Russia Hands Over The Crown To India As The #1 Tourist Market To The Maldives

The latest statistics by the Ministry of Tourism show that India has taken over as the top source market to the Maldives once again. At the end of last year, India ranked number one in terms of tourist arrivals to the country, yet, the position was largely dominated by Russia up until now. As of 18^th February, Maldives has welcomed a total of 32,970 Indian tourists since the start of this year.

Coming close to India, Russia holds the second position with 32,019 tourist arrivals. In the list apart of these two are Kazakhstan, Romania, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, and the United States of America.

Looking at the grand total, as of 18^th February, a total of 151,113 tourists have visited the country since the beginning of this year. Nevertheless, this is a massive 43.6% decrease compared to the same period last year recording a total of 268,034 tourist arrivals – is most likely due to the effects of the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic.

The country aims to welcome 1.5 million tourists by the end of the year. But due to lockdown measures in key tourist markets along with the increase of positive cases in the island nation itself, tourist arrival figures are not up to expectations.