Fortina €110m makeover: how Malta’s most talked-about hotel deal will change Sliema forever

# Watch: The Fortina deal explained – how a Sliema landmark is being reborn and why every Maltese pensioner is talking about it

Sliema’s skyline has always been a scrapbook of Malta’s last 150 years: Victorian townhouses, 1970s holiday flats, the odd glass shard from the 2000s. This week the Fortina Hotel – that terraced, eight-storey slab painted the colour of Mediterranean toothpaste – became the newest page. A €110 million refinancing package, sealed in Valletta on Tuesday and splashed across One News by Wednesday, means the 1968 icon will close for 18 months and reopen as a five-star, 200-suite “wellness peninsula” with a rooftop lagoon, 110 new jobs and, whisper it, starting rates of €600 a night.

For anyone who grew up taking confirmation-day photos on the Fortina’s floating pontoons, the numbers feel surreal. But the deal is bigger than nostalgia. It is a crash course in post-COVID Maltese tourism, pension-fund politics and the fine art of convincing foreign lenders that a country the size of Birkirkara can still print money from sea views.

## How the money moves

Behind the scenes, the transaction is a three-layered ftira. Layer one: Fortina Investments plc, the family company that has owned the site since George Fenech bought a derelict British Services club in 1962, borrows €60 million from APS Bank. Layer two: Malta Government Investments, the state’s investment arm, converts €25 million of existing preference shares into equity, effectively nationalising a quarter of the project. Layer three: €25 million in fresh private equity comes from a Luxembourg fund whose name – “Horizon Europe Wellness REIT” – sounds like it was generated by ChatGPT after three Cisk.

The government’s role raised eyebrows. Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo insists the equity swap is “a passive, time-limited stake” that will be sold once the hotel is operational, repaying taxpayers with 5 % interest. But Bernard Grech’s PN is already calling it “Burj Khalifa by stealth”, warning that public money is cushioning a private luxury play.

## Why Sliema cares

Walk down the Ferries promenade at 7 a.m. and you will see the real stakeholders: retirees power-walking past the Fortina’s concrete jetty, teenagers diving off the rocks, kiosk owners setting up timpana for the lunch rush. All of them have a story.

“My first pay packet in 1979 came from washing dishes in that kitchen,” says 63-year-old Ċikku Brincat, now a grandfather of four. “Back then we earned €40 a month and the manager let us take leftover rabbit home. If they close for works, where will the new kids learn?”

The Fortina’s HR manager, Ramona Cauchi, promises that 90 % of the 160 current staff will be kept on half-pay during refurbishment and rehired once the site reopens. She also pledges 30 new apprenticeships for MCAST students, a lifeline in a summer when Air Malta’s shrinkage has left hundreds of trainee chefs stranded.

## Cultural ghosts

Architecturally, the Fortina has always been the awkward cousin. While neighbouring Art Deco gems were bulldozed for tower blocks, the hotel survived by adding balconies the way Maltese houses add plastic saints. Its 2006 “Taste of India” wing, complete with curry buffet and sari-draped statues, became a running joke – yet it drew 25,000 Indian tourists a year at its peak, the first hotel in Malta to target a non-European market so aggressively.

The new design, by Milan studio Lissoni & Partners, keeps the original 1960s shell but wraps it in travertine and hanging gardens. Think Tigné Point’s shopping mall cosplaying as a Singapore resort. Heritage NGOs are reserving judgement until full plans are tabled, but they note that the façade will be lowered by one metre to protect protected views of Valletta from Manoel Island – a small win in a country that has elevated sea-view obstruction to national sport.

## Community ledger

Economists at MU predict the refurbished Fortina will inject €14 million annually into the local economy through suppliers, taxis and restaurant spill-over. Sliema’s parish priest, Fr. Joe Zammit, is more interested in souls than GDP. He has negotiated a tiny 30-seat chapel inside the spa wing, ensuring Sunday Mass for staff and guests. “If we can bless cruise ships, we can bless saunas,” he shrugs.

Not everyone is celebrating. Boat-trip operators fear the rooftop lagoon will cannibalise their Comino excursions; environmentalists warn that 200 extra luxury suites equals 400 more daily showers worth of sewage heading to the already-overloaded Ta’ Barkat plant.

Yet for many Maltese the overriding emotion is curiosity. The Fortina was where our parents tasted their first prawn cocktail, where we snuck into discos wearing our older cousin’s ID, where British tourists taught us to say “cheers” instead of “saħħa”. If the deal works, the next generation will inherit a greener, plusher version of that memory – and perhaps a pay packet big enough to rent a flat that isn’t carved out of someone’s garage.

## Conclusion

Love it or side-eye it, the Fortina refinancing is a mirror. It reflects a country betting its post-pandemic recovery on upmarket wellness rather than bucket-and-spade bargains; a government willing to flirt with state capitalism when private capital gets coy; and a community that still measures progress not only in euros but in the stories we can tell our grandchildren. When the cranes leave and the rooftop lagoon opens in 2026, the view from Sliema will be different. Whether it is better depends on whose eyes are doing the watching – and whether the rest of us can still afford to stand on the promenade and look.