Outbound travel increased by 6% last year

Low-cost airlines registered an increase in outbound travellers of 14.5%, while Maltese travelling to non-EU countries increased by 21.7%

Outbound tourism in 2019 saw an increase of 6% over the previous year, with the total nights spent abroad surpassing 4.6 million nights, figures out today show.

The National Statistics Office said there were 706,797 outbound tourists last year, up by 39,750 over 2018.

Air travel saw an increase of 6.1%, with 677,004 tourists choosing to travel to their destination by plane.

Holidaymakers in 2019 also shifted more towards low-cost airlines, with an increase of 14.5% to 341,762 tourists. On the other hand, other airlines registered a percentage drop of 1.2%.

Passenger increases were registered across both sexes and all ages.

While age groups registered increases across the board, the most notable were in the 25-44 age group, with an increase of 8.6%, amounting to 26,864 passengers, and the 65+ bracket, who registered a 9.9% increase. There were 5,051 more elderly passengers who travelled overseas last year when compated to 2018.

With outbound tourists choosing to travel mostly to European countries (610,811), non-EU countries, registered an increase of 21.7%, going up by 17,114 passengers.

Travellers’ average length of stay decreased by -0.2% over the previous years with an average of 6.5 days.

The total nights spent increased by 2.9%, going up by 131,096 over the previous year, registering a total of 4,608,643 nights.

The total estimated expenditure for 2019 stood at €606.2 million, increasing by 7.6% over the previous year.