Maldives row- No halt in flights but bookings drop after ‘derogatory remarks’

Maldives row: No halt in flights but bookings drop after ‘derogatory remarks’

There has been a rising call to boycott the Maldives as a travel destination by Indians across social media platforms, but domestic airlines are not looking to reduce flights to the island nation yet.

Bookings to the popular tourist destination for Indians, however, have taken a major hit after ‘derogatory remarks’ by some Maldives ministers made against India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But there has not been any cancellations of flights by the domestic carriers.

Similarly, sources in IndiGo said that the airline has not cancelled flights to the Maldives and has not seen a trend of cancellations by Indian tourists, even though bookings have fallen in the past 36 hours.

According to Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO), no new enquiries are coming for travel to the island nation, but there were no cancellations. Online travel aggregator EaseMyTrip has halted flight bookings to the island nation, Prashant Pitti, CEO and co-founder of EaseMyTrip, said in a post on X.

Also, the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has issued an appeal to all Indian trade associations to boycott the Maldives. Subhash Goyal, who heads ICC’s aviation and tourism committee, said, “Please divert all queries to Lakshadweep and Andaman & Nicobar Islands, which are even better than Maldives in many ways. other destinations that can be promoted in the Indian Ocean region are Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Bali, Phuket, etc,” he said. Goyal’s STC Travels has also stopped selling Maldives packages, tickets, etc.

In fact, Lakshadweep seems to have garnered a lot of interest after Modi’s recent visit to the island with MakeMyTrip observing a 3,400% increase in on-platform searches. Ixigo too saw a surge of 2,900% in travel search queries for the island.

EaseMyTrip’s Pitti said that every year 300,000 people visit the Maldives from India. “We are focusing on promoting tourism in domestic destinations like Lakshadweep and have also launched five new packages to promote the island,” he said.

But it’s business as usual for domestic carriers with 48 flights to the Maldives this week. IndiGo has 28 flights to the the island nation, while Vistara and SpiceJet have seven flights each, and Air India has six flights, according to data shared by Ciricum, an aviation analytics company.

Maldivian carriers will operate another 10 flights between the two countries. Air India connects Male to Mumbai and Delhi, while Vistara flies from Mumbai and Delhi. IndiGo operates to Male from Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Kochi and Hyderabad. Maldivian flights operate to Bengaluru, Trivandrum and Kochi in India from Male.

Tourism is the largest foreign exchange earner for the Maldives and the country is targeting 2 million arrivals for 2024. Indian tourists were the highest among the visitors to the Maldives till December 2023, according to data from the country’s tourism ministry.

As reported, the Maldives government on Sunday suspended three of its ministers for their derogatory remarks against PM Modi.