With nearly 8,000 arrivals recorded, Russia has been the top source market for tourism thus far in 2021.

As per the Ministry of Tourism’s latest statistics, a total of 7,858 Russians visited the Maldives within the first nine days of the year. This contributes to 29.4 percent of the total arrivals this year.

26,767 visitors were recorded by January 9 with the highest daily arrivals recorded on January 3. While 4,195 tourists arrived in the Maldives that day, 4,160 arrivals were recorded the previous day. The lowest daily arrivals were recorded at 2,005 on the 1st of January, and the daily average for the month is 2,974 arrivals.

India comes second with 3,360 arrivals recorded by January 9, which is 12.6 percent of the total arrivals, while Ukraine makes up 8.4 percent of the arrivals with 2,246 visitors. This is followed by Romania with 1,370 tourists. Kazakhstan is in fifth position with 1,347 arrivals while the United Kingdom is at six with 1,224 arrivals. Other top source markets for the first nine days of the year include France (910 arrivals), Germany (811 arrivals), United States (598 arrivals) and Switzerland (518 arrivals).

Russia held the top spot for highest market for tourism at one-point last year, but was dethroned by India towards the end of the year, with a difference of less than two thousand arrivals.

As such, a total of 62,905 Indians traveled to Maldives in 2020 while there were 61,388 arrivals from the eastern European nation. The island nation saw a total of 555,399 tourist arrivals in 2020, over a million less than the previous year due to restrictions imposed following the Covid-19 pandemic including a nearly four-month long border closure.

Russia remained the top source market for tourism from border reopening until the end of December, with 31,800 arrivals.

While Maldives was forced to reduce its ambitious two-million-tourist-arrival goal for 2020 due the Covid-19 pandemic, the country aims to welcome 1.5 million tourists this year. A record breaking 1.7 million tourists arrivals were recorded in 2019.