Malta school camps hit by surprise price hikes as Gozo campsites ditch resident discount

School camp organisers lumped with bill five times higher than agreed price

Żebbuġ primary school’s annual “Kamp tan-Natura” was supposed to end with toasted marshmallows and teary farewells last Friday. Instead, 47 eight-year-olds watched their teachers argue with Gozo campsite managers while a credit-card machine beeped “declined” in the background. The bill had ballooned from the quoted €1,200 to €6,045 – the price of a second-hand Kia in Malta – because, the organisers were told, “government VAT numbers don’t qualify for the resident discount anymore”.

The shock invoice is the latest in a string of pricing disputes that have left Maltese educators scrambling to save outdoor-education traditions once taken for granted. For decades, May has meant canvas tents pitched in Gozo’s red soil, mosquito coils glowing like communion candles and children learning to identify ħaxix tal-widien by torchlight. School camps are woven into the national memory: Prime Minister Robert Abela still jokes that he learnt the Labour anthem “L-Innu tal-MPL” not in Żokrija’s clubroom but round a bonfire at Ramla Bay in 1987. When camps are cancelled, whole villages feel the loss.

Yet the sector that hosts 18,000 Maltese pupils every year operates in a grey zone between tourism and education, a loophole campsite owners are now exploiting. “We signed a written quotation in January,” explains Simone Micallef, the Żebbuġ parent-teacher coordinator who organised the trip. “The rate was €25 per night per child, half-board, plus 10 % VAT. When we arrived they demanded the ‘non-resident’ rate of €95, claiming our VAT number proves we are a commercial entity, not residents.” The difference meant finding an extra €4,845 at 11 pm on a school night.

Gozo’s tourism lobby insists the new policy merely aligns campsite tariffs with hotels, where Maltese ID cards automatically trigger a lower rate. “We never refused the children shelter,” argues Martin Xerri, president of the Gozo Camping Association. “But schools must understand that in peak season our beds sell to Italian scouts for €110. Why should we subsidise Maltese pupils who pay in May and cancel in April?”

Why indeed, reply parents, when state subsidies already foot the bill. The Education Ministry allocates €45 per pupil for annual outdoor activities; most schools top it up with fund-raising pastizzi mornings and marathon tombolas. A five-fold price hike wipes out budgets meant for transport, insurance and the inevitable ħobż biż-żejt mountain. “We sold 600 raffle tickets picturing the Gozo ferry,” says Micallef. “Parents thought they were helping us buy extra sleeping bags, not subsidise a businessman’s summer profit.”

The fallout stretches beyond the classroom. Bus drivers who depend on school charters, farmers who sell crates of ġbejniet for camp breakfasts, and corner grocers who deliver 200 bottles of Kinnie at a time all lose income when trips are cancelled. In Gozo, where tourism is the only industry keeping young people from emigrating to Malta or Canada, the reputational risk is real. “One viral TikTok of kids crying at reception undoes years of marketing,” admits a Xlendi hotelier who asked not to be named. “Italian travel agents already phone to check if Maltese schools are ‘unreliable’.”

Education Minister Clifton Grima has promised an investigation, but teachers want rules, not retweets. The Malta Union of Teachers is demanding that campsites be classified as educational providers, locking them into the same capped rates that apply to hostels used by MCAST students. Until then, schools are voting with their feet. “Next year we’re camping in Buskett,” says Micallef. “No ferry, no hidden extras, and the kids can hear the Għanafest drums for free.”

For a nation that still recites “Il-Maġġ u l-Lulju” poems about May blossoms and June seas, the message is stark: if we want our children to collect ladybirds under the stars, someone must decide whether a school trip is a birth-right or a luxury. Right now, it feels like both – and neither – and the only sure winners are the credit-card machines quietly charging 2 % interest on every unexpected €6,045.