Maldives - through the eyes of a travel agent

Maldives is so sellable? One might wonder when he thinks of the beautiful coral islands with those green palm trees, azure lagoon and white sandy beaches. It can be easily convinced to a person with one of those Michael Friedel’s postcard, where a palm tree bends over to Kuda Bandos Lagoon. Wow one will gaze….

For Travel agents this is a money factory! Perhaps that is why you see almost all big brands never let their eyes off Maldives. Like Kouni, TUI, Thomas Cook, Nickerman, Hays & Javis and many more. Perhaps that is why they make huge charter flight operations to Maldives. I remember sitting with Mr. Champa Afeef in refreshment at a MATI meeting, and as he described how they managed operating resorts in 70’s. For sure he and many others are the ambassadors of tourism. I remember an interview by Mr. Koli Umar Manik describing the very first tourist group came to Maldives and how they managed to cook lunch for them with local style biriyani. And later the tourists didn’t like it.

For me they are absolutely happy with their achievements! I remember Mr. Deen telling how he managed to bring tourists to Bandos with local dhonis, sometimes with rough seas. I met one of the first tourists to Maldives and he described one of the events which occurred at that time. He was sat to travel to Meeru and the captain of the dhoni mistakenly went to another island. Because the same island from far look liked same. For him the only way he could describe his destination island is with few extra long palm trees. I remember sitting with my fellow colleagues back in resorts which I worked, and how they described the first experiences in 70s. I remember them telling about club nature where all tourists stay nude.

Maldives has grown to become one of the most favorite tourist destination and all the tour operators and travel agents through out the world is anxious to sell it! This is a lucrative industry and a gold mine. Not only you could sell it easily but you could put high margin. Interestingly the reality for fellow local travel agents isn’t same! They are much left behind as the industry grew. And awkwardly with this magnitude of tourist industry, Maldives never realized to produce capable local travel agencies. Although difficult to digest, the industry never saw the need to empower local travel agents. The poor local travel agents keep working until they go bankrupt.

When you see though the eyes of a local travel agent, Maldives doesn’t fascinate him, nor is it a money factory. Neither has it produced gold for him. Not even it is tourist’s heaven for his clients. Than why is he on to this difficult business? A good question with an easy answer! This is because this is most natural industry to be in, the only industry to do business apart from fishing industry is tourism, and for those who have tourism background their primary interest become to be a travel agent. The only problem is there is no mechanized system in place for the agencies to operate.

It is very important that there should be local agencies well operated in Maldives for the very survival of this industry, for the long run and sustainable development of this industry. But who is there to address this question…. A never ending story…