Russian tourist flow to the Maldives almost tripled

Tour packages to the Maldives for the May holidays are practically sold out, tour operators say. The rate of summer bookings is more ahead of last year's figures due to affordable prices.

The Maldives was one of the first to agree to receive tourists from Russia; flights between Moscow and Male were resumed in September last year.

The interest of Russians was not long in coming due to the inaccessibility of most of the traditional beach foreign destinations.

In pre-pandemic 2019, Russia ranked sixth in the top ten of source markets for the Maldives. Now, Russia is on the leading positions, slightly behind India. Last year, 555,5 thousand foreign tourists came in the Maldives, of which 61 387 tourists were from Russia.

This year, the Russian tourist flow to the Maldives continues to break records. According to the latest data from the Ministry of Tourism of the Maldives, in the period from January 1 to April 21, 365 324 thousand foreign tourists entered the country, 22,8% of this number were from India, and 21,6% - from Russia (78 847 thousand). This is a record for the Russian market in this destination.

Last year, over the same period, 28 949 tourists from the Russian Federation arrived in the Maldives, thus, the increase of Russian tourist flow to this country amounted to 172% (an increase of 2,72 times).

At Coral Travel operator, 55% of all bookings of May tours made in the past week were to the Maldives. “These indicators are in line with our expectations,” the company noted.

For the first time, at Intourist company the destination entered the TOP of the most popular for the May holidays.