Malé, Maldives — Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) has revealed that the occupancy rate in the tourism sector of Maldives has increased to 51% in April 2021 compared to the same period of last year.
MMA revealed that in April 2021, both the tourist arrivals and bed nights increased in annual terms with a growth of 84% and 42% in March 2021, respectively.
The bed capacity of the tourism industry of Maldives has seen a six-fold increase compared to the year 2020 as the occupancy rate increased to 51% in April 2021 from 4% in April 2020. The significant drop in the numbers in 2020 is due to the closure of Maldives’ international borders on March 27, 2020 to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
While only 13 tourist arrivals were recorded in April 2020, a massive increase of 91,200 tourists were recorded during April 2021. Majority of these tourists were from Russia, India and Germany respectively.
The overall performance in annual terms for the year 2021 from January till April showed an increase of 2% in total arrivals while the total bednights of the industry showed an increased of 14% compared to the year before. During this period, MMA noted that the average stay rate increased to 9.0 days from 8.1 days in the year 2020.
While Maldives aims to achieve 1.5 million tourist arrivals in 2021 with vigorous promotional campaigns, the island nation currently has 162 resorts/marinas, 12 hotels, 696 guesthouses, and 159 safari vessels in operation.
The island destination is open to tourists outside of South Asia, provided they have proof of a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken a maximum of 96 hours before departure from their original destination. All travellers arriving in the Maldives and travelling internally have to observe a mandatory quarantine of 14 days.
With the increase in vaccinated people in Maldives, and people receiving the second dose of vaccine, the Ministry had foreseen a better future for the tourism sector of Maldives in 2021.
