The Maldives on 16^th July 2023 welcomed the 1 millionth tourist for the year. The 1 millionth tourist arrival figure was achieved on August 12th last year, making this year’s achievement a full month ahead, and on course for H.E President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s national arrival target of 1.8 million tourists by the end of 2023.

The 1 millionth tourist for this year was Mr. Anton Pavlov, a British national who arrived on British Airways flight BA061 with his family. The family was escorted to the event area with a cultural performance, and welcomed by Senior Officials from the Ministry of Tourism (MOT), Maldives Marketing & PR Corporation (MMPRC), Maldives Airports Company Limited (MACL), and Maldives Immigration upon arrival. This year’s 1 millionth tourist, Anton, received special gift packs from MoT, MMPRC, MACL, Maldives Immigration, and from the tourism industry to commemorate the momentous occasion. MMPRC’s gift pack was a collection of locally-sourced products essential for a holiday in the Maldives.

MMPRC’s marketing efforts in the first 2 quarters of this year have played a pivotal role to drive exposure and maintain destination presence across various key markets with a 360 degree marketing approach.

Among the other groundbreaking marketing events conducted by MMPRC this year, the Visit Maldives Storytellers’ Conference 2023 (from 30th May 2023 to 02nd June 2023) is anticipated to increase the arrivals further in the coming months. This outstanding event, executed during the low season to help boost arrivals, resulted in simultaneous coverage of several different regions of the Maldives which made a prominent presence globally, receiving over 89,517,434 reach on the Visit Maldives social media platforms alone. With the extensive coverage received for different regions of the Maldives during the sideline activities of this event, we forecast arrivals to increase further and for bookings to be more dispersed throughout the Maldives.

MMPRC has strategized the marketing activities to attract more visitors to the destination in order to reach the President’s annual arrivals target of 1.8 million tourists this year. This will be achieved through various destination marketing activities such as collaborating with global stakeholders such as airlines, TO’s, and TA’s to boost arrival figures. Accordingly, most of the Maldives’ top source markets have already surpassed pre-pandemic arrivals.

The top 5 markets for Maldives thus far this year are Russia, India, UK, China and Germany. India had consistently remained at the top arrivals spot, especially post-covid. India, having exceeded pre-pandemic arrival numbers in 2021, is currently ranked at the #2 arrivals spot, with 117,131 visitors from India to the Maldives, and Russia on number 1, with 117,198 visitors as of 15^th July 2023.