MMPRC takes part in ITB Asia Virtual fair

With 17 tourism industry partners, Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC), is taking part in “Reinventing Travel in the New Normal'' at the ITB Asia Virtual held from October 21 to 23.

While the live ITB Asia fair was postponed to 2021, the virtual fair will be attended by industry professionals from Singapore and worldwide, being the leading travel trade show within this region.

The three-day virtual event incorporates features for business matching that enables participants to meet industry leaders and additionally attend top notch conference sessions, which, according to MMPRC, creates a virtual marketplace for the travel industry.

All exhibitors at the fair will get to showcase a virtual booth which will feature unique images, videos, as well as promotional material will be available for download to visitors.

Similarly, MMPRC has joined several virtual fairs this year including ATM Virtual, SATTE GenX and PTM Virtual, focusing on different key market regions. Moreover, along with the opening of the borders, Visit Maldives has launched a global campaign called “Rediscover Maldives... the sunny side of life”.

The corporation has also conducted some recent promotional activities including an integrated webinar series for tour operators in China, an outdoor visibility campaign in the UK and South Korea, familiarization trips for India media journalists, as well as a global digital campaign with CNN.

“MMPRC hopes to increase the number of tourist arrivals from the South East Asian region through similar events and other marketing activities focused on this region”, they said.

“Prior to the border closure in March, tourist arrivals from the South East Asian region to the Maldives were recorded as 11,581 tourists. Even though current travel limitations exist, such efforts will be an important enabling factor to capture the travel trends”.

As with numerous countries around the world, in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Maldives closed its air and sea borders to tourist arrivals from March 27 to July 15.

The restrictions on international travel left Maldives' heavily tourism reliant economy in an extremely vulnerable state. In mid-April, the World Bank projected that Maldives would be the worst-hit economy in the South Asian region due to the pandemic.