Tourism Board sets in place a new strategy to grow its tourism arrivals
THE Maldives has launched a new drive to pull in more tourists from across the world including the Middle East, as it spruces up its industry to meet the challenges of a new world order in tourism. Under the new strategy, the Maldives will focus on developing more products for families, honing the skills of workers in the industry as well as tourism facilities, and concentrating on green initiatives, Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Dr Ahmed Ali Sawad told TTN during his recent visit to Dubai.
Although 2008 got off to a rocky start, the Maldives ended up attracting a total of 683,000 tourists last year on a back of a record 2007. According to Dr Sawad, the Middle East is a key target market for the archipelago nation. “The Mideast currently accounts for only 1.3 per cent of total arrivals, but we are confident of seeing double-digit growth,” he added.
“Our traditional markets showed marginal fluctuations. We saw a drop from markets such as UK, Italy and Japan in 2008, but at the same time saw tremendous growth from new markets like Russia, Eastern Europe and China, so creating a balanced effect as well as providing us with an indication on how the destination is pegged in these markets. We realise that our core markets are expanding and we have started doing much targeted marketing exercises in these regions, while continuing to focus on our traditional markets,” he added.
Dr Sawad believes that the planned improvements will gear the tourism industry in Maldives to changing market conditions of the global tourism industry.
“When the tourism industry kicked off in the Maldives, we were marketing targeted products to target markets. At a product level, this is what we are lacking now and to see more tourists from the Middle East and India, we need to do the same once again. To cater to these markets, we will in the near future have more family-oriented products in the Maldives,” he said.
With over 60 islands and 11,800 beds under various stages of development, Maldives expects several new concepts to come out of this pool in the next few years. Although renowned for its high end tourism resorts, Dr Sawad highlighted that part of the region’s development initiatives would be to refocus on emphasising the growth of mid-market tourist resorts. Through providing diverse product segments the region would be able to respond better to market fluctuations in any one segment.
Facility development in the Maldives would initially be focused upon the international airport at Hulhule. Development of the airport is expected to yield an improvement in capacity as well as services. Training and developing staff – particularly local, Maldivian personnel – also features on the government’s planning programme. The Maldives hopes to address the shortfall of skilled personnel through the development of exclusive resort staff training facilities in addition to recruiting assistance from experienced and renowned hospitality training schools from around the world.
“The fourth area that is crucially in need of improvement is the distribution of tourism income in the Maldivian economy,” said Dr Sawad. He explained that although the region benefited from a healthy tourism industry, this benefit was negligibly seen in the local communities. The promotion of cultural, heritage and festival tourism is on the cards, as is the development of eco conservation zones to emphasise ‘blue’ and ‘green’ tourism in the Maldives.
Looking forward into 2009, the Maldives have already seen some recovery from markets like Germany and the Nordic countries, and Dr Sawad believes that more direct connections from Europe to Malé will help boost arrival numbers into the country. “Our scheduled flights need to be increased for more direct connections from markets like Rome, Paris and Frankfurt. We are in the process of dialogue with several airline carriers and hope to see some new connections in the near future,” he concluded.
By Shalu Chandran