The political shake-up in the Maldives has affected Chinese arrivals – now its biggest source – and triggered concerns in its traditional Europe and Japan markets, but rates appear to be holding, reports Mimi Hudoyo for TTG Asia, from ITB Berlin.
Let’s Go Maldives managing director, Mohamed Riyaz, said his company had seen 12 per cent of its Chinese bookings wiped out: “The Maldives gets between three and five charter flights from China every day, so if we lose one or two flights that means we lose quite a large volume.”
Maldives Marketing & PR Corp deputy director, Ibrahim Asim, said the China market was “quite sensitive about political issues”.
“Buyers (from other markets) at the show have also shown concern, but we have not seen a significant impact from the other markets so far,” he said. “Having said that, we are putting together plans to minimise the impact, and we expect to launch these by the end of this month.”
China is the Maldives largest market in terms of tourist arrivals, at nearly 23 percent.
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