Maldives breaks one million visitor milestone for 2016
Achieving another milestone for Visit Maldives Year 2016, the destination proudly welcomed the one millionth visitor of the year at Ibrahim Nasir International Airport earlier.
Alefiya Merchant, from India, arrived on an Air India flight with her husband Ali Asgar Godhrawala for their honeymoon in Maldives earlier today.
The couple was warmly welcomed by Akhilesh Mishra, the high commissioner of India to the Maldives, Hussain Lirar and Shazail Shiyam, deputy ministers of tourism, Haris Mohamed, acting managing director of Maldives Marketing & Public Relations Corporation and other senior officials from the ministry of tourism, MMPRC, Maldives Airports Company and representatives of the tourism industry.
Mishra awarded them with a commemorative plaque.
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The Lucky honeymoon couple also received a complimentary holiday package from Hurawalhi Resort.
The prize was presented by Shiyam and Cherry Zhuang, sales and marketing manager of Crown & Champa Resorts.
Since the grand welcoming of the first visitor of Visit Maldives Year in the early morning of January 1st, milestones of reaching 500,000th and 750,000th were colourfully celebrated.
An Indian National being the distinguished one millionth visitor is of great significance to the Maldives providing a great opportunity to promote the Maldives as a tourist destination to the Indian market.
India is a rapidly growing market having attained its position within the top ten single source markets climbing up to reaching amongst the top 5 source markets to the Maldives.
Arrivals from India show a positive growth of 21.5 per cent from January to July when compared to the same period in 2015.
During this period in 2016 a total of 34,884 Indian tourists are recorded to have arrived in Maldives.