age of rising prices, environmental stain, construction madness, and tourism fatigue. There’s certainly a greater deal of wryness about the holy grail that tourism tends to represent, when decades back in the 1980s the national tourist board’s slogan read: ‘Malta: where every face has a smile’.  

The pains of tourism 

The massive export value of tourism to Malta can never be understated. NSO data for June 2023 shows the monthly spend of incoming tourists was over €286 million – an average €972 spend per tourist. In six months, tourism revenues are estimated to be at over the €1 billion mark. 

But the visible effects of tourism’s massive growth are also evidenced by packed towns and villages that have had to cater for more construction, higher hotels, dozens upon dozens of bus commuters waiting for a delayed bus and hoping to find space on board, or the disruption of AirBnbs that put out more residential units on the market for quick gains. Small (and large) investors want to open up boutique hotels anywhere if they can convince tourists to move off the beaten path – but it comes at a cost in rural areas that sacrifice agriculture for agritourism, attracting more traffic or higher-priced restaurants in areas unaccustomed to tourists. Then throw in the piling rubbish on the streets. The coastlines annexed by hotels for reclaimed lidos. The traditional meeting spots once part of village life, turned into cocktail bars for holidaymakers. It’s the entire island that has been turned into an airport. 

“We have hit our 2019 volumes and revenues,” says Philip Fenech, the Chamber of SMEs’ vice-president, a veteran of the tourism industry who is also chair of Paceville’s town centre management committee. “Because when tourism went into COVID cooldown, the industry was primed to pounce back and we’ve literally gone to pre-COVID rates.” 

But Fenech believes this steroidal growth has left so much of the island’s infrastructure lagging. Traffic management has suffered, garbage piles up, streets washed and cleaned in the morning are a mess by the middle of the day, and this is compounded by the related social or infrastructural pressures from an influx of foreign labour that is required as muscle to serve tourism. 

“I don’t think anyone was looking at the consequence of excess capacity, such was the business confidence fuelling investment,” Fenech says. “The MHRA carried out a capacity study on beds, but we need a similar study on the supply side, to give investors trying to claw at every single piece of action to get a reality check, and not just copying every single business concept out there in the hope of raking in some of that cash.” 

According to the Malta hotels’ lobby study by Deloitte, Malta’s regulated bed stock would require 4.7 million arrivals at an average of just under seven nights each, to achieve 80% occupancy throughout the year if all the proposed and planned bed stock comes onto the market. 

It’s a number that strikes fear in those who know the stress tourism brings on the country’s infrastructure, such as the sewage system, which is already strained, and exacerbates the strain on tourism hotspots like Comino, Mdina and the Cittadella in Gozo. This means that to remain sustainable, hotels will need to attract double the number of tourists they attracted in 2019, with all the repercussions this will have on the country’s infrastructure. 

Fenech says it is a reason to pause. “There must be a market correction, because there are obvious consequences on the environment and land resources. Excess capacity brings about collapse, so the more efficient and well-priced businesses must push the others out. Wouldn’t it be better to really take stock and for us to get a bird’s eye view on tourism investment?” 

Whose quality tourism? 

Fenech scoffs at the tabloid press that feasts on stories of excess in Paceville, for decades the entertainment mecca that once hosted his own jazz club. But today, that square mile has undergone radical changes – more clubs and their more tolerated raucous behaviour have replaced the sedate hangouts of yesteryear. “If you had to categorise that type of reveller as a ‘lower’ type of tourist, it is a minority: flight costs have risen with fuel hikes and the war’s inflationary effect, and even when it comes to English-language students, we’ve had more mature visitors than the typical hordes of youngsters.” 

Indeed, Fenech also gives short shrift to the shrill calls for ‘quality tourism’. What on earth is that anyway? Whose pound is the Maltese entrepreneur going to refuse? 

“How do you even define what a ‘quality’ tourist is?” Fenech asks. “The spend per capita? The one who prefers history over a few lagers? Must everything in Malta be ‘deluxe’?” 

Fenech thinks Malta should keep chasing better standards, instead. “Quality means that, be it the humble AirBnB or some takeaway shop, there is a standard business owners aspire to. And of course, the same goes for managing our national infrastructure. Because we need all types – the ageing tourists, the bucket-and-sand holidaymakers, and the champagne conference-goers... even the summer clubbers are important spenders.” 

The boastful figures of Malta’s post-COVID tourism recovery keep confirming the attraction of the island for the tourists who, holiday-tinted glasses firmly on, are blind to the effects of tourism growth on the population. 

Malta’s singular point of attraction keeps being its size, and the ability to reach one attraction after the other in the space of 20 minutes. It’s the tapas of the tourism world. “It can offer something different to people with different desires,” Fenech says. “They don’t come for just one thing – they love our small size because they can spend a day at the temples, then then the beach, and then the clubs.” 

There’s nothing to rubbish about this singular aspect of the Maltese tourism product. But are the Maltese really going to have cope, some day, with 5 million arrivals each year simply because of investors’ hunger for more beds, taller hotels, and the largesse of Malta’s erratic planning regime? 

Tourism fatigue 

Prof. Marie Avellino, of the University of Malta’s Institute for Tourism, Travel and Culture, knows what overtourism looks like. In a 2019 study with economist Lino Briguglio reflecting on the doubling of tourism arrivals over a decade, she said an online survey of 400 respondents suggested the fatigue from “overtourism” – a situation where a majority would like tourist numbers to decrease – had set in. In response to the statement “I wish to see more tourists in the town/village where I reside” only 18% of the respondents agreed that they wished to see more tourists in their town or village, while 51% of the respondents disagreed. The remaining 31% were undecided. 

Not surprisingly, respondents who live in high-tourist-density localities were less likely to desire more tourists in their communities than the average and expressed a higher degree of associating tourism with social discomfort. 

“Overtourism is when locals, and our non-native population, feel their quality of life is being reduced by tourism,” Prof. Avellino says. “I was shocked at the Deloitte report’s numbers, because it is based on the supply, the amount of people we can fit. But you must factor in the infrastructural strain – garbage, roads, sewage, energy – and the amount of foreign labour required to service tourism, which itself comes with stories of exploitation.” 

Where does one draw the line? Studies like those of Avellino and Briguglio reveal how buzzwords such as ‘sustainability’ adorn so many tourism policies approved under different administrations, yet in practice sustainability “was often only lip service only, and the success of the industry was generally measured in terms of tourist numbers by the tourism authorities.” 

And this means that dependence on mass tourism continues unabated. Indeed, very little, if at all, is done to reverse this trend. For example, capping the number of pleasure boats and tourists arriving in the Blue Lagoon is considered crucial to control ecological damage in the protected site, but a commitment undertaken over seven years ago to establish the beach’s carrying capacity has not been implemented. Back in 2016, the majority of those visiting the Blue Lagoon arrived by means of organised cruises (between 3,500-4,000) with another 1,000 using water taxis from Ċirkewwa, Mġarr and Sliema. 

And the challenge of desiring larger tourism volumes while fighting off the threat of gentrification and property price increase is also felt in Gozo, where the Gozo Regional Development Authority (GRDA) is also carrying out its own carrying-capacity study. 

Similarly to the Maltese experience, the greater dependence on a fast and cheap labour force has meant a rise in foreign workers: the 2021 Census finds the town of Żebbuġ, which includes the sprawling Marsalforn seafront, doubling in population to over 3,300 in 2021 over the last decade, with the locality’s foreign population exploding from just 125 to 1,371 – 42% of the Żebbuġ population, up from 7% ten years ago.  

So, is it about only managing the development of tourism – as Fenech suggests. What about managing the people’s quality of life first – for what is a serene Maltese tourism product if its inhabitants dislike the place they welcome tourists to? 

Prof. Avellino says the tourism industry needs democratisation, one that involves the active participation of residents and local communities, rather than simply being driven by investors’ whims. “It’s not an easy policy to carry out, due to the conflicting interests and agendas involved in tourism. Business interests often seeking short-term gains rather than social responsibility, and politicians often try to gain political mileage by boasting about tourism numbers,” Prof. Avellino says. 

Quality tourism misnomer 

Nothing could be more contradictory than a recent rant by former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi about the lack of ‘quality tourists’ (the Sun’s diatribe on Paceville was the springboard) while boasting of tourism growth under his tenure when Malta opened up to low-cost airlines.  

“The quality tourist is a misnomer,” Prof. Avellino says. “Everyone in Malta thinks they’re an expert in tourism of course – that’s what I tell students who get asked why they are reading for a degree in tourism – but it’s a very short-sighted way of treating the subject of tourism in Malta. Because not enough people criticise the hotels, restaurants or the entertainment business driven to make a buck. And you’d expect the direction to come from the top, not the bottom.” 

Philip Fenech says Malta must learn how to manage yet another wave of changing tourism. He points at the towering Mercury high-rise, the luxury skyscraper built by magnate Joseph Portelli that now serves as the gateway to what was once a trashy patch of clubland. “To me it’s looking like a mini-Manhattan… wait till the other towers and edifices are built. The tacky parts will automatically lose out.” 

It will be renewed gentrification, a story of capitalism’s repeat formula on not just lucrative areas like Paceville, but even in small towns where the boutique hotels start attracting restaurants tempting patrons with two-course meals and wine at €80 a head. How long can towns and villages losing out to ‘luxury’ development survive this kind of inflationary effect? “It’s a free market,” Fenech says, resigned to its logic. “If someone wants to charge for that demand and people go, that’s it... but my advice is for people to be reasonable, and not go overboard.”