Malta ranked third among European countries in 2025 for household spending on restaurants and accommodation services relative to GDP, with the figure reaching 11.8 per cent.
Montenegro topped the comparison at 14.0 per cent, followed by Croatia at 12.2 per cent. Greece stood just behind Malta at 11.7 per cent, while Cyprus recorded 10.7 per cent.
What Malta’s 11.8% Figure Actually Means
The figure should not be read as saying that restaurants and hotels directly produced 11.8 per cent of Malta’s GDP. It measures household final consumption expenditure on restaurants and accommodation services and compares that spending with the size of the economy.
Eurostat’s methodology uses the domestic concept for this expenditure, meaning spending by both residents and non-residents within the country’s economic territory is included. That makes tourism particularly relevant when interpreting Malta’s result.
Malta’s National Statistics Office recorded around €2.90 billion in current-price expenditure on restaurants and accommodation services during 2025. Malta’s GDP for the year was around €24.58 billion, which puts the category at approximately 11.8 per cent of GDP.
Spending Share Rose from 2024
Revised NSO figures show the same category amounted to around €2.51 billion in 2024 against GDP of about €23.14 billion. That works out at roughly 10.8 per cent, meaning the share increased by close to one percentage point in 2025.
Tourism helps put those numbers into context. Eurostat reported that foreign visitors accounted for 93.7 per cent of nights spent in tourist accommodation in Malta during 2025, one of the highest proportions recorded across European regions.
Malta has also stood out in this area for years. Back in 2017, Eurostat found that restaurants and hotels accounted for 20.2 per cent of Malta’s total household consumption expenditure, the highest share in the EU at the time. That older figure uses a different denominator, but it underlines how prominent hospitality spending has long been in Malta’s consumption profile.
The latest figures therefore highlight the scale of restaurant and accommodation spending in Malta, while also showing why the result needs to be viewed alongside the country’s large tourism market rather than as a direct measure of the hospitality sector’s contribution to GDP.
