One liveaboard vessel halts services, operational capacity drops to 1,207

The number of operational tourist accommodation establishments across the Maldives has dropped to 1,207 with the halting of services for tourists at one liveaboard vessel over the past week.

This was revealed by the latest weekly statistics publicized by the Ministry of Tourism on Thursday.

As such, a total of 1,207 tourist accommodation facilities are currently operational across Maldives, with a total of 59,608 tourist beds.

Operational facilities include 168 resorts, 869 guesthouses, 13 hotels and 157 live-aboard vessels. The guesthouses span across 115 islands of 20 atolls, with hotels operational in seven islands of eight atolls.

As of January 11.69 percent of the bed capacity is occupied by resorts, followed by 23 percent occupied by guesthouses, five percent by safari vessels and three percent by hotels.

The total number of operational beds span across resorts, hotels, guesthouses, and live-aboard vessels including 41,049 in resorts, 1,640 in hotels, 14,018 in guesthouses and 2,901 in live-aboard vessels.

Maldives currently has a capacity of 1,211 tourist facilities which include 157 safari vessels, 869 guesthouses, 13 hotels and 172 resorts. This means that of the total facility capacity, four resorts are yet to resume operations.

The ministry introduced Homestay in the Maldives in January 2022, since then a few more homestay facilities have been opened. This comes under President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s tourism development vision and policy to make tourism and its benefits accessible to the island communities as well.

After the Covid 19 pandemic Maldives re-opened borders on 15 July 2020 nearly four months since borders were closed, and at first, resorts and live-aboard vessels were given the green light to begin operations. Guesthouses outside of the Greater Malé Region were permitted to resume operations on 15 October 2020. Authorities allowed the reopening of guesthouses in the capital region on 14 December 2020.