Malta-born travel platform WheretoMalta puts island boutique hotels and low-cost flights in one click

Valletta start-up WheretoMalta has officially launched a one-click platform that bundles low-cost flights with hand-picked, family-run hotels across the archipelago, promising to shave hours off trip planning while funnelling more tourism revenue into village squares rather than multinational chains.

Founded by 29-year-old Sliema twins Maria and Luke Azzopardi, the site went live at 6 a.m. on Friday with a cheeky Maltese-language countdown—“Għandna l-biljetti!”—that crashed the servers for 11 minutes under the weight of 14,000 simultaneous searches. By lunchtime the siblings, both University of Malta data-science graduates, were sipping ħelwa tat-Tork with Finance Minister Clyde Caruana at the Upper Barrakka Gardens, celebrating what economic-development agency Malta Enterprise hailed as “the first indigenous booking engine to prioritise local hosts over global OTAs.”

“We grew up watching tourists pour into Mellieħa buses clutching print-outs from foreign sites that charge 18 % commission,” Luke told Hot Malta, gesturing at cruise liners dotting Grand Harbour. “Our algorithm keeps 97 % of every euro inside Malta by negotiating directly with 220 boutique hotels, farmhouses and palazzini.”

The platform’s secret sauce is a bilingual AI concierge nicknamed “Karmenu” that learns whether a visitor wants a Gozitan olive-oil tasting or a Paceville foam party. Type “I’m vegan and obsessed with baroque ceilings” and Karmenu surfaces a solar-powered townhouse in Birgu opposite St Lawrence Church within three seconds, paired with a €38 Ryanair fare from Bari that lands at 08:40—early enough for pastizzi at Is-Serkin before check-in.

Crucially for the Maltese market, WheretoMalta displays prices in euros, pounds and the traditional per-person, per-night “PPPN” metric still used by village travel agents, eliminating the mental gymnastics that often drives older holiday-makers back to paper brochures. A “Festi” slider even syncs bookings with local patron-saint feasts; drag it to August and fireworks auto-populate your itinerary in Qrendi, Vittoriosa and Mqabba.

Cultural guardians are cautiously optimistic. “For decades we’ve warned that mass tourism flattens identity,” said Professor Arnold Cassar, curator at Heritage Malta. “A platform that nudges visitors toward family bakeries or a 300-year-old townhouse in Xagħra is essentially gamifying conservation.”

Early data backs the claim. During beta testing with 1,200 German and French travellers, 68 % upgraded to heritage properties after the engine highlighted original limestone slabs or frescoed chapels. Average length of stay rose from 5.2 to 6.7 nights, while spend in village restaurants jumped 31 %, according to figures shared with this newspaper.

Gozitan hotelier Rebekah Portelli, whose 14-room Dar ta’ Kerċem is booked solid through October thanks to the site, says the ripple effect is already visible. “I’ve hired two cousins to run cycling tours to the salt pans. Guests used to land, snap a photo and ferry back; now they linger for lace-making demos in the evening.”

Not everyone is celebrating. The Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association warned that bypassing larger properties could “destabilise employment in four- and five-star properties already hammered by post-COVID debt.” But Economy Minister Silvio Schembri countered that micro-distribution of visitors eases pressure on over-trodden hotspots like Blue Lagoon. “If algorithms can tempt a Stockholm blogger to spend three nights in Għarb instead of cramming into Comino, we relieve infrastructure and give residents breathing space,” Schembri said.

The Azzopardi twins insist they are not crusading against big resorts—merely democratising discovery. A toggle labelled “All Options” still surfaces Hilton and InterContinental deals for travellers who crave infinity pools. Yet the default setting, cheekily called “Malta First,” ranks properties by percentage of staff born within 12 km, a metric that has already sparked friendly rivalry between Żejtun and Żebbuġ guest-houses vying for the top spot.

Next on the roadmap: integration with Tallinja bus cards so bookings auto-load a week’s worth of unlimited rides, and a carbon-offset button that plants carob trees on degraded garigue in time for the 2024 scholastic calendar. “We want every boarding pass to double as a love letter to Malta,” Maria said, as the bells of St John’s Co-Cathedral tolled behind her. If Friday’s traffic surge is any indication, the island’s next wave of visitors will arrive armed not with laminated maps but with a single QR code that folds flight, feast and farmhouse into one elegant swipe.