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Halal Tourism – Maldives stepping towards a bold new direction!

Mohamed Rehan
04 December 2021, MVT 18:59
(FILE) The master bedroom of The Muraka, the world's first underwater residence: Conrad Maldives Rangali Island is one of the properties in Maldives that have already been marketing themselves as "Halal Friendly" in order to attract Muslim tourists -- Photo: Conrad Maldives Rangali Island
Mohamed Rehan
04 December 2021, MVT 18:59

Recently it was announced by the country's biggest tourism promoter on the launch of Maldives Halal Travel (MHT); along with its platform of products including the Maldives Halal Travel Magazine. The launch was officiated earlier at the Arabian Travel Market 2021 on 16th May 2021.

The founder of the platform and the Managing Director of MHT said that the platform has a market worth potential of over USD189 billion while the main objective is to attract Muslim travelers to the Maldives – mainly from the GCC region.

This indicates that the tourism industry is already exploring on bolder new routes in a bid to expand its ever-evolving consumer base.

Ideally, this is also a fresh move by top stakeholders of the tourism industry to steer away from relying on the traditional tourist markets to the Maldives. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic's impact, the necessity of exploring potential new markets to the island nation has become even more paramount.

In 2020, the country's reliance mainly on the European market for tourist arrivals was met with a rather unpleasant outcome due to several countries in the said region shutting out their respective international aviation operations amid the pandemic outbreak. This in turn, resulted in a significant and noticeable decline in the tourist arrivals to the Maldives.

So much so, that the tourist arrivals to the Maldives in annual terms did not penetrate beyond 600,000 arrivals by the end of 2020.

On the other hand, assessing the current international travel to the trend also provides a good portrait of new and emerging markets that can become major source markets to the Maldives prospectively. India, which has never been a significant source market to the country in the previous years is currently the top source market with more than 250,000 arrivals from the South Asian giant so far.

Similar to the current year, the top tourist source market to the Maldives in 2020 had been India as well despite the persistence of the viral pandemic.

Halal Tourism comes into play following the observable change in the international traveler trend to the Maldives. As such, the tourist arrivals from the Middle-Eastern region indicated an increment of over 280% during 2020 and 2021.

This is a clear indication of growing popularity of Maldives in the said region, and the island nation's government is already taking steps to ensure that the diversification of the market segmentation plays out in favor of a robust and expansive tourism industry.

Meanwhile, several prominent tourist properties have been extensively promoting themselves as 'Halal Friendly' properties to attract Muslim travelers from across the world. Some of the most notable of these properties include the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, Banyan Tree Vabbinfaru, Six Senses Laamu among several other top-notch tourist resorts.

Perhaps the next breed of tourist properties in the Maldives may take a few extra steps to ensure them being attractive enough to Muslim travelers as well as attracting Middle-Eastern to GCC countries by developing their properties in Arabian inspired themes – a general idea that could be incorporated handsomely.

After all, gone are the days of every single tourist resort banking on the traditional thatch-roofed villas; with many of the recent tourist properties have opted towards contemporary and futuristic designs while several other properties have based their architectural designs on popular Mediterranean cultures. Some of these resorts have fashioned their lodgings and buildings after popular Thai-designs as well, so there is always the scope for infusing popular foreign cultures into the Maldivian tourism industry.

So, if executed right, then the next set of properties in the Maldives could very well have more Halal-centric themes found in its architecture and even the cuisine.

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