The number of tourists visiting Malta was up more than 13 per cent in July, with visitors spending €9.5m more in the country than they did in the same month of 2017.

National Statistics Office figures released on Friday show that 290,041 people visited the country during that month, with more than one in every three (36.8 per cent) aged between 25 and 44. Children and youths aged up to 24 made up a further 28.7 per cent of visitors.

The 13.1 per cent increase was accompanied by a proportional rise in the total number of nights spent in the country, which was up 12.9 per cent to reach almost 2.4 million. More than half of those, 50.4 per cent, were spent in hotels, hostels and other forms of collective accommodation.

Strong August at MIA

Statistics released by Malta International Airport on Friday suggest NSO figures for August will also be positive once they are released.

MIA recorded a second consecutive month of more than 700,000 passenger movements in August, with traffic 9.5 per cent higher than in August of last year – another traffic record.

The 759,547 passenger movements translated into an average of 24,502 passengers passing through MIA every day that month.

There was a similar increase in seat capacity, which was up 10.5 per cent, though seat load factor dropped slightly by 0.7 percentage points to stand at 87.4 per cent, MIA said.

The UK continued to be MIA’s top traffic driver and improved its numbers by 12.1 per cent increase. The most improved numbers were posted by Spain, which saw a massive 30 per cent rise in tourism numbers, with MIA partially attributing that to new flights to Bilbao, Malaga and Seville.

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