May tourism analysis: Italians stay longer, Germans spend more, but non-EU arrivals do both

Italian tourists stay longest among EU arrivals to Malta, and German ones spend more on a per capita and per night basis, but it is visitors from outside the EU that stay longest and spend most in Malta, according to a new National Statistics Office (NSO) release.

In fact, the 2,954 non-EU arrivals, making up 12.8 per cent of the total, were responsible for an outsized 18.9 per cent of the total tourist spend.

When considering tourist expenditure in light of the total number of nights spent, German residents win out, spending the most in relation to the length of their stay, with an average of €107.52 per night, while non-EU arrivals come in second with an average spend of €86.07 per night.

French (€79.92/night) and Polish (€79.70/night) tourists come in third and fourth place, with both spending similar amounts.

Spanish and Italian arrivals spent a relatively low €61.89 and €46.69 per night, but make up for it by spending longer in the country, with each Spaniard spending an average of 12.2 nights and each Italian spending an average of 15 nights.

Arrivals from France meanwhile spent 8.4 nights on average, those from Germany 8 nights, and those from Poland 7.4 nights.

Arrivals from countries outside the EU spent the longest time in the country, with each one staying for an average of 15.7 nights.

When seeing expenditure on a per person basis, the combination of high spend per night and long stays makes non-EU tourists the most lucrative tourists for Malta, with every such arrival during May spending an average of €1351.

German residents came second (€863 per person), followed by Spanish ones (€759), Italians (€701), French (€674) and Polish residents (€588).

May tourism statistics

The NSO release noted that during May a total of 20,105 inbound tourists visited Malta for holiday purposes, followed by 4,126 tourists for business purposes.

Almost half of the inbound tourists were aged between 25 and 44 years (46.3 per cent), followed by those within the 45-64 age bracket (26.7 per cent).

French and Italian residents comprised 46.1 per cent of total inbound tourists.

Tourists from France, making up the largest share of arrivals, numbered 6,076. These were followed by arrivals from Italy (5,895), Germany (3,824), non-EU countries (2,954), Poland (2,069) and Spain (1,023).

The average length of stay of the total inbound tourists stood at 10.9 nights.

The largest share of guest nights (59.7 per cent) was spent in rented accommodation establishments, with 31 per cent of the nights spent in collective accommodation and 28.8 per cent in other rented accommodation.

Total tourist expenditure reached nearly €21.1 million, of which €9.2 million were spent in non-package expenditure and €9.3 million were spent in other expenditure.

January-May 2021

Inbound tourists for the first five months of 2021 amounted to 69,387, a decrease of 81.3 per cent over the same period in 2020.

Total nights spent by inbound tourists decreased by 59.0 per cent, totalling 917,196 nights.

Total tourism expenditure was estimated at €60.4 million, a decrease of 73.1 per cent when compared to the same period in the previous year (Table 9).

Total expenditure per capita stood at €870, increasing from €607 in the same period in 2020, mainly as a result of longer length of stays.

NSO statistics are collected on the basis of residency. National designations used in this article should be taken to refer to residency rather than nationality.