Suffering Maldives launches tacticals

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.

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.”

Asim added that the NTO had also started inviting tour operators and media, especially from China, for fam trips.

According to Riyaz, these seem to have worked, as charter flights from China were scheduled to return to normal by April.

He pointed out that while resorts in the Maldives were holding their rates, they had introduced tacticals such as stay-four, pay-three-night packages, although this was not unusual in the low season which runs from March to May.

Thulhagiri Island Resort & Spa sales and reservations manager, Ismail Areef, was confident that the European market would do well during the peak season, based on feedback gathered from buyers at ITB Berlin.

China is a new but very fast-growing market for the destination, totalling 198,655 arrivals last year. This represents 21.3 per cent of overall arrivals.

Read the full report in TTG Asia, March 9, 2012

Read the full report in ITB Berlin

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