VIA records over 30,000 visitors by Wednesday

Maldives welcomed over 30,000 tourists so far this year.

Latest statistics publicized by the Ministry of Tourism indicate that the country recorded a total of 37,926 tourist arrivals from 1-13 January this year.

With this development from a few 1,000 monthly arrivals since borders were reopened, the country’s daily average for tourist arrivals this month sits well above 2,900.

This number is 34,336 visitors less in comparison to the same period last year, where 72,262 arrivals were recorded from 1-13 January. This is an expected outcome of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which soiled the government’s vision of accomplishing two million tourist arrivals during 2020.

Statistics point out that the highest daily increase in tourist arrivals thus far this month, was reported on January 3, when 4,195 arrivals were recorded.

On Sunday, 3,877 tourists visited the island nation, followed by 2,898 arrivals the next day. 2,459 arrivals were recorded on Tuesday and 1,925 on Wednesday.

So far this year, Russia is the top source market for Maldives tourism, where 10,002 arrivals have been recorded, making up 26.4 percent of the total arrivals this year.

India comes second with 5,727 arrivals within the first 13 days of the month.

Currently, 26 international airlines are operating flights to the island nation including Gulf Air, Austrian Airlines, Condor, Air Vistara, Uzbekistan Airways and Ukraine International Airlines which recently began flight operations.

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 578 tourist establishments are currently in operation, with 42,244 beds. Out of this, 32,636 beds are being operated in 141 resorts. Further, 304 hotels and guesthouses are also in operation with 7,032 beds. 133 liveaboard vessels are currently operating 2,576 beds. 293 guesthouses are in operation in 46 islands of 15 atolls with 5,574 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.

Maldives has also observed an optimistic recovery from the Central and Eastern European region as well as some markets from Asia, as such, 20,764 arrivals from Central and Eastern Europe during the review period this year, beat the 14,828 arrivals from the region recorded during the same period last year.

0.22 percent of the total Tourist Arrivals have tested positive for the coronavirus infection thus far.