Over 20,000 tourist arrivals were recorded within the first week of 2021.
Latest statistics by the Ministry of Tourism revealed that Maldives welcomed 20,612 visitors during the first six days of the year alone.
This means that the country’s daily average for tourist arrivals is above 2,000.
Statistics point out that the highest daily increase in tourist arrivals thus far this year, was reported on January 3, when 4,195 arrivals were recorded.
On January 1, 2,005 visitors arrived in the island nation, followed by 4,160 arrivals the next day.
Further, 2,646 tourist arrivals were recorded on Monday, with 2,672 visitors having arrived on Tuesday.
The daily arrivals were recorded at 2,408 on Wednesday and rose to 2,526 on January 7.
So far this year, Russia is the top source market for Maldives tourism, where 5,331 arrivals have been recorded, making up 25.9 percent of the total arrivals this year.
India comes second with 1,816 arrivals within the first week of the year.
Other top source markets include:
- Ukraine with 1,779 arrivals,
- Kazakhstan with 1,082 arrivals,
- United Kingdom with 956 arrivals,
- Romania with 739 arrivals,
- Germany with 650 arrivals,
- France with 586 arrivals,
- United States of America with 416 arrivals
- Uzbekistan with 377 arrivals.
Statistics go on to reveal that 26 international airlines are currently operating flights to the island nation.
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.
As such, a total of 557 tourist establishments are currently in operation, with 41,872 beds. Out of this, 32,636 beds are being operated in 141 resorts. Further, 286 hotels and guesthouses are also in operation with 6,732 beds. 130 liveaboard vessels are currently operating 2,504 beds.
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 and aims to welcome 1.5 million tourist arrivals this ongoing year.
