India drops to fifth in Maldives tourist arrivals

At the end of January, the highest number of tourist arrivals to the Maldives was from Russia, while India, which topped the the list for the past three years dropped down to fifth, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Tourism.

Amid the diplomatic row between Maldives and India at the beginning of the year, a boycott campaign was launched in India calling on their citizens to stop coming to Maldives. However, the campaign had lost traction in the past couple of weeks.

According to the Tourism Ministry, 14,619 tourists arrived in Maldives from India as of January 30. That is 7.8% of the tourist arrivals during the period.

In January 2023, 17,029 tourists arrived from the country. That was 10.1% of the 172,536 tourists in January.

Top 5 countries by number of tourists arrivals so far this year:

According to the ministry, 186,327 tourists arrived in Maldives in the first 30 days of this year. On average, 6,211 tourists arrived daily, and they spent an average of 7.9 days in Maldives.

The government aims to attract 2 million tourists this to go well past the 1.8 million recorded last year.