In conjunction with the reopening of Maldives’ border, Visit Maldives is conducting two visibility campaigns in the Southeast Asia region, named FreakOut and Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia.
According to Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation, the FreakOut is a digital campaign specifically for the Malaysian market, focusing on the middle early careers, young families, and Muslim travelers within this region.
The campaign included group-specific oustream In-Article Video Ads, Native Rich Media and In-Feed Content on online portals to attract tourists. The cumulative reach included a total 5,068,532 impressions, MMPRC said.
With the conclusion of the one-month campaign with FreakOut, Visit Maldives has now launched its second digital campaign focusing on the luxury and business travelers market. The four-month campaign with Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia will focus on articles highlighting the current COVID-19 situation as well as the unique experiences available in Maldives.
Additionally, MMPRC said that colourful images will be displayed on the main website’s leaderboard and parallax banner. Further to this, social media content will also be boosted accordingly throughout the campaign.
In this post-COVID-19 era, Maldives has become the ideal location for traveling, as it is geographically blessed by its isolated nature, making it one of the safest destinations to travel to at the time.
Moreover, the constant efforts taken by the travel and tourism industry of Maldives to provide tourists the assurance of safety, and the joint marketing efforts by Visit Maldives and other stakeholders, have placed Maldives as the World’s Leading Destination at the World Travel Awards 2020.
“The achievement of this award at such a crucial time is a testament to the love for Maldives and will be an important enabling factor to capture the travel trends. This effort will hopefully bring back the number of tourist arrivals from the Southeast Asian region to its earlier statistics”, MMPRC noted.
Visit Maldives is carrying out several activities in key markets to market and promote Maldives. All in all, 412 different types of marketing activities have been carried out in 22 global markets.
A total of 314 activities were carried out during this pandemic as part of the crisis recovery plan; some of these include activities such as Instagram live conference with Indian celebrities, major media campaigns in key markets, China Online Roadshow, ITB Asia Virtual and more.
Furthermore, the introductions of the Maldives Border Miles and Allied Inbound Travel Insurance program is an additional boost and advantages to promote Maldives, said MMPRC.
Maldives reopened its borders to international passengers on July 15, after nearly four months since the state halted issuing on-arrival visas on March 27. Guesthouses were permitted to resume operations and kick start local tourism on October 15.
Although Maldives has noted a significant reduction in tourist arrivals compared to pre-COVID figures, the numbers have maintained a steady upward slope indicating a stable increase, but the country has a long way to go before pre-pandemic figures are achieved.
Prior to the border closure as a preventive measure amidst the ongoing pandemic, Maldives recorded an average of 4,200 visitors on the daily.
However, the Minister of Tourism earlier expressed hopes for the industry's recovery, estimating that 100,000 tourists would visit Maldives before the end of 2020. The tourism ministry expects a total of 500,000 arrivals for the year.