Despite the looming shadow of Covid-19 this holiday season, Maldives has recorded over 12,000 arrivals from neighboring India within the first 20 days of December.

General Manager of Terminal Operations at Velana International Airport, Ibrahim Hussian told RaajjeTV's Fashaairu programme that there has been an increase in tourist arrivals adding that most arrivals have been recorded from India, Russia and the United Kingdom.

Explaining that a daily average of five or six flights have thus far brought a total of 12,616 tourists from India, the country hit second-hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic after USA with over 10.1 million active cases.

This brings the total number of arrivals from India well above the 22,000-mark following re-opening of the nation's borders on July 15. As of December 20, the Ministry of Tourism records India as the third-biggest market for tourist arrivals to the Maldives this year with 44,268 Indian travelers making up 9.6 percent of all arrivals to the country.

Tourist arrivals to the Maldives have been increasing steadily every day with the majority of visitors coming from big tourist markets like Russia, India, UK, USA and UAE.

Hussain went on to announce that 19 private jets landed at VIA on Monday.

More than 100,000 tourists have visited Maldives following the re-opening of borders, bringing the number of total annual arrivals well over 500,000.