There were an estimated 279,010, visitors to the Maltese Islands in September, an increase of 15.6% when compared to last year, the National Statistics Office reported today.
239,377 of these visitors were for holiday purposes, while a further 21,416 were for business purposes. Visiting tourists from EU Member States went up by 11.9% on 2017 to 224,405.
The NSO noted that the total nights spent increased by 10.2% on the same month last year, surpassing 2.0 million nights, with the largest share of those nights (48.4%) pent in collective accommodation establishments.
While visiting Gozo and Malta, the total tourist expenditure was estimated at €242.7 million, up by 4.8% over 2017.
For the first nine months of this year, tourist numbers reached 2,036,841, an increase of 15.6% over 2017. The number of nights spent also increased, this time by 13.5% surpassing 14.8 million nights.
During that same period, total tourism expenditure was estimated at nearly €1.7 billion, the NSO said. this was 9.3 % higher than last year, however expenditure per capita stood at €827, which was a decrease of 5.4 per cent when compared to 2017.
Photographby Alain Salvary