Bandos Maldives Kicks Off Festive Celebrations
Visit Maldives has successfully concluded the series of Webinar Sessions in China, with the 10th and final session being held on 16th October 2020. This webinar series was conducted through 10 sessions held between 20th May and 16th October, for the purpose of educating China travel trade partners and positioning Maldives as the most preferred tourist destination for Chinese Travelers.
Over 2370 travel agents participated in this webinar series from across China. In the first 5 sessions, an in-depth presentation of Maldives tourism with information regarding Maldives’ tourism products and Maldives’ Airlines was given to the participants in Chinese Language. In addition, these webinars focused on sharing information about travel to Maldives during the pandemic. The remaining sessions were for partners from the Maldives tourism industry to share information about their properties and products with the travel agents.
Each session was conducted with specific discussion topics relating to Chinese tourist’s interests. At the end of each session, an interactive Q&A session was conducted to answer any queries the travel agents had about the destination. The feedback received by the participants was positive, with many Chinese tourists looking forward to travelling to Maldives.
These webinar sessions were an integral part of the marketing strategy by MMPRC to train travel trade in key tourist markets across the globe. It is important to continue to promote Maldives as a safe destination in the Chinese Market. So far for the China Market, Visit Maldives has conducted several digital campaigns on Weibo and WeChat throughout the year, Outdoor Campaigns in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Outdoor Advertising in Beijing Capital Airport, participation in Luxury Resort 2020 roadshow by Runtour, Launched a HTML Fishing Game on WeChat and several Media interviews. In addition, MMPRC is currently planning to conduct Maldives online roadshow in China, launching china travel trade portal on WeChat, more social media promotions, travel trade joint campaign and several other marketing campaigns for the China Market.
China remains to be the biggest source market for the Maldives. It is projected that the number of arrivals from China will increase exponentially once China reopens their borders for international outbound travel. In January 2020, a total of 31,744 tourist arrivals were recorded from this market which was a 23% growth compared to the same period last year. For 2019, a total of 284,372 tourists arrived in Maldives from China, making China the number one market in terms of arrival to Maldives last year.
In addition, Visit Maldives is also carrying out several marketing activities worldwide to ensure that Maldives remains one of the most preferred and safest tourist destinations. Global Campaigns with SkyScanner and CNN. Market specific campaigns like DNATA campaign in Middle East, outdoor campaigns in UK and South Korea, FVW German, campaign with Travel Weekly in UK, campaign with WeddingSutra in India, campaign with OTA in France and an online campaign with Travelata, sletat and Squiz in Russia.
Maldives also launched a global campaign, “Rediscover Maldives…the Sunny Side of Life”, aiming to make tourists more aware of the travel situation and the measures taken under the “new normal” guidelines, to ensure the protection of both tourists and staff
