Visit Maldives on Sunday launched a radio promotion campaign with Al Khaleejiya for the Middle Eastern region, as part of the ongoing “Rediscover Maldives…the sunny side of life” campaign.

The two-week campaign aims to promote the Maldives and the unique experiences available in the destination.

“… this campaign also aims to inform prospective travellers from the Middle East about the safety measures that are imposed in the Maldives and ensure them that Maldives is a safe haven,” a statement issued by Visit Maldives read.

Al Khaleejiya is one of the most popular radio channels in UAE, and the highest ranking Khaleeji channel in the region.

By utilising the channel’s weekly reach of 480,000+, their exclusive audience of 379,000 and their weekend reach of 223,000 listeners, Visit Maldives hopes to reach out to Emiratis on a mass scale, in a bid to entice them to choose the Maldives as their preferred holiday destination.

With the reopening of major Middle Eastern borders, tourists are able to visit the Maldives more frequently now.

Marketing efforts in the Middle Eastern market have increased in order to regain the market share, and increase tourist arrivals from the GCC and the KSA region.

“This is carried forward by utilising campaigns such as the joint campaign with DNATA Travel and promotions with Emirates Woman, targeting potential segments,” the statement read.

“Under the Rediscover Maldives campaign, a series of webinars were also conducted for the travel trade of the Middle East market and other key markets.”

Airlines currently flying to the Maldives from the Middle East include Emirates, flydubai, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways.

While arrivals from the Middle East to the Maldives showed a year-over-year increase of 15.1 per cent in 2019 with a record of 60,003 tourists, traveller trends since the reopening of Maldives borders in July have positioned the UAE as the third biggest source market post-lockdown.

Visit Maldives is currently conducting major marketing activities in key markets such as a global campaign with CNN, integrated webinar sessions in China, and the recent participation in World Travel Mart (WTM) Virtual 2020 in the UK.

Visit Maldives has successfully concluded the Rediscover Maldives webinar series in September which was targeted to travel trade in source markets.

In 2021, Visit Maldives aims to lead the national efforts in uniting all tourism stakeholders to try and achieve pre-Covid arrival numbers.