What if the island everyone in power is fighting to grow is already full? In the early 2000s Malta had almost no tourism. Today it carries 4.5 million tourists a year, and this January alone it saw more of them than in August 2012, its old peak month. The population has passed 588,000, up 31% since 2000. A home that once cost 7 years of salary now costs 14. Philip Fenech has spent 40 years inside Malta's tourism and nightlife. He didn't build it, he lived it. He helped bring Ryanair to the island, opened one of the first clubs in Paceville, and watched Malta go from empty airports to one of the most crowded countries in Europe. In this conversation he says the thing most people in his position are too careful to say: the island cannot carry any more. We go into overtourism, the population nobody can accurately count, why a 30 year old can't buy a home, the businesses that look packed while they quietly lose money, and what every fast growing country on earth is about to learn from Malta. This is not a tourism episode. It is an episode about home, and about whether a country still belongs to the people who live in it.
What if the island everyone in power is fighting to grow is already full? In the early 2000s Malta had almost no tourism. Today it carries 4.5 million tourists a year, and this January alone it saw more of them than in August 2012, its old peak month. The population has passed 588,000, up 31% since 2000. A home that once cost 7 years of salary now costs 14. Philip Fenech has spent 40 years inside Malta's tourism and nightlife. He didn't build it, he lived it. He helped bring Ryanair to the island, opened one of the first clubs in Paceville, and watched Malta go from empty airports to one of the most crowded countries in Europe. In this conversation he says the thing most people in his position are too careful to say: the island cannot carry any more. We go into overtourism, the population nobody can accurately count, why a 30 year old can't buy a home, the businesses that look packed while they quietly lose money, and what every fast growing country on earth is about to learn from Malta. This is not a tourism episode. It is an episode about home, and about whether a country still belongs to the people who live in it.
What if the island everyone in power is fighting to grow is already full? In the early 2000s Malta had almost no tourism. Today it carries 4.5 million tourists a year, and this January alone it saw more of them than in August 2012, its old peak month. The population has passed 588,000, up 31% since 2000. A home that once cost 7 years of salary now costs 14. Philip Fenech has spent 40 years inside Malta's tourism and nightlife. He didn't build it, he lived it. He helped bring Ryanair to the island, opened one of the first clubs in Paceville, and watched Malta go from empty airports to one of the most crowded countries in Europe. In this conversation he says the thing most people in his position are too careful to say: the island cannot carry any more. We go into overtourism, the population nobody can accurately count, why a 30 year old can't buy a home, the businesses that look packed while they quietly lose money, and what every fast growing country on earth is about to learn from Malta. This is not a tourism episode. It is an episode about home, and about whether a country still belongs to the people who live in it.
