Malé, Maldives – The Maldives, within just three months, has welcomed almost 269,500 tourists to the country during the year 2021.
According to the latest statistics released by the Ministry of Tourism of Maldives, a total of 269,504 tourists have arrived to the Maldives as of March 24, during 2021, despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
While India was second in the tourist arrival market of Maldives pre-covid, India is currently topping the market by contributing to 64,1059 arrivals so far in the year 2021 contributing to 23.8% of the arrival market. In addition to this, India also topped the tourist market for 2020 with a total of 62,960 tourist arrivals recorded from India throughout the year.
While India leads, Russia comes in second with 58,679 arrivals, as countries such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Germany, Romania, Czech Republic, France, USA and Switzerland follow on the top ten arrivals list respectively.
The Tourism Ministry of Maldives has noted that the markets have shown impressive recovery results so far in the year 2021 as the Central/Eastern Europe and South Asia region both surpassed pre-covid levels, posting above average growth rates of +102.2% and +74.1% respectively.
Along with this, the Ministry stated that the individual markets within the Central/Eastern European region are also performing with outstanding results as new markets emerge from this region and making it to top 10 market list.
While Maldives has welcomed 269,504 tourists so far in 2021, 80,519 tourists had arrived to Maldives from March 1st till March 24th alone. Maldives welcomed over 92,000 tourists on January and over 96,000 tourists on February of this year and according to the Minister of Tourism, Dr Mausoom, Maldives will welcome over 100,000 tourists by the end of March 2021.
However with the increase in vaccinated people in Maldives, the Ministry foresees a better future for the tourism sector of Maldives in 2021. The Ministry is already working on increasing the capacity available for tourists.
Currently, there are a total of 52,852 beds available from 159 resorts, 700 guest houses and hotels as well as 158 safari vessels. Currently, there are only few restrictions for visitors entering the country, with just the requirement to produce a negative PCR test administered 96 hours prior to departure.
