Tourism direct GDP (2024) | Tourism direct employment (2024) | Travel exports (2024) |
|---|---|---|
11% of total GDP (up 2 percentage points since 2023) | 19.1% of total employment (up 1.7 percentage points since 2023) | 10.7% of total service exports (up 1.0 percentage points since 2023) |
OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2026
National tourism strategy: National Tourism Strategy 2021-2030 - Recover, Rethink, Revitalise.
Responsible government agency: Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Tourism
National tourism budget: EUR 133.6 million (for 2024, under previous organisational structure)
Key tourism policy priorities and actions:
Upskilling the tourism workforce – Improving workforce education and skilling, including through the introduction of the ‘Skills Pass’ national certification system.
Harnessing sustainability to attract quality tourism – Utilising a set of sustainable tourism indicators to improve destination management and supporting SMEs to become more sustainable and digital.
Embracing digital tools and smart technologies – Building an open data platform and utilising AI to analyse diverse tourism data to gain insights into tourist behaviours in Malta.
Tourism is an essential contributor to the Maltese economy. In 2024, total international tourist expenditure reached EUR 3.3 billion. Tourism is estimated to have contributed 11% to GDP, based on the GDP identity from the expenditure side. The tourism sector directly supported 61 100 jobs or 19.1% of total employment in 2024.
With approximately 3.6 million international inbound tourists, 2024 marked a new record year for the tourism sector in Malta, and an increase of 19.5% compared to 2023. The top three international visitor markets were the United Kingdom (20%), Italy (17%) and France (8%). Almost all top 15 geographical source markets saw strong growth rates. The growth continued in 2025 with 4.0 million inbound arrivals, an increase of 12.9% compared to 2024.
Domestic tourism increased in the years following the pandemic. While domestic visitor numbers decreased by 2.7% from 2023 to 2024, to 442 300 overnight trips, domestic visitor nights increased by 5.6% (to 1.2 million nights).
The responsibility for tourism was transferred to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Tourism in November 2024. The Ministry is responsible for the tourism sector at a holistic level, including education within the sector, which is essential for strengthening the country’s tourism product. The Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) is the DMO under the Ministry’s remit, responsible for promoting Malta as a tourist destination, advising the government on tourism operations and issuing licences under the relevant legislation. MTA also caters for the needs of all Maltese islands, liaising with the Ministry for Gozo, the Gozo Tourism Association, which represents Gozitan tourism stakeholders, and the Gozo Regional Development Authority. The MTA Board of Directors comprises members from the major tourism sub-sectors.
The recently established Tourism Sustainability Indicators Stakeholders Group brings together a variety of state agencies, academia and trade associations primarily to contribute to the compilation of data for the tourism sustainability indicators. It also functions as an informal forum to discuss tourism needs and impacts with a wide range of stakeholders (see box below).
The estimated budgetary allocation for tourism in 2024 was EUR 133.4 million from national funds and EUR 155 000 from EU funds. This was slightly below the allocation of 2023 (EUR 145.3 million from national funds and around EUR 2.6 million from EU funds). Due to changes in the organisational structure in 2025, the budget for 2024 cannot be compared with subsequent budgetary allocations.
Source: OECD, adapted from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Tourism, 2026.
Malta’s National Tourism Strategy 2021–2030 is designed to recover, rethink, and revitalise the tourism sector in a sustainable and resilient manner following the disruption caused by COVID-19. The overarching goal is to build a stronger, more competitive, and sustainable tourism sector by 2030, with a focus on balancing economic growth, environmental preservation and social cohesion, while also addressing climate change.
To address ongoing skills shortages and improve tourism quality, Malta began to roll out the ‘Skills Pass’ in May 2024. This is a national certification system which aims to train hospitality and tourism workers to have the skills, knowledge and attitude to deliver quality service. The Skills Pass sets a clear benchmark for competence, and candidates require the Skills Pass to move forward in the recruitment or work permit process. Malta is also delivering a training programme for existing tourism employees and is working to promote tourism-related career opportunities to students.
Sustainability is now being considered a core requirement to improve the quality of tourism in Malta. A tailored set of 37 indicators was developed through the EU Technical Support Instrument, supported by the European Commission (SG REFORM) and the OECD, can now be used to inform and enhance evidence-based policy development and sustainable destination management in Malta. It builds on existing frameworks and good practices at international, national and regional level. Indicator selection was informed by key policy priorities identified in the Malta Tourism Strategy and through stakeholder consultations. This work also presented a toolkit with five levers to incorporate tourism sustainability indicators into decision making for positive change in Malta, building the bridge from indicator selection to action.
To accelerate private sector investment in green and digital technology, MTA is participating in the EU-funded Cross-Re-Tour project. Cross-Re-Tour is a partnership between eight countries with the aim to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in tourism to become more sustainable and more digital. The main areas of focus are water, energy, plastic, food, equipment/furniture, mobility, customer nudging and employee nudging in the tourism sector. Starting in September 2023, this 3-year project involves 3 phases:
Phase one (completed) - gather information about the challenges faced by SMEs to invest in green and digital technology, and enable SMEs to evaluate their own digital and green readiness using a checklist tool developed for the project.
Phase two (completed) - provide support to SMEs through business consultancy services in the areas of digitalisation, green technologies and nudging techniques. In Malta, 22 SMEs benefited from consultancy services in these areas. Webinars were also organised on each focus area with the aim of increasing awareness among tourism businesses.
Phase three (in progress) – 10 projects in Malta are being implemented through a grants scheme designed for SMEs with a total value of EUR 300 000.
In the final stage of the project, Malta will host a 'Show and Share' event in April 2026, where all the projects carried out in EU countries, as part of the Cross-Re-Tour project, will be exhibited.
In 2023, MTA began a project to develop an AI Tourism Platform to modernise tourism data analysis by combining traditional statistical sources with big data and AI technology to enhance decision making in the tourism sector. The development of this infrastructure was completed in June 2025. This project was financed by the Malta Digital and Innovation Authority and implemented within the Sandbox framework. The platform collects information from traditional information sources, such as the National Statistics Office and MTA data, as well new 'big data' sources related to tourism, including short-term rental and hotel performance, tourist flows and tourist expenditure. This project also enabled the transition to digital data collection methods and automation of repetitive processes, which have helped to improve efficiency and speed in data collection and evaluation. The platform is currently available for internal use with limited public access available in the near future.
Finally, Malta is working to develop airline connectivity. Airline connectivity in Malta is yet to return to pre-Covid-19 levels however most scheduled services have been successfully expanded to operate year-round, helping to better manage visitor flows. The recent attraction of additional airlines, including Aer Lingus, Lot Polish Airlines and Qatar Airways, provides additional networking opportunities for Malta to reach more lucrative long-haul markets.
As a result of the work to formulate tourism sustainability indicators for Malta, supported by the European Commission and OECD, a strong working relationship was formed with the range of stakeholders who participated in the consultation. This resulted in the establishment of the Tourism Sustainability Indicators Stakeholders Group, led by the Malta Tourism Observatory.
The objective of this group is to bring together representatives from the most relevant cross-section of stakeholders who have an impact on, and/or are impacted by tourism. Organisations that have committed to participation in the group include the Gozo Tourism Association, the Energy and Water Agency, the National Statistics Office, Ministry for Environment, Energy and Public Cleansing, Jobs Plus (Employment), Identita’ (work permits for TCNs), Planning Authority, University of Malta, Climate Action Authority and SUNx Malta, while others are still considering participation.
While this group is informal, it provides an opportunity for participating organisations to collectively contribute to the indicators but also act as a forum to discuss tourism needs and impacts. This innovative and informal approach can help to create synergies and contacts between the various stakeholders.