Over 260,000 tourist arrivals have been recorded thus far this year.

Latest statistics publicized by the Ministry of Tourism reveal that a total of 260,334 visitors had arrived in the Maldives by Sunday. This is 31.9 percent less than the number of tourists recorded for the same period last year. The Ministry also shared that an average of 3,254 tourists were visiting the Maldives every day based on their statistics.

The duration of stay has been recorded at an average of 8.9 days,

So far in March, Maldives has welcomed 71,349 visitors, which is significantly more than the arrivals recorded the same period last year. 59,147 visitors were recorded from March 1 – 21 in 2020. During January 2021, Maldives welcomed 92,103. The number escalated to 96,882 in the month that followed.

On Sunday, 4,431 tourists arrived in the country, 78 tourists less than the previous day’s arrivals. Saturday saw the highest number of visitors so far this month, at 4,509. The lowest arrivals were recorded on March 10, with 2,368 arrivals.

Further, India remains the top source market for tourist arrivals thus far contributing 23.7 percent of the arrival rate, while it was ranked second before the Covid-19 pandemic began sweeping across the globe. India is followed by Russia making up 21.7 percent of arrivals and third comes Ukraine, which rose from the 23rd rank according to pre-Covid stats and currently contributes 6.4 percent of tourist arrivals.

One more tourist accommodation facility opened over the past 24 hours which means that there are currently 683 operations tourist accommodation establishments with 45,839 beds across the Maldives.

Out of this, 385 are guesthouses with 7,026 operational beds, 150 resorts with 34,656 beds, 137 liveaboard vessels with 2,699 beds and 11 hotels are also in operation with 1,458 beds.

The ministry revealed that guesthouses were in operation across 56 islands of 18 atolls, by Sunday’s end.

The ministry boasts increasing tourist arrivals, which were snail-paced into the beginning of the country’s tourism-revival journey. As such, an optimistic tourism ministry revealed that the source markets are recovering, with “impressive” results.

With this being said, the average growth rates of arrivals from the Central/Eastern Europe and South Asia had surpassed the pre-Covid rates by March 10, with individual markets within the Central/Eastern European region excelling as new markets emerge from the region and making the top 10 source markets for Maldives tourism.

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 in 2020, which was foiled by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, due to which authorities halted issuing on-arrival visas on March 27 that year.

Nearly four months later, Maldives tourism began reviving and from July 15, arrivals have been 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.

Maldives will mark 50 years since the tourism industry’s inception, in 2022, which is to be celebrated as the golden year of tourism in Maldives.