Maldives Finds the ‘Safest Tomorrow’ to Travel

Saturday 28th of March 2020

Maldives Finds the ‘Safest Tomorrow’ to Travel

The Maldives needs to find the safest tomorrow to travel, according to Minister of Tourism Ali Waheed at the very first meeting of Global Tourism Crisis Community where he represented the Maldives and South Asia.

“The world cannot be locked down for months. What we need to do is to find the ‘safest tomorrow’ to travel. Therefore, safe ways to start traveling and safe markets to start with, must be on top of our agenda,” said the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)’s South Asian Regional Committee Chair and Tourism Minister of Maldives.

On 27th March, Maldives suspended on arrival visas in attempts to contain the coronavirus, bringing tourism operations to a stop. The industry is the largest in the country after fishing and contributes greatly to the GDP and employment. With operations on a halt, many have been going out of jobs and the economy continues to move to a recession.

Maldivian news website SunOnline reported on 25th of March that President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih stated that, “under certain circumstances”, the tourism-dependent country could be reopened to Chinese, South Korean and Japanese markets by the end of April. That is if there are no known active cases of infection in the Maldives.