Calls from Indian tourists to boycott the resort paradise of Maldives are growing louder despite the punishment of three officials who "slipped up their tongues", according to CNBC.
The incident led to many waves of flight cancellations and hotel cancellations, putting pressure on the country's tourism revenue over the past two weekends.
Mass cancellation
Thousands of Indian tourists have canceled their trips to the Maldives, the India Express reported.
EaseMyTrip, India's largest online travel booking portal, has taken a pro-nationalist stance by closing all flight bookings to the Maldives, removing the island's image from its website and recommending tourists to visit other Indian Ocean islands such as Lakshadweep, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands or Sri Lanka.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posts photos of diving
...to attract tourists to Lakshadweep.
On January 9, Mr. Ankit Chaturvedi - Vice President and Director of Global Marketing of India-based travel software company Rategain - informed that the number of room bookings on the island decreased by 40% in the last two weekends.
"The number of visitors to the Maldives on weekends should have increased like in previous months, but the incident caused room occupancy on the two weekends to drop significantly," he told CNBC.
What happened
The boycott was sparked by three Maldivian officials reacting to an image posted on social media by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Specifically, Mr. Modi posted on the X platform a series of photos taken in Lakshadweep - an archipelago in southern India - along with compliments to promote this tourist destination.
In the comments section, many Indians praised Mr. Modi for doing a good job in promoting local tourism. However, some people thought that his post was a way to encourage people to go on vacation to Lakshadweep instead of Maldives, even though Mr. Modi did not mention Maldives in his post.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on the X platform to promote tourism in the Lakshadweep islands.
Three Maldivian officials commented indignantly on Mr. Modi's post.
The Maldivian official's comments have angered Indians.
A senior Maldives official told Reuters on January 6 that the three officials who made the remarks were Malsha Shareef, Mariyam Shiuna and Abdulla Mahzoom Majid. All three worked for the Ministry of Employment, Information and Youth Arts and had been disciplined.
In a statement, the Maldives government said the comments were personal and did not represent the views of the country as a whole.
Attention is focused on Lakshadweep
The wave of calls to boycott Maldives has made media from all over focus on Lakshadweep - the island group is said to have a landscape quite similar to Maldives with coral reefs hidden under clear beaches, white sand. Before that, Lakshadweep was not known to many people.
Located about 2,000 km from the capital New Delhi, the resort paradise Maldives is truly a playground for Indian tourists. According to Maldives tourism statistics, by 2023, more than one in 10 visitors will come from India, making it the largest market share of Maldives, followed by Russia and China.
In the context of the Chinese tourist flow not recovering, the market of a country with a billion people like India is "fertile land", not to mention this country is expected to have the 4th highest spending on tourism in the world by 2030.
The slip of the tongue of three Maldives officials unintentionally "gave" the opportunity to increase tourism revenue to other destinations, especially Lakshadweep.
The exact damage figure is still unclear, but the Indian market share has helped Maldives tourism revenue reach 380 million USD, about 9.2 billion VND, by 2023.
Given the volatile nature of social media, Mr Chaturvedi hopes the wave of outrage will "quickly subside".
But it's the power of hashtags that has Maldivian authorities worried. Hashtags starting with the "#" have become popular. #ExploreIndianIslands and #ChaloLakshadweep are being promoted by tourists and Bollywood celebrities alike.
In addition, this person commented that the post of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is part of the plan to promote tourism in this country. This is followed by a tourism-related agenda from the government.
Meanwhile, Indian aviation consultancy CAPA said the real impact of the boycott would be "ephemeral" compared to actual travel, unless negative sentiment escalates to the point where Indian tourists actually feel unwelcome in the Maldives.
CAPA also pointed out that this controversy highlights the tourism psychology of a group of tourists.
“The current situation shows how tourism can be caught up in geopolitical and economic issues, especially where the destination is heavily dependent on key source markets, of which India is one,” CAPA told India Express.
