Male’, Maldives – Ministry of Tourism has revealed that over 93,000 tourist arrivals have been recorded in December, amounting to a total of 552,881 tourist arrivals for the year 2020 reaching well over the expected target.
According to the statistics revealed by the Tourism Ministry, 93,823 tourist arrivals were recorded till 30th December making December the month with the highest number of tourist arrivals since border reopening. Im addition to this a total of 169,964 tourist arrivals were recorded since the island nation reopened it’s borders to international travel on July 15th.
The tourism statistics further reveal 1,752 tourist arrivals in July, 7,628 in August, 9,538 in September, 21,515 in October and finally 35,759 tourist arrivals in November. As shown by the statistics, Maldives has recorded a steady growth in the number of tourists arriving to Maldives as well as the daily arrivals.
On December 12, Maldives recorded the arrival of the 100,000th tourist following the removal of travel restrictions. Five days after the milestone was reached, the government welcomed the 500,000th tourist for the year 2020. The government aims to attract a total of 1.2 million tourists to Maldives in 2021, compared to the country’s record of 1.7 million in 2019. Minister of Tourism Abdulla Mausoom had expressed his belief that the upcoming year would be a triumphant one for the island nation’s tourism sector.
As the country depends solely on its tourism sector, since the international borders of Maldives were reopened, the Tourism Ministry has been proactively doing various activities and taking measures to promote tourism in the country including promotional events and high safety standards in the tourism sector to prevent spreading of Covid-19 virus in the resorts and other tourist facilities.
While the island nation does not require tourist to go through quarantine or testing on arrival, all the tourists are required to complete an online health declaration form given by the country and to also provide a negative PCR test result along with it. The PCR test must be taken at least 96 hours prior to departure. However, due to the newly found Covid-19 variant in United Kingdom, tourists arriving from UK on work visas and locals who spend over 12 hours in UK will have to go through a mandatory 10 day quarantine period in Maldives upon arrival.
