Tourists staying longer, spending more

The number of tourists departing by air during September was estimated at 118,472, a 3.5 per cent decline over the same month last year, the National Statistics Office said yesterday.

In the first nine months of this year, tourist departures increased by two per cent over the same period last year, reaching 872,324.

Tourists departing to the UK in September accounted for 47 per cent of all tourist departures and increased by 10.7 per cent over the same month last year. Other markets recording increases in tourist departures included the Swedish, Belgian, Danish and US.

On the other hand, departing German tourists accounted for 10 per cent, a decline of 36.6 per cent, while the French market which accounted for six per cent, went down by 24.7 per cent.

Departing Italian tourists declined by 16.7 per cent and accounted for 5.5 per cent of the total. Other drops in tourist departures were recorded among the Russian, Libyan and Swiss markets.

In the nine-month period under review, holiday tourists accounted for 83.9 per cent of all tourists while business tourists accounted for 7.5 per cent.

This shows an improvement in business travel to Malta when compared to the same period last year, when business tourists accounted for 5.1 per cent of all tourist departures.

It is estimated that during the January-September period, tourists spent a total of 9,023,089 nights in Malta, an increase of 9.2 per cent over the same period last year.

In the period under review total expenditure rose by Lm23 million or 6.9 per cent to Lm355.5 million. As a result, per capita expenditure increased to Lm179.6 from Lm175.1 in the same period last year.