Tourist arrivals increased by 12.4 per cent in August compared to the same period last year, according to statistics released by the Tourism Ministry. A total of 139,338 tourists visited the Maldives by August 2019.
Arrivals surpassed the one million mark last month, reaching 1, 134,071 by the end of August and which is a 16.6% increase in tourist arrivals compared to the same period last year.
The highest percentage of tourist arrivals was from the Europe market which accounts for 48.2 per cent of the market. This market recorded year-over-year growth of 14.1 per cent with 546,373 tourists.
The second highest market from which the Maldives welcomed tourists was the Asia Pacific market with 42.2%. August 2019 alone welcomed 64,982 accumulating the total from this segment to 478,048 from January to August. This is a 16.7% increase from last year.
The American market contributed 4.9 per cent of the total arrivals while Middle East saw its market share reached to 3.9 per cent due to a 14.9 per cent increase in the number of tourist arrivals (42,774) in the January-August period, whilst Africa, which observed a 22.4 per cent growth in arrivals, contributed one per cent (11,555) of the total tourist arrivals over the past eights months. Relatively new markets such as Africa and the Middle East also maintained their strong performance.
The top 10 tourist arrival markets from January to August 2019 was China (18.1%), Italy (8.1%), Germany (7.5%), UK (7.3%), Russia (4.7%), France (3.8%), USA (3.1%), Japan (2.6%), and Australia (2.3%).
