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Malta’s Tourism Authority chief explains how the Mediterranean island managed to restart its crucial tourism industry in a few months, and how it plans to capitalise on the momentum garnered.

For the tourism sector in Malta, 2022 was the year of the great restart. Practically closing its doors to incoming tourists for most of the previous 24 months, the tourism-focused island in the middle of the Mediterranean was extremely eager to welcome back visitors.

Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) CEO Carlo Micallef, explains how the recovery was faster and steadier than expected, as 2022 is expected to have attracted 2.2 million tourists, getting close to the pre-COVID record breaking 2019, which clocked 2.75 million visitors. Apart from health considerations which made some visitors hesitant to travel anywhere, Malta had to face an airborne challenge which wasn't the virus, but the actual availability of seats flying to Malta.

"It wasn't easy to get the numbers going again" Mr Micallef explains "Flights servicing Malta from around the world peaked at only at 80% of what we had in 2019. With 99% of our guests arriving by air, this was a considerable limitation that needed to be mitigated. On the other hand, that meant that airlines were flying at almost full capacity, which translated into very good business for them, which makes us happy!"

Mr Micallef proceeds to express his satisfaction that Malta didn't lose its shine with visitors.