China market is biggest hope for tourism in 2023: Minister
Mausoom said that tourists from China are expected to start arriving in the Maldives for Chinese New Year, which falls on January 22.
Tourism minister Dr Mohamed Waheed said on Wednesday that the biggest hope for tourism in the Maldives next year is the resumption of Chinese tourist arrivals.
In a brief interview to Atoll Times on the state of tourism in the Maldives at the end of the year, Mausoom said that tourists from China are expected to start arriving in the Maldives for Chinese New Year, which falls on January 22.
"There is a lot of hope for that now," he said.
"Once Chinese tourists start coming in, our industry will be better than what it was before the pandemic."
Prior to Covid, China was the single biggest source market for Maldives tourism. In 2019:
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284,029 Chinese tourists visited the Maldives
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That is 16.7% of the total tourist arrivals that year
The minister said that the 1.6 million tourists target set for this year will be achieved by the third week of December.
The tourist arrivals target for next year is 2 million tourists.
'Tax should be levied for tourism development'
Asked if the increase in T-GST next year would affect tourism in the country, Mausoom said the increase in T-GST needs to be done to strengthen the infrastructure of the tourism sector. In particular, he stressed on the need to increase taxes to ensure that critical infrastructure projects such as water and sewerage and harbours, which have already been started for the development of local tourism, continue.
"The best thing to do is to delay the tax hike by a year. But President [Ibrahim Mohamed] Solih's policy is not to stop any of the projects that have been started, but to finish them in a speedy manner. These things need to be done to promote local tourism. If that stops, the expansion of local tourism will come to a halt," Mausoom said.
While the minister believes that the tax hike will not have much impact on the resort market, he also admits that guesthouse or local tourism is likely to be affected to an extent. To cushion the impact, the ministry in collaboration with MMPRC aims to promote local tourism next year, he said.
"Our focus will be to work closely with the guesthouse association next year to better promote local tourism," Mausoom said.
"Together, we can overcome these challenges. We have proved that even after Covid."
