Maldives top source tourist market for 2020 was India
11.3 percent of tourist arrivals last year was Indian nationals
An Air India flight at Velana International Airport
The Ministry of Tourism has revealed that the highest market for the country’s tourism remained India, throughout 2020.
Statistics publicized by the ministry reveal that a total of 62,905 tourists had arrived from India during 2020, which contributes 11.3 percent of the total arrival rate for the year.
The second highest arrivals across 2020 were recorded from Russia, at 11.1 percent making up a total of 61,388 visitors.
The top ten source markets make up 65.9 percent of the country’s total number of tourist arrivals for the year, and third in the list comes the United Kingdom.
According to the ministry, 52,716 tourists had visited from United Kingdom last year, making up 9.5 percent of the total arrivals.
8.4 percent of the arrival tally is Italy with 46,690 visitors whereas 36,435 arrivals were recorded from Germany which contributed 6.6 percent.
Further, 34,245 arrivals from China make up 6.2 percent of the total arrival rate.
Five percent makes up 28,031 arrivals from France as well.
The United States remains one of the top source markets for Maldives tourism, having contributed 3.6 percent of the arrivals with 19,759 visitors.
Ukraine and Switzerland is also among the top ten source markets, with 10,343 arrivals having been recorded from Ukraine and 12,516 from the latter.
Maldives recorded a total of 555,399 tourist arrivals during the last year.
The island nation was one of the harder-hit countries as one dependent on the tourism industry as its main source of income, due to the global Covid-19 pandemic. As such, the government stopped issuing on-arrival visas on March 27, which proved to be a major downfall for the country’s economy. Nearly four months later, borders were reopened on July 15 and albeit snail-paced at the beginning, tourist arrivals began surging within a few months.
The country saw a record-breaking 1.7 million tourist arrivals during 2019 and an optimistic government set a vision to break the record with two million arrivals, which was foiled by the pandemic. Maldives was able to exceed its new target of 545,000, by the end of December 2020.
