Paper short abstract:

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Paper long abstract:

Tourism in Malta began in the 1960s with the arrival of a modest numbers of tourists together with retired colonial settlers in search of low taxes, sun, servants and picturesque Mediterranean houses. Rising affluence, fuelled by the tourist boom that began in earnest in the 1970s, enabled Maltese living in traditional cramped accommodation to build new houses or to move to new housing developments that sprouted around towns and villages. At the same time hotels and cheap apartment complexes for tourists mushroomed in disorderly fashion along the northern shore. Since the mid 1970s an increasingly frenetic building boom has raged on, consuming scarce agricultural land, open countryside and traditional neighbourhoods. The clientelistic political culture facilitated rampant abusive building and subverted the enforcement of building regulations. By the late 1980s a sense of nostalgia emerged for a way of life sacrificed to modernity and affluence. Traditional houses, the countryside and village rituals became heritage. Mass tourism and the building industry were blamed for their destruction. The government tried to develop a more sustainable (and profitable) type of tourism by attracting quality visitors interested in culture and up-market sports. To this end, it promoted the development of luxury accommodation, marinas and golf courses. From the mid 1990s onwards, environmental non-governmental organisations with increasing success mobilized civil society to challenge government and the building industry over these mega developments. During the past decade annual tourist arrivals, which had steadily increased since the 1960s, stabilised at about one million, and in 2006 declined for the second year running. Tourism in Malta is in trouble.