Malta welcomes more than 3 mln tourists in 2023

VALLETTA, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- Malta welcomed more than 3 million tourists in 2023, setting a new record high, Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo said on Monday.

The previous record high was registered in 2019, when 2.8 million visitors traveled to Malta.

Official figures show tourists spent a total of over 2.7 billion euros (2.9 billion U.S. dollars) in Malta.

Bartolo said that 2023 proved to be the best year of all time for Malta's tourism industry, not only in terms of inbound tourists but also the number of guest nights spent in Malta -- 20.2 million nights -- and in terms of tourist expenditure.

For the first time, Italy surpassed the United Kingdom as the top tourism market, as 18.4 percent of tourists came from Italy. (1 euro=1.08 U.S. dollar)