There's no "country" category in the forum for Malta, so I'm taking the liberty of adding this post here - in what I'll call the virtual category of "On the Edge of Europe"...
BBC: A second chance for Malta's paradise island turned 'Hell on Earth'
I visited Comino as part of my Fall 2023 trip to Malta. I had read plenty, and had been frequently warned about how crass and over-touristed Comino had become (which all appeared to be true), but I still wanted to check it out while I was there. We were there during "shoulder season" in early October, and there was no shortage of tourists generally in Malta at the time (multiple, huge cruise ships in port pretty much every day), and it seemed all of them wanted their Maltese day in the sun at "the Blue Lagoon" on Comino.
We accessed Comino from Gozo (the second Maltese island, which isn't nearly as over-run with tourists - we spent most of our trip on Malta itself, and a few days on Gozo). Almost all visitors to Comino do it by large "party boats" (from the capital, Valletta), boats which can carry upwards of a hundred partiers, with huge speakers pointing out to sea, booming out loud music, and other things that we don't appreciate. So we departed from Gozo instead. We hired a private boat just for ourselves to visit, swim, snorkel and see things for half a day, a minor splurge for us. I also arranged to depart at 7:30 in the morning, which was questioned by many people (including the boat owner, but he eventually shrugged and said OK). We got to Comino around 8:00, when things were peaceful, quiet, and not a single party boat was around. There were a few boats moored around the island (mostly small, private vessels), but only a handful of people were visible on the beach area where everyone goes. We enjoyed boating around the scenic coastline, poking into little sea caves, swimming and snorkeling in the clear waters. It was lovely. A little after 9 am, the first boom-boom boats started pulling up, unloading their passengers to grab the empty sun loungers. More boats quickly followed, with crowds forming on the shore and all the sun loungers already rented out. People were squeezing onto the shrinking space between the sun loungers and the rocks, loud music was blaring. We could see where this was headed, so we headed away, around to other coves on other sides of the island. We enjoyed another couple hours this way and then headed back to Gozo.
If anyone here is contemplating a trip to Malta, and you want to see the famous Blue Lagoon, I would recommend you do it the way we did. You will have a short time there (and you'll need to get up early) but you can have a lovely, relatively peaceful visit to this place that others are describing as "Hell on Earth."
I hope the efforts by enlightened locals and preservationists continue and are successful in bringing Comino back from the grotesque excesses it has been suffering. They have a long way to go.
A favorite photo that captured the vibe we were enjoying: Beautiful Comino