Visit Maldives launches a destination marketing campaign with Italy’s largest travel agency brand, Bluvacanze and Vivere & Viaggiare. The campaign will be held till the end of March 2022.

Vivere & Viaggiare with Bluvacanze is the brand that represents the largest number of travel agencies in Italy. The brand has over 320 travel agencies and over 600 points of sale across the country. This Italian tourism distribution brand has been in the market for over 40 years and offers a complete range of services and solutions in collaboration with the best tour operator partners. It is one of the largest and most important Italian tourism companies, which also owns the Blunet brands, the Tour Operator Going and Cisalpina Tours and is also the leading Italian company in Business Travel Management.

Under the campaign with Visit Maldives and Bluvacanze will hold several B2B and B2C promotional activities using email marketing, digital communication, social media posts, and webinar for the Italian travel trade and tourists.

The activities of this campaign will include social media posts and video on 3 of the Group’s pages which has 90,000 followers, a product newsletter distributed to 600 tour operators and a training webinar for 50 travel agents. Through this campaign Maldives will also be displayed on the landing page of Bluvacanze website for a year, while banners and leaflets about the destination will be on “Gocce di viaggio”, a dedicated website for honeymooners and couples. Under this campaign videos and images of Maldives will be displayed on digital signage with monitors in 150 travel agencies for four months as well.

This campaign is held in line with Visit Maldives’ marketing strategy for the Italian market, aiming to promote the destination as a safe haven for Italian tourists. The campaign will promote the Maldivian resorts, hotels, guesthouses and liveaboards, along with experiences unique to the Maldives to Italian travel trade and tourists. This campaign is expected to increase future bookings and arrivals from the Italian market.

So far this year we have held several activities targeting this market, including a campaign with Welcome Travels, campaign with Easy Market and BIT Milan. Ongoing activities for the Italian market by Visit Maldives includes joint Campaign with Alpitour and E-Learning Campaign. Future activities planned ahead for this market include media, influencer and travel trade FAM Trip, campaign with tour operators and airlines, OOH Advertising (Milan) and campaign with Mediamond.

Prior to the pandemic in 2020 Italy ranked as the 4th top source market to Maldives with 46,690 arrivals while the country ranked as the 3rd top source market to Maldives in 2019 with 136,343 arrivals. Since the pandemic, the arrivals from the market declined drastically due to travel restrictions and measures taken across the globe. On 29th September, the Italian government established a travel corridor with tourist destinations including the Maldives, which allows Italians to travel to Maldives without quarantine-on-arrival upon returning to Italy.

Our target is to achieve pre-pandemic arrivals from the Italian market by holding promotional and marketing activities and position Maldives as the top destination of choice for Italian travelers as borders are now reopening for leisure travel.