New York and São Paulo lead non-European cities searching for flights to Malta  

New York and São Paulo recorded the highest number of flight searches to Malta among non-European cities last year.

They were followed by Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Toronto, and Tokyo. 

The information, sourced from airline data platform Amadeus, was released by Alex Rayner, an executive board member of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) during a discussion on long-haul flights. 

He said that an average of 502,932 active online searches for flights to Malta were made every day last year, around 184 million searches in total. 

“We’re talking about consumers who visit a site like Expedia, lastminute.com or Skyscanner, put their destination as Malta and add a specific date of departure or return,” he said. “There’s an element of commitment there; we’re not talking about people who just they want to travel.”

“You announced that four million tourists visited Malta last year, so that’s a conversion ratio of 46 – for every 46 online searches, you get a visitor to Malta.”

When asked which new markets Malta should tap into to follow up on its upcoming long-haul flights to New York, Mr Rayner said that 70 per cent of searches for Malta come from 50 destinations. 

“Excluding Europe, the top five are, in order, New York, São Paulo, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Toronto, and Tokyo. So that’s your formula for success and this is all based on Amadeus data.”

Malta is already connected to Istanbul via Turkish Airlines and KM Malta Airlines, while Ryanair used to connect the country to Tel Aviv. 

With Delta set to start operating between Malta and New York in June, could direct flights to São Paulo and Tokyo also be in the pipeline?