Tourism in the Maldives seems bouncing back, as numbers are slowly reaching pre-COVID times.
In the first four days of 2021, Maldives counted 13,006 as tourist arrivals. Though this is a 36 percent fall in comparison to the 2020 arrivals from the same period (20,594), these numbers show a hopeful setting of a recovering tourism industry after global lockdowns and travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The daily average for the past four days has been 3,400 tourists.
"With arrivals of tourists to Maldives averaging about 3,456 tourists a day, for the first 3 days, Year 2021 looks promising," Minister of Tourism joyfully expressed on Twitter.
As of January 4, 2020, the largest share of tourists in the Maldives come from Russia (31.7%), while India (8.3%), Ukraine (8.3%), Kazakhstan (6.5%) and the UK (5.4%) follows trails.
The year 2020 ended successfully for Maldives, with the tourist industry's collectively reaching post-pandemic tourist arrival targets of 500,000 tourists three weeks ahead of year end. A total of 555,399 tourists visited Maldives in 2020, and the top markets were India, Russia, UK, Italy and Germany respectively.
As at Janaury 4, 2020, 141 resorts, 11 hotels, 130 safari vessels and 261 guesthouses are open in the Maldives with a total of 41,682 operational beds.
On the other hand, more airlines are either debuting or restarting services to the Maldives, while large Middle-East based airlines such as Emirates and Qatar Airways have gradually increased daily flight frequencies to the Maldives, allowing more travelers from the North and West to catch connections to the Indian Ocean destination.
