Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC) invited local travel agents to wash away the winter blues and experience the ‘Sunny Side of Life’ during an evening event at Hotel Football in Manchester on Friday 8th November 2019.
The evening event, which was part of a three-city UK and Ireland travel industry roadshow, encouraged travel agents to ‘Journey to the Sunny Side’ and meet with key travel partners from the Maldives to find out more about the new tourism developments taking place across the island nation.
There were three holiday prizes presented to lucky travel agents, with Bury-based Ralph Warrington from Travel Counsellors winning a five-night holiday at Reethi Faru Resort on a full-board basis. Holiday prizes were also presented to Spencer Nadin from M.Zahid Travel in Blackburn, who won a five-night holiday at You & Me Maldives, and Eileen Allan from Altrincham’s Cresta World Travel, who won a two-night stay at LUX* South Ari Atoll. Guests also enjoyed refreshments and dinner, as well as one-on-one meetings with 17 hotels and resorts from the Maldives.
Attendees at the roadshow event included agents and local representatives from prominent travel companies such as Hays Travel, Not Just Travel and TUI.
Speaking about the roadshow event, Safa Musthafa, Senior Marketing Executive at MMPRC, said: “It has been a pleasure to bring the ‘Sunny Side of Life’ to Manchester’s Hotel Football this week during our UK and Ireland roadshow events. The UK and Ireland are two of our most important inbound markets for tourism and the events have provided us with the perfect opportunity to update our valued travel partners on all the new tourism developments taking place across the Maldives.”
The three roadshow events are taking place following MMPRC’s attendance at World Travel Market London 2019, where MMPRC’s Managing Director Mr Thoyyib Mohamed met with key travel trade partners and media contacts to discuss tourism developments in the Maldives.
These include an influx of new resorts, including several new family-friendly, adult-only and high-end properties, as well as the continued developments at Velana International Airport, which will allow the airport to cater for over 7.5 million passengers. In October 2019, the Maldives also welcomed increased airlift for UK travellers with the launch of a new five-times-weekly flight from London Heathrow to Malé, via Bahrain, with Gulf Air.
The Maldives remains one of the UK’s and Ireland’s most popular holiday destinations, with a total of 83,089 UK and 2,924 Irish holidaymakers arriving to the Indian Ocean destination from January – August 2019. This represents a 10.5% year-on-year increase in UK arrivals and a 2.6% increase in Irish visitors. The UK holds the fifth market ranking on tourist arrivals by nationality, firmly holding 7.3% of the total market share and steadily increasing year-on-year.
