Ryanair CEO Blames Airbnb & Cruise Ships for Overtourism—But What About Malta’s 62 Ryanair Routes?

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary’s latest sound-bite—blaming Airbnb and cruise ships for Europe’s overtourism chaos while exonerating budget airlines—has landed in Malta with the subtlety of a 6 a.m. Boeing 737-800 revving up over Ħal Luqa. Speaking to Reuters in Brussels last week, the Irish aviation firebrand insisted that “flights are full both ways” and therefore “don’t create bottlenecks,” whereas “unlimited Airbnb apartments” and “5,000-passenger cruise ships dumping people for six hours” are the real villains. On a rock that welcomed 3.2 million air arrivals last year yet only has 519,000 beds, Maltese ears pricked up. Was O’Leary deflecting, or had he accidentally diagnosed our own national headache?

Walk down Strait Street on a Friday night in July and you’ll feel the paradox. Revellers who paid €19.99 to fly in from Krakow or Pisa queue for €12 cocktails, while 89-year-old Karmenu, who was born above the old Silva’s Bar, tries to sleep through the bass. Up in Gżira, entire townhouse blocks glow with identical Ikea lamps: foreign-owned Airbnbs rented to stag parties who will never learn the Maltese word for “quiet”. Meanwhile, in Valletta’s Grand Harbour, MSC Grandiosa discharges 6,000 day-trippers like human confetti; they fan out for selfies at St John’s Co-Cathedral and vanish by sunset, leaving behind cruise-card receipts and ice-cream wrappers but no cultural imprint.

Air Malta’s successor, KM Malta Airlines, may have taken over the national fleet last March, but Ryanair remains Malta’s single largest carrier, operating 62 weekly routes. The airline’s €1.5 billion investment here since 2010 has democratised travel: Maltese students can reach Bologna for a €24 exam session; diaspora nurses fly home from Dublin for €39. Yet the same model weaponises our finite space. “Ryanair talks about ‘full both ways’, but the outbound Maltese are weekenders; the inbound are week-long partiers,” says Professor Marie Briguglio, an environmental economist at the University of Malta. “The footprint asymmetry is massive—one direction imports waste, noise and water stress.”

Airbnb’s numbers reinforce her point. Malta now lists 11,700 active short-lets on the platform—roughly one for every 44 residents. In Sliema and St Julian’s, the ratio collapses to one for every 11. The result is ghost neighbourhoods where post boxes overflow with utility bills addressed to shell companies in Cyprus. “My grandchildren barely know their neighbours,” laments 72-year-old Sliema resident Rita Farrugia. “The apartment next door changes tourists every three days. They ring my bell asking for Wi-Fi.”

O’Leary’s cruise-ship critique, however, wins grudging local applause. Heritage guides have long complained about “six-hour tourists” who photograph Caravaggio and exit without buying even a pastizz. “Cruisers spend €52 on average; a land-based visitor spends €920,” notes tourism economist Dr Gordon Pace. “Yet we host three cruise ships simultaneously, blocking views of our own skyline.” The government’s 2022 white paper pledging to cap cruise calls at 300 per annum is still gathering dust; 357 docked last year.

So who really overcrowds whom? Malta’s tourism masterplan targets 2.2 million “quality” visitors by 2030, but Ryanair’s winter schedule alone promises to ferry 1.8 million seats. “You can’t separate aviation from the accommodation ecosystem,” argues Astrid Vella, coordinator of Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar. “Cheap flights feed the Airbnb monster; together they create the perfect storm.” The NGO wants a moratorium on new short-let licences and an eco-tax on every landing, ideas that make O’Leary see red.

Culture Minister Owen Bonnici responded cautiously, telling Times of Malta that “all stakeholders must shoulder responsibility,” a diplomatic way of saying no one wants to kill the golden goose—especially one that lays €2.2 billion annually, 27% of GDP. Yet the social ledger is filling up: rent inflation, bus-stop queues that stretch past the old opera house, and beaches where Maltese families now set alarms for 7 a.m. to claim a square metre of sand.

O’Leary’s finger-pointing may be self-serving, but it unintentionally sparks a Maltese reckoning. True, Airbnb hollowed out residential life, and cruise ships treat us like a floating duty-free mall. Still, those 737s roaring over Valletta are the conveyor belt that keeps the whole machine humming. Until Malta decides how many tourists—and flights—its limestone skin can actually bear, the blame game will remain airborne, circling like the planes stacking above the Mediterranean blue, waiting for a slot.