The curious case of adventure tourism and its relative non-existence in the Maldives

We know, how during the 2010s, the Maldives government actively pushed out a wholly new tourism mandate that revolved around the growth and fostering of local tourism. This was during the presidential administration of Mohamed Nasheed when his government actively focused on expanding the country’s tourism industry outside of its conventional comfort zone.

Traditionally, the Maldivian tourism industry banked heavily on targeting affluent travelers. The country’s tourism industry mainly focused on catering to tourists with middle-class to higher categories of earnings. In addition to this, the conventional tourism approach in the island nation was developing tourist resort islands geographically detached from residential islands; professionally speaking, Maldives relied heavily on enclave resort tourism.