The Maldives has recorded a 6.1 percent overall increase in tourist arrivals for June 2012 compared to the same period last year, according to figures from the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC).
The increase came despite continued drops in key markets across Europe, including the emerging Eastern European market.
The German market, which was one of the few large market segments to show a double figure increase over the last few months, declined 9.4 percent in June 2012, compared to the same period last year.
The decline in the longstanding staple UK market – the country’s largest prior to the sudden influx of Chinese visitors in 2010 – slowed slightly, recording a drop of 3 percent to 6146.
Russia, a lucrative and generally consistent emerging market for the Maldives, fell 12.3 percent in June 2012 compared to the previous year.
Italian arrivals continued to plummet, falling 32.8 percent.
Chinese arrivals continued to show strong growth in terms of volume, increasing to 17,809 in June 2012 – growth of 15.6 percent, on the back of strong charter performance. The MMPRC’s figures suggest that in terms of volume, Chinese arrivals are three times greater than the country’s second largest market.
The Middle East region continued to show strong growth, with arrivals increasing almost 110 percent to 2533. The vast majority of arrivals were from Saudi Arabia, which recorded a 152 percent increase in June 2012 on the same period last year.
Total arrivals for the first half of 2012 are up 2.3 percent on the same period in 2011 to 458,068, implying that the country still has a chance at breaking its target of one million visitors despite the ongoing political and economic turmoil.
Head of the MMPRC Mohamed Maleeh Jamal was not responding at time of press.
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Where does the foreign currency go?
Bankls are always saying they have no foreign currency!!!
The black market is destroying our economy by making resort owners richer and force traders begging for dollars...
The final losers are the people!!!
okay first of all, what exactly is a "black market".
And next please define "resort owners"?
And as much of a horrible thing the divide between the wealthy and poor increasing, please explain how exactly this happens?
Now, this article is misleading, considering the fact that Maldives beds have been heavily discounted the past few months. Adding to this discount is lost revenue and the Chinese are bad spenders apart from their package deal. the numbers maybe up but its not all rosy.
This article has no depth and very poor analysis.
What is up is the number of arrivals, not the number of bed nights. The shift from Europeans (average stay 10 days) to asians (average stay 4 days) means that although there may be more arrivals at the airport these people are actually staying here for a shorter period of time, hence if you look from the resorts point of view the picture looks very different. Add to that the fact that chinese are cheaper tourists with lower spends than the europeans and the increase in the total number of beds in the country because of new resorts opening and you will see that the average resort is actually doing a lot worse than a year ago. As ahmed said there is huge discounting going on as resorts trying to outdo each other to compete for occupancy. MMPRC has failed miserably in its attempts at destination promotion and with europe going into recession things are only going to get tougher. Best start learning to speak mandarin, its the future of this industry.
Is it because of the coup the visitors from the most of the European countries have reduced despite the more cheaper holiday packages introduced by the rebel resort owners? I guess if this coup had never been brought, a large number of tourists from all over the world would be visited this year 2012 even without reducing the package rates. Sad days for poor innocent Maldivians.
If the resorts are currently discounting, we are not seeing this in Europe - your prices are rising - spo much so that you are becomming unaffordable
These figures can not be correct?? Are you sure they were not supplied by Ruder Finn??
Zindhabad LCH
Alliefat is right, current prices makes Maldivian vacation unaffordable...