TravelDailyNews: What are your expectations for your tourism industry in 2006?

Murad Hassan Marketing Executive of MTPB: Maldives Tourism looks very bright for the year ahead. Maldives is on its way to towards recovery after its set back in December 2004. Our arrival figure for this year is expected to cross half a million. It give confidence to the destination, being the fastest recovering destination in South Asia.

TDN: How does the competition in the region affect your destination policy? Who are your main competitors?

M.H.: We do not have much competition in the region. We consider India and Sri Lanka as strategic partners in tourism and seek to work together. Therefore, the competition in the region does not affect our destination policy. Our main competition comes from destinations such as Mauritius, Seychelles, Bali and islands of Philippines and Malaysia. However, these are not direct competitors to the Maldives. The tourism product we have is very unique.

TDN: How do terrorist attacks/natural disasters/epidemics affect your country’s tourism flow?

M.H.: It does affect Maldives as it does to all the other destinations. However, we find that some markets are more sensitive to these types of threats. We feel no pressure from the what is happening in the Middle East and Iraq.

There are no occurrences of natural disasters around this region. We are not prone to earth quakes, cyclones and storms etc. Maldives is very well prepared to handle situations that may be expected after natural disasters. Maldives has always been considered a very safe destination.

We are very lucky destination, as we don’t have dangerous epidemics in the country. In an unlikely event of an epidemic tourists can be assures of safe stay in the country as Maldives is blessed with unique geographical formation and Maldives has maintained its policy on one island – one resort concept.

TDN: What are your destination marketing goals? By what means are you implementing these? Does this evolve innovations?

M.H.: The destination marketing goals of the Maldives has been to brand Maldives as a unique, safe and as a premium destination. This is being done by portraying the specific strengths unique to the Maldives. These include, one island one resort, peace and serenity and superior marine environment.

Some of the marketing activities we carry out include, participating in travel and trade fairs, mass media advertising, public relations, promotional events such as road shows, webvertising. Yes, our marketing evolves innovation.