Thursday, June 11, 2009

Maldives plans Middle East focus

The Republic of Maldives intends to focus on the Middle East in an overhaul of its tourism strategy.

Republic of Maldives Minister of Tourism, Arts & Culture Dr. Ahmed Ali Sawad said the aim was to make the new democratic system a success in the global market and part of that was through tourism.

“For the tourism sector I think the Maldives is known throughout the world as a luxury destination and we have a lot of tourist products,” Sawad said.

“Our exercise is to focus on areas where we have not had a strong presence, particularly the Middle East and India so the new government policy is to strengthen those ties.”

The new government is looking to expand and diversify the capacity over the next five to six years, with an additional 11,000 beds on the current stock of 20,000, according to Sawad.

“We realised the boom happened in the late 80s and 90s based on a strong mid-market tourism and it expanded into the high-end — it upgraded,” he said.

“In the industry right now we are saying there is a lot of room for both these segments and we are putting a lot of emphasis into that mid-market product, while strengthening access for our key markets.”

Source: hoteliermiddleeast.com

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