According to the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) tourist arrivals increased by 94% in May 2022.
The authority, in its most recent Economic Update highlighted that apart from tourist arrivals, tourist bed-nights observed a significant improvement by 43% in the review month, in comparison with the corresponding month in 2021.
Tourist arrivals exclusively for the month of May was recorded at 125,552, which is an increment of 22% when compared with May 2019.
The annual increment in tourist arrivals reflected the surge in arrivals from prominent markets such as India as well as bump from European market. The highest number of tourist arrivals during the review month were recorded from India, United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and the United States.
Russian source market, which had been at the top spot in 2021 fell to the seventh position in April 2022 owing to the suspension of flights from Russia to the Maldives earlier in March 2022 due to the country’s conflict with Ukraine.
However, the popular source market managed to trek up and rest in fourth position during the review month owing to the resumption of Russia’s flagship carrier Aeroflot’s operations to the Maldives in May.
Meanwhile, the operational bed capacity of the tourism industry observed an increment of 9,305 beds when compared with the same month last year, while the occupancy rate rose to 48% in the review month from 40% in May 2021.
For the period of January to May 2022, the total tourist arrivals increased by 55% in annual terms while bed nights for the same period increased by 40%. However, compared to the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, tourist arrivals for the period recorded a decline of 6% though bed nights observed an increment of 13%.
Additionally, the average stay declined to 8.2 days in May from 9.0 days in the corresponding month of 2021.