Category Archives: Industry

World Tourism Day today.

As the Maldives (and Kurumba in particular where the sessions are being convened) welcomes tourism officials from around the world to host the United Nations World Travel Organisations official celebration, it is an apropos time to take a look at the shifting concentrations of tourists from around the world. Much has been written about the rise of the Chinese visit numbers, but with over a billion in population, one would expect a fair number to be drawn to the Maldivian charms. But which country has the highest proportionate draw to the Maldives?

If you look at the most recent Maldives visitor numbers by country population, Switzerland is the big fan of the Maldives with 4.03 visitors per year per 1,000 of population. The closest rival in enthusiasm density is Austria coming in at less than half that number with 1.97 per 1,000 population. Perhaps not coincidentally, both of these countries are famous for their mountainous landscape. Maybe the population craves the low altitudes of the sea-level hugging islands.

As described in the earlier look at guest numbers, the shift in enthusiasm density tracks with the overall guest trends. Namely, the rise of the East (Singapore, Kuwait and Australia the biggest risers) and the decline of the West (UK, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Denmark and Czech are the biggest droppers).

What is the most prominent thing people search for about the Maldives?

Google celebrates its sesquidecennial anniversary today (there’s a sesquipedalian for you…If you don’t know what it means, Google it). I’ve been doing some work to make Maldives Complete a bit easier for people to find using search engines like Google.  Part of that work has had been use Google’s ‘Keyword Tool’ to get a better understanding of what are people looking for when they are searching about ‘Maldives resorts’. The results were quite intriguing…

1. Resorts – Obviously, the “resorts” themselves.

2. Spas – A bit curious in that when we first started coming to the Maldives in the nineties, most resorts didn’t even have spas. Maybe a few staff therapists on contracts. Now they are one of the top allures. Also and indication of the gentrification of the Maldives as a luxury destination.

3. Where they are – This was the one that surprised me. It seems that the Maldives’ reputation proceeds itself. People have heard of the legendary Maldives so far and wide that many don’t even know where they are. Part of this bias is due to the high portion of USA traffic on the web. Not only are Americans notoriously bad at geography, but the Maldives are literally on the opposite side of the world quite removed from their traditional tropical destinations like the Caribbean and South Pacific.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

A less than rhetorical question for a few very lucky souls this week. The Madison Avenue sponsored script is “Disneyland,” but the more unprompted survey says – “Maldives”. The article“If I won the lottery the first place I would go is…” that the first thing people do is go on a dream holiday, and the top dream holiday destination was the Maldives…

“If you won the lottery where would you go to on holiday? A leading travel agency asked Britons where they would most want to travel to if they won the jackpot and it revealed that the Maldives is top of the pile…The amount of winnings was any amount over half a million pounds and if money was no object Britons would go to the Maldives as their first holiday pit stop. The website Sunshine wanted to look into the holiday habits of Brits and in the survey of 1,672 adults they were all asked about how they would spend their winnings. 78% of people said that a holiday would be first on their list of expenditures and all were asked if they won over 500,000 where they would go on holiday first. According to the poll, the top 10 most desirable holiday destinations, if money were no object for Britons, were as follows:

1. The Maldives – 19.0%
2. Seychelles – 13.2%
3. St Lucia – 10.6%

You’ve just won the lottery, what are you going to do? I’m going to the Maldives!

The international recipe of guests is reformulating from a European continental dish to a distinctly Asian fusion flair of late Switzerland has now dropped out of the Maldives “Arrivals by Country” top 10 leading a trend of Alpine Western countries (Switzerland, Italy, France) being supplanted by low lying Eastern countries (Saudi Arabia, Australia).

That’s according to the latest stats from the Ministry of Tourism that they presented in a nifty Pinterest (“P-interest” or “Pin-terest”?) post last week.

The Western sun seekers are being supplanted by the Eastern luxury seekers.

It is even more surprising it is that no resort has really nailed a sustained, quality blog considering how straightforward the opportunity really is. In addition to the blog fundamentals cited in my yesterdays “Maldives Resort Blog Roll” post, here are a few angles that almost write themselves for most resorts…

• Staff Profiles – A common feature on corporate blogs is to do profiles of various members of staff. Sometimes they are people doing particularly intriguing or esoteric jobs. Sometimes they are people with particularly unique backgrounds. Sometimes they are staff with special interests. We do them on our Red Bee Piero blog. The benefit to the resort and the guest is that such pieces really personalise the resort. Such individual stories make a bit of a human connection to this plot of sand with some villas and palm trees on it. Another benefit to the resort is that very often the staff are quite proud of the work they do and their story they tell.
• Snorkel Central – Snorkelling is the main event for the most guests to the Maldives. It is one of the first topics of conversation at the bar in the evening…”What did you see today?” Invite guests to share their house reef adventures and discoveries. Also, the majority of resorts now staff marine biologists. I find too many of these MBs focus on education. They write and speak about the ABCs of marine life. I think they should invest more effort and time in writing about “stuff they saw”.

What about Facebook? Many of the approaches I’ve listed above (eg. sharing snorkel pics) are what resort marketeers do on Facebook. They sometimes respond, “Blogs are passé, Facebook is where it is at.” Yes, blogs have been around for a while. The hype behind them hit a crescendo and has since tapered off (typical of many innovations). And Facebook is very of the moment. Though indications are that Facebook is hitting its own hype apex. Despite Facebook’s popularity and ease of use, it still has a number of major shortcomings especially vis-à-vis blogs…

• Offline Accessibility – Getting Facebook updates delivered to your offline Inbox (eg. Outlook) is a complicated set of menus and settings, while blogs provide simple (“Really Simple”) RSS Feed that deliver straight to your Inbox for offline reading (eg. on an airplane, in remote areas).
• Archivability – After certain dates, finding and accessing old posts and updates is a real chore (and I find they often disappear). On a blog, you can readily access them with direct links, Search boxes and dated Archive listings.
• Searchability – One struggles to find material on Facebook with Google, but Google readily finds most all blog material.
• Formatability – Facebook has very limited, almost primitive, formatting capability. Your own blog frees up your ability to format your posts in your preferred branding style or in a rich way that makes the post more engaging and/or appealing
• Linkability – Investing in a blog doesn’t necessarily forgo Facebook. You can have your cake and eat it too. Simple draft a rich format blog post…and then link to it with a brief comment on your Facebook page.

Happy Blonde Day!

Or you could pick your resort based on the prevailing hair colour of the staff…

When the press release came out a year ago about the ‘Blondes Only’ Olialia Island, everyone was looking for the ’01 April’ publication date. But the announcement was all delivered with a straight face even if they weren’t received with any.

Recently I stumbled upon the LinkedIn profile of Indre Kavaliauskaite who has the title of ‘Project manager at Olialia Blonde Island Maldives’. So it seems that someone is on the case. And judging by her profile picture (see below), her appointment is ‘on brand’ shall we say.

So Maldives Complete was faced with the question of whether to feature it on the site in the list of the resorts. Part of the ‘Complete’ in Maldives Complete is to feature every single resort. Including ones that are shut down for a period or are not yet opened. The thinking is that as people do research, they might have heard about a resort. Maybe it was from a friend who was there before it closed. Maybe it is not opened now, but often people plan trips to the Maldives a year in advance. By that time, the resort in question might just be opened. So info on it should be featured so people can include it on their radar.

It has its own Facebook page. If it is a hoax, then it is an extremely elaborate (and expensive one).