Maldives eases regulations for foreign tourist vessels

President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih's administration has successfully fulfilled a pledge he made while speaking in HA. Uligamu during his campaign for the 2018 Presidential Elections.

While the president ratified the 10th amendment to the Maldives Tourism Act on Monday, it includes a change to the permit for foreign tourist vessels; the amendment states that any sea vessel larger than 15m in length would have to pay a fee of MVR 5,000 to purchase permits, while cruising yachts or yachts smaller than 15m in length are exempt from the fee.

The previous iteration of this law required foreign tourist vessels from abroad to pay an indiscriminate fee of MVR 5,000 when travelling to or within the Maldives.

Agents for cruising yacht vessels operating in the Maldives were most relieved with the new changes being implemented by the Solih administration.

Speaking to RaajjeMV, Asadulla Mohamed, who represents Maldives in the international Ocean Cruising Club, said that they had been waiting patiently for this change to come about ever since the day President Solih had pledged it in his address at Uligamu island two years ago. He said that this was an encouraging step, and that they had been sharing this information with foreign agents and members of the ocean cruising industry.

Asadulla asaid that the fee being taken from cruising yachts in the Maldives had been reduced following the president's pledges when government authorities began working on implementing the change, noting especially that a symposium had been held with participation from authorities such as Maldives Customs Services and Maldives Immigration before the fee had finally been decreased.

Presently, cruising vessels that do not have 15m in length have to pay MVR 500 as an inward and outward fee, down from MVR 2,000 before.

Asadulla also said that they had observed an enthusiastic response from the international ocean cruising community when news of these changes to the Tourism Act were shared, adding that many parties had expressed interest in operating such vessels to and inside the Maldives.

He went on to reveal that there was already a list of 78 yachts that were interested in cruising in the Maldives, and that this number would likely increase in the days to come.

Additionally, Asadulla took time to detail one of the main wants for travelers cruising the Maldives aboard these yachts. He said guests had requested that they be allowed to visit inhabited islands after a 14-day period to experience Maldivian culture and traditions first-hand, and do business with local communities so as to have the most authentic tourist experience. He went on to say that guests who travelled aboard cruising yachts were usually middle-class people and that their primary purpose for visiting Maldives was to have a chance to directly witness the richness of Maldivian culture and the diversity of our island traditions.

Describing an example of the feasibility of letting these guests visit inhabited islands, Asadulla said that a tourist arriving in the Maldives aboard a cruising yacht from Thailand would ideally have taken a negative Covid-19 test, and that they would have spent 16 days at sea travelling to the Maldives. He explained they were therefore already spending an adequate amount of time to quarantine outside of local communities, and that an increasing number of tourists would be interested in cruising in Maldives if they could visit inhabited islands and interact with people on a more personal level.

Asadulla called for the Health Protection Agency (HPA) to allow tourists from cruising yachts to disembark at inhabited islands in accordance with new normal guidelines with the proper protective and social distancing measures in place.