The Link between Sustainable Tourism, Tourism Carrying Capacity and Overtourism

Like many other islands in the Mediterranean, Malta depends highly on tourism. Although various national tourism strategies for the Maltese Islands indicated sustainable tourism as an objective, in reality the policies and practices actually adopted were mostly intended to maximise tourist inflows, to a large extent disregarding their negative environmental and social impacts. Between 2012 and 2024, incoming tourists visiting the 316 km 2 Maltese Islands more than doubled, increasing from 1.44 million to 3.56 million during that period, with the 2023 inflow being six times as much as the resident population. This so-called “astounding success” was laced with dark overtones of overtourism, such as a construction frenzy, a high rate of waste generation, overuse of the infrastructure including the sewerage, traffic congestion, overcrowding, delays in public transport and others. This chapter associates overtourism with a disregard of carrying capacity and sustainability, applying these concepts to the tourism situation in Malta. The chapter also proposes a set of strategic directions that can be applied to address overtourism in Malta, respecting carrying capacity and thereby promoting sustainability. Finally, it points to the major hurdles that these directions are likely face in their implementation