Maldives welcomed over 96,000 tourists during February.

Statistics publicized by the Ministry of Tourism revealed that the country welcomed a total of 96,881 tourists during the past month, which is 4,778 visitors more than the first month of the year.

Throughout the month, the ministry recorded the highest single-day tourist arrivals on the 21st, at 5,268. The second highest single-day arrivals were recorded on February 12, where 4,809 visitors arrived in the island nation, with the lowest rise in daily arrivals having been recorded on the first day of the month, at 2,158.

The country’s daily average for tourist arrivals was at 3,460 during February.

The ministry revealed that a total of 188,984 visitors had arrived in the Maldives as at February 28, since the beginning of 2021. This is 40.7 percent less than the number of tourists recorded for the same period last year. The Ministry also shared that an average of 3,203 tourists were visiting the Maldives every day based on their statistics, with duration of stay recorded at an average of nine days.

Since the beginning of the year, India has remained the top source market for tourism in the Maldives, with 44,039 visitors being recorded from the neighboring country, which contributes 23.3 percent of the arrival rate.

Second comes Russia contributing 21.5 percent to the total arrivals, with 40,698 arrivals recorded from Russia.

Aside from India and Russia, Ukraine also remains among the top three source markets for Maldives tourism, coming third with 12,549, making up 6.6 percent of the count.

Kazakhstan, Germany, Romania, France, Switzerland, Czech Republic and the United Kingdom are also considered some of the biggest tourist markets for the Maldives.

Further, statistics go on to reveal that a total of 657 tourist establishments are currently in operation across the Maldives with 44,859 beds. These include 359 guesthouses with 6,602 beds, 147 resorts across 18 atolls with 34,076 beds as well as 11 hotels with 1,458 beds and 140 liveaboard vessels with 2,723 operational beds.

The ministry revealed that there are 359 guesthouses in operation across 52 islands of 17 atolls.

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 ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, due to which authorities halted issuing on-arrival visas on March 27, last year.

Nearly four months later, Maldives tourism began reviving, albeit snail-paced at first, from July 15, arrivals began increasing steadily over the past couple of months. 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.