Tourism Minister: Need to increase bed-nights, rather than number of arrivals

The Minister of Tourism Dr Abdulla Mausoon stated on Wednesday that rather than working on increasing the total number of tourist arrivals, more importance needs to be given to increasing the duration they spend in Maldives.

Speaking with the press after the ceremony held at Crossroads to kick off United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Global Summit on Community-based Tourism, Minister Mausoon said that the statistics were proof that after the Covid-19 pandemic tourist arrivals have started to improve.

However, he noted that more significance needs to be given to increasing the duration tourist spend holidaying in Maldives. He added that the fact that the time they spend has been increasing was a positive sign.

“We are focusing more on bed nights. The duration [tourists] spend. That is happening. Even now, we have increased bed nights to what it was in 2019.”

Moreover, the minister said that although due to the pandemic and war, about 40 percent of the market from two years back has been lost, we have pushed closer to the arrivals of back then.

Professor Jafar Jafari, a renowned tourism expert who is in Maldives for the summit addressed this session.

During his speech, he described Maldives increasing bed nights as one of the biggest accomplishments.

 According to the Tourism Ministry’s statistics, the average duration tourists spend in Maldives in 2019 was 6.8 days, while currently, the figure is at 8.7 days.

So far this year, a total of 732,884 tourists arrived in Maldives. For the same period in 2019, number of arrivals was 780,931.