A National Guide built with - and for Malta's Rural Community
A National Guide built with - and for Malta's Rural Community
SEED, in collaboration with the Malta Tourism Authority, is developing Malta’s first national guide for rural tourism stakeholders, a practical, evidence-based reference to support sustainable and community-rooted rural tourism across Malta and Gozo.
What is this Project?
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A collective, evidence-based initiative designed to:
Identify opportunities and risks in rural tourism development
Highlighting challenges and gaps
Serve as a shared reference point for decision-making
Improving our understanding of the reality on the ground
Strengthen sustainable and culturally respectful practices
Supporting better-informed decisions by all actors involved
Provide tangible tools and principles
That serve as practical and usable guidance
Who is this guide for?
This tool is intended to serve as a strategic reference point for all actors interesting in fostering responsible rural tourism, including:
Project leaders and rural entrepreneurs
Farmers, fishers, breeders and artisans
Rural communities and residents
Landowners
Local businesses
Public authorities and local councils
Policy makers
NGOs and civil society organisations
Tourism guides
International businesses operating in Malta
Researchers and academia
This guide avoids a tourism-only lens. Rural tourism is influenced by agriculture, transport, land use, environment, culture, governance etc. All these actors matter.
Who is leading this project?
The National Guide for Rural Tourism Stakeholders is a joint effort by SEED and the Malta Tourism Authority. While SEED leads research and drafting, the Guide is shaped through a sector-wide process that values the knowledge, needs, and experiences of Malta’s rural communities and tourism actors.
With over fifteen years of experience at the intersection of agriculture, culture, and tourism, SEED has empowered farmers, artisans, breeders, and small producers to diversify their income through rural tourism. This gives us practical insight to support the process, not to dictate it. Our role is to connect existing expertise rather than replace it.
The Guide reflects diverse voices: residents, rural operators, cultural and environmental actors, tourism businesses, local councils, NGOs, and public institutions. It promotes shared principles and good practices, while respecting the uniqueness of Malta’s rural identity.
By bringing together SEED's field knowledge, MTA’s strategic direction, and input from stakeholders across Malta and Gozo, we aim to create a resource that protects authenticity, fosters sustainable growth, and supports rural tourism that benefits all.
Why this Guide matters
Tourism is changing... and so must the way we support those at the heart of Malta’s rural tourism offer. Today’s travellers increasingly seek meaningful, immersive experiences rooted in nature, food, and culture. As a result, farmers, fishers, artisans and breeders - whose core activity lies in the primary sector - often find themselves stepping into the role of tourism hosts.
But without a solid background in tourism management, this shift doesn’t come without risks. In a fragile territorial context like Malta, there is a growing danger that traditional activities are abandoned in favour of tourism-only services. When this happens, we risk losing the very authenticity that makes rural tourism valuable and, with it, centuries-old skills, crafts and knowledge.
This Guide, developed in close collaboration with the Malta Tourism Authority, is our collective response. It emerges from over a decade and a half of working alongside Malta’s rural communities, and it reflects a shared need: to bring clarity, credibility, and sustainability to those working at the crossroads of agriculture, craft and tourism.
Beyond offering practical tools and shared standards, the Guide will be complemented by recommendations to encourage the long-term strategic planning of the sector… A starting point for a national dialogue on how to nurture rural tourism in ways that are aligned with Malta’s unique rural identity.
What this Guide will include
Understanding Rural Tourism in Malta
This section will explore what rural tourism means in the Maltese context, considering the peculiarities of the insular country. It will also highlight how rural tourism is defined, imagined and practiced across the Maltese Islands.
Stakeholders' Mapping
A grounded overview of actors influencing rural tourism, across sectors.
Guiding Principles and Best Practices
A ready-to-use toolkit for existing or prospective rural tourism actors, with a set of shared principles, inspiring case studies, and actionable tools.
The guidelines will be structured around 6 pillars:
I Inclusive governance and cooperation
II Environmental respect and regeneration
III Community empowerment and social justice
IV Visitor engagement and experience
V Cultural authenticity and living heritage
VI Economic stability and resilience
What is 'Rural Tourism' in the Maltese context?
Too often ‘rural tourism’ evokes a narrow range of experiences limited to accommodation on farms.
In Malta there is broader potential for small-scale, collaborative and place-based hospitality that is attuned to the local context, strengthening environmental stewardship, social and economic resilience, and cultural continuity. The ‘rural’ in Malta encapsulates traditions and practices of production and stewardship that survive in villages and urban spaces. It encompasses crafts and gastronomy along with farming and nature.
In this guide, we are considering Rural tourism as a form of tourism rooted in the island’s heritage, traditions, and communities, and are looking to include authentic experiences connected to:
Agriculture
Fishing
Fishing
Crafts
Trades
Food
Nature
A participatory and evidence-based approach
This guide is being developed on the ground, through desk research, field visits, interviews, questionnaires etc.
It will mix consultation (gathering views) and co-creation (shaping ideas together).
Transparency, anonymity and trust guide the process.
The aim is not to validate pre-existing positions, but to test assumptions, identify overlooked challenges, capture diverse realities and build legitimate and grounded guidance.
Who is working on this project
Samwel Grima
Project Coordinator
I am Samwel, the Project Coordinator. Trained in social anthropology, I have conducted fieldwork with rural landholders in Malta to understand how rapid economic growth, urbanisation and speculation shape the value of land and food, and how these are mobilised to construct and contest legitimate claims to land. My work with smallholders, and with organic and conventional farmers has explored changing meanings of farmerhood and stewardship, treating land relatedness as a plural and localised reality despite shared structural pressures.
I am currently concluding a PhD examining recent contestations around land tenure governance through in-depth analysis of landholders’ values and practices at different scales. My research turns on three themes: what it means to be and become a farmer; what it means to care for land amid precarity, climate change and overdevelopment; and what agriculture and the local are for, where farming shapes the countryside yet remains marginal within the food system. I am deeply interested in sustaining rural livelihoods, collaboration, and landscapes in changing times.
Océane Droulin
Project Manager
I am Océane Droulin, the Project Manager. I specialise in territorial governance, with a particular focus on how policies, planning frameworks and development choices shape landscapes, communities, and long-term sustainability. My work has addressed a range of challenges, including the barriers and opportunities for agritourism development in northern France, the diversification of mid-mountain ski resorts in the face of climate change, environmental planning within the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolitan Area, and the broader adaptation of tourism to climate impacts.
Although I am based in France, Malta holds a special place for me, as I completed my Erasmus there -a formative experience that shaped my connection to the country. I have been struck by its beauty, cultural richness and diversity, but also by how fragile and exposed its territories are. Managing this project is therefore both a professional and personal commitment: to help rural tourism stakeholders develop an authentic and sustainable form of tourism, while clearly highlighting the risks of unmanaged growth and the importance of long-term stewardship.
