Last month

Tourism Ministry has said that compared with last year, tourist arrival figures for this year show an increase of 2.3 percent.

State Minister for Tourism Maleeh Jamal said today that 355,000 tourists had arrived in Maldives during the first four months of this year, which is a 2.3 percent increase when compared with the last four months of last year. He also said that the one-third of the campaign to have one million tourists had been achieved.

“We have achieved one-third of one million. The biggest drop was in January, February and March. But with the efforts of the ministry and industry officials, we have managed to maintain the minus rate. Negative for April is 0.8, so nobody has minus,” Maleeh said.

He expressed confidence that arrivals will increase this month, and increase even more in June. Tourists arriving from Germany, Russia and Switzerland had increased, and an improvement of 3.5 percent had been achieved from the Chinese market.

“Earlier there was no increase in arrivals from China and Japan. This increase now makes it much easier to reach the one million target.”

He noted that it is unlikely that tourists from Italy, Portugal and Greece will increase due to the economic downturn, and said that the focus should now be on developing economies.

“The Korea Expo held this month is a good opportunity. It will go on for three months. We have invited officials from the tourism industry to travel anytime that’s convenient for them, to display their products. We should focus on strengthening ties with these regions and target developing markets,” Maleeh said.

Maleeh will participate in the Korea Expo on behalf of Tourism Ministry.

The tourism industry in Maldives was negatively affected by the change of government on 7 February, when international media began reporting the political turmoil in the country.

The campaigns to boycott tourism in some parts of the world worsened the effects.

Tourist arrival for March 2012 is 5.3 percent less when compared with that for March 2011.

MIRA’s statements for last month show the government received Rf155.7m as GST from tourism industry, making it the major source of income for the state.