Poland is Malta’s fastest-growing travel market for fourth consecutive month

Poland has solidified its spot as Malta’s fastest-growing market for aviation travel, surpassing other notable countries such as Italy and the UK in terms of growth.

This was announced by the Malta International Airport (MIA) in its June 2024 traffic results, published on Tuesday.

In the announcement, MIA stated that it registered 858,738 passenger movements during June, a 13.9 per cent increase in traffic when compared to the same month in 2023. As a result, MIA has already surpassed the four million mark for year-to-date traffic, with 4,065,414 passenger movements being registered, 18.4 per cent over 2023.

Aircraft movements for June also rose by 14.7 per cent, while seat capacity registered an increase of 13.5 per cent.

One notable finding was that out of Malta’s top five markets (Italy, UK, Germany, France, and Poland), Poland registered the most growth in terms of passenger movements during June 2024.

In fact, the Polish market grew by 46.6 per cent over 2023 numbers.

This represented the fourth consecutive month where Poland was the fastest-growing market, having also topped the list in May, April, and March, with 62.4 per cent, 47 per cent, and 80.6 per cent growth, respectively.

In terms of market share in June 2024, Italy and the UK remained firmly in the top two with 23 per cent and 21 per cent respectively, closely followed by Germany (8.1 per cent) and France (7.7 per cent). Poland came in fifth with 5.2 per cent market share.

Presently, Malta is connected to seven Polish airports, namely Warsaw, Poznan, Modlin, Wroclaw, Katowice, and Krakow. The flights are operated by low-cost carriers Ryanair and Wizz Air.

Earlier this month, Airports Council International (ACI) Europe released its 2024 Airport Industry Connectivity Report, which highlighted that Malta’s total air connectivity is still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels, yet direct connections improved the fourth most in Europe. In comments provided to MaltaCEOs.mt, CEO Alan Borg stated that instead of increasing flight frequencies, MIA is focused on expanding its network to cater for booming travel demand.