Tourist arrivals in January increased by 7.5 per cent to 59,928.

They spent a total of 364,442 nights here, 6.3 per cent more than in the same month last year, the National Office of Statistics said.

It said the majority of guest nights were spent in four-star hotel accommodation. These amounted to 183,543 nights, or 50.4 per cent of the total. Guest nights in three-star hotels reached 73,811 nights, an increase of 29.3 per cent over 2012.

Overall, the average length of stay stood at 6.1 nights, practically unchanged when compared to January last year.

Collective accommodation establishments in Malta registered increases of 7.2 and 6.3 per cent in the number of arrivals and nights spent, respectively. The occupancy rate also rose by 1.6 percentage points when compared to the previous year, to 34.5 per cent.

In Gozo, total arrivals and nights amounted to 2,260 and 6,366 respectively - increases of 15.5 per cent and 12.3 per cent over the corresponding period last year. The average length of stay stood at 2.8 nights and the net use of bed-places was calculated at 16.3 per cent.