Explore Malta with Desire To TravelMalta

There are two ways to do Malta.

The first involves ticking off landmarks, squeezing into packed group tours and spending most of your holiday trying to take photos without strangers accidentally appearing in them.

The second is this.

Desire To Travel’s new small-group Malta and Gozo journey is designed for travellers who’d rather experience the islands properly; through local stories, long lunches, hidden laneways and places most people walk straight past.

Over nine days, the tour moves beyond the obvious. Yes, there’s Valletta and Mdina, because you can’t exactly ignore cities that beautiful. But there’s also time spent in quiet fishing villages, coastal towns and family-run spots where conversations tend to last longer than planned.

The experience has been personally curated by Desire To Travel founders Nick and Steph, who spent years building relationships with locals across Malta and Gozo. The result doesn’t feel like a standard itinerary, instead it feels like travelling with people who genuinely know the islands.

Accommodation comes in the form of boutique hotels full of character, while the pace stays refreshingly manageable. No frantic rushing. No 6am stampedes towards a tour bus. Just enough structure to see a lot, with enough flexibility to still feel like you’re discovering things for yourself.

There’s also something increasingly rare about a trip that prioritises connection over checklist tourism. It gets a big hell yes from us.