In the most recent development from Ministry of Finance, the government body affirms staggering decline in the tourism sector activities in 2020.
Earlier, in 2020 the impact of Covid-19 pandemic forced several tourist properties to temporarily shutdown.
Moreover, the island nation observed an over 3-month long border closure which further dented tourism sector.
Ministry of Finance attest that as of August 2020 only 65 tourist resorts were at operational capacity.
The authority in their budget statistics confirm January 2020 recorded the most tourist arrivals in history with a total of 173,347 – for a singular month.
Furthermore, this corresponds to a 14.4% increase in bed-nights in comparison with the previous year.
In February 2020, all direct flights from China to Maldives came to a halt with pandemic outbreak in the former.
Moreover, China; which remains one of the strongest tourism market, closing down its flights to Maldives meant a rapid decline in tourist arrivals.
As such tourist arrivals saw a decline of 11.1% by February 2020.
On the other hand, the tourist arrival decline fell further hitting 63.4% in March 2020.
Due to border closure, there were no tourist arrivals during the second quarter of 2020.
Since border reopening in July, a tourist arrivals hit only 9,380 until August.
Meanwhile, bed-nights saw a further dip of 94.5% during the said period.
By August of previous year tourist arrivals from all major markets had slowed down.
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