Maldives tourist arrivals surpass 200,000

Maldives tourist arrival count has surpassed the 200,000 mark with a total of 200,871 tourists having arrived in the island nation by Thursday.

Statistics publicized by the Ministry of Tourism revealed that since the beginning of the year up until Thursday, 200,871 visitors have been welcomed.

This is 41.2 percent less than the number of tourists recorded for the same period last year, where 341,689 arrivals were recorded. The Ministry also shared that an average of 3,188 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 46,541 visitors being recorded from the neighboring country, which contributes 23.5 percent of the arrival rate.

Second comes Russia contributing 21.4 percent to the total arrivals, with 42,417 arrivals recorded from Russia.

Aside from India and Russia, Ukraine also remains among the top three source markets for Maldives tourism, coming third with 13,350, making up 6.7 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.

The country welcomed a total of 96,881 tourists during February, which is 4,778 visitors more than the first month of the year. Within the first four days of March, the island nation has welcomed 11,886 visitors, a 37.2 percent downfall in comparison to the 14,530 tourist arrivals recorded the same period last year. On Monday, VIA saw 3,394 tourist arrivals, followed by 2,732 on Tuesday, 3,005 on Wednesday and Thursday saw 2,755 tourist arrivals.

Further, statistics go on to reveal that a total of 663 tourist establishments are currently in operation across the Maldives with 45,083 beds. These include 364 guesthouses with 6,676 beds, 148 resorts across 18 atolls with 34,226 beds as well as 11 hotels with 1,458 beds and 140 liveaboard vessels with 2,723 operational beds.

The ministry revealed that guesthouses are 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.