As part of the ongoing “Rediscover Maldives…the sunny side of life” campaign, Visit Maldives welcomes influencers from the Middle Eastern market. This is the second familiarization trip conducted after reopening the border.
The purpose of this FAM trip is to promote the destination and the unique experiences that are available in Maldives. Furthermore, the FAM trip also aims to showcase the safety measures that are imposed in the Maldives and ensure that Maldives is a safe haven to Middle Eastern travellers.
Today, Sherif & Becky, two well-known influencers in the Middle Eastern region with a combined follower base of more than 1.5 million followers, arrived in the Maldives to promote the destination. The duo will feature their experiences and discoveries of Maldives on their social media platforms that reaches millions of potential travellers from the Middle Eastern region.
Sherif & Becky are hosted by both PULLMAN Maldives Maamutaa and Hard Rock Hotel for five nights in the Maldives, where they will experience the unique activities such as signature cuisines, wellness activities, snorkelling and other such unique experiences.
With the reopening of major Middle Eastern borders, tourists are able to visit Maldives more frequently now. Thus, marketing efforts in the Middle Eastern market have increased in order to regain the market share and increase tourist arrivals from the GCC and the KSA region, utilizing campaigns such as the joint campaign with DNATA Travel and promotions with Emirates Woman targeting potential segments. Under the Rediscover Maldives campaign, a series of webinar was also conducted for the travel trade of Middle East market and other key markets
In this regard, the airlines operating from the Middle Eastern region include Emirate Airlines, Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways, Saudi Arabian Airlines and Gulf Air. In addition to this, FlyDubai would start it’s operations to the Maldives on the 27th of October 2020. While tourist arrivals from the Middle East to the Maldives showed a 15.1% increase, with a record of 60,003 arrivals in 2019, current arrival trends since the reopening positions the UAE market 2nd in terms of arrival from the date of border opening.
Visit Maldives is currently conducting major marketing activities in key markets such as Global campaign with CNN, Integrated webinar sessions in china, a campaign with Travel weekly targeting the UK market which has 1.5 million-page views. Furthermore, MMPRC has successfully concluded the Rediscover Maldives webinar series in September which was targeted to travel trade in source markets.