Though the disparaging remarks by three Deputy Ministers of the Maldives government against Prime Minister Narendra Modi have put the government there in a fix following calls by Indians to boycott the Maldives for tourism activities, foreign tourist arrival statistics available with tourist departments in India and the Maldives show that Indians have been making a beeline for the Indian archipelago for some time. On the other hand, there has been a steady decline in the growth of Maldivians visiting India, especially Kerala, the popular destination for Maldivians to avail medical tourism services.
Around 90,474 Indians visited the Maldives in 2018, according to the Ministry of Maldives Tourism, but the number of Indians visiting the island country shot up to 2,09 lakhs in 2023. India leads the table by contributing the largest number of foreign tourist arrivals in the Maldives, followed by Russia and China. On the other hand, Maldivians visiting Kerala came down to 38,143 in 2022, while their number was 42,237 in 2018 and 52,236 in 2019.
According to industry experts, the change of guard in the Maldives sometime ago and the growing ‘closeness’ of Male towards China since then have a bearing on the age-old bilateral ties between the two countries. However, south India, including Kerala, is one of the preferred destinations for Maldivians for medical tourism purposes with hospital chains here even curating special Maldivian cuisine for them at their in-house restaurants. Though the latest incident has soured the relation between the two countries further, travel agents in Kerala say there are no adequate facilities on Lakshadweep to provide tour packages to the islands, despite a huge demand for the destination for quite some time now.
According to Sajeer Padikkal, president, Malabar Tourism Council, there have been massive cancellations from north India to the Maldives in response to the calls to boycott the Maldives. However, there has been no such trend in Kerala. One of the major impediments to promoting Lakshadweep is the shortage of facilities and regulated entry of holidayers to the island. On the flip side, the tour package to the Maldives begins from Rs 53,000 for a couple as the Maldives is a popular budget tourism location for the majority of Indians.
Leisure tourism
“We have tried to bring some Maldivians here for leisure tourism activities. But the absence of government-sponsored campaigns to promote the destinations here in the Maldives, among other things, has contributed to the low tourist arrivals from the Maldives,” said Mr. Padikkal.
In the first week of January itself, as many as 2,372 Indians visited the Maldives as of January 6, according to the statistics with the Ministry of Maldives Tourism.
