46,691 tourists welcomed within the first two weeks of April

Within the first two weeks of April, Maldives welcomed 46,691 tourists.

According to the latest statistics released by the Ministry of Tourism on Thursday, April 2021’s arrivals are 26 percent less than the amount of tourist arrivals recorded during the same period in 2019 where 75,978 tourist arrivals were recorded.

A total of 345,261 tourist arrivals have been recorded thus far this year.

While visitors are staying for an average of nine days, the number of tourist arrivals recorded the same period last year was slightly higher. As such, it was 38.2 percent more with 382,762 visitors having been recorded by April 14 last year.

Tourism Ministry also shared that an average of 3,335 tourists were visiting the Maldives every day based on their statistics.

Maldives celebrated over 100,000 tourist arrivals during March, the highest monthly arrivals recorded since borders were reopened for international travel. As such, 109,585 tourist visited Maldives during March.

During January 2021, Maldives welcomed 92,103. The number escalated to 96,882 in the month that followed.

The highest arrivals this past week was recorded on April 2 at 5,052 visitors. The lowest arrivals were recorded at 1,970 on April 13.

India contributes 22.9 percent of the arrival rate with 78,902 visitors by April 14, which is a step up after having been ranked second before the Covid-19 pandemic began sweeping across the globe. India is followed by Russia making up 21.3 percent with 73,415 arrivals by Wednesday and third comes Ukraine, which jumped from the 23rd rank according to pre-Covid stats and currently contributes 5.6 percent of tourist arrivals. 19,302 visitors arrived from Ukraine by Wednesday.

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

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.

The country saw a record-breaking 1,702,887 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.

The tourism ministry of Tourism recently held an introductory meeting with the tourism industry stakeholders and related associations to discuss activities and events to celebrate the Maldives Tourism Golden Jubilee Year, 2022.