Visit Maldives has commenced a social and digital marketing campaign with Odigeo, one of the top Online Travel Agencies (OTA) in France. The objective of this campaign is to increase destination awareness and boost arrivals to the destination in the low season. The three month campaign will run from 7th January 2021 to 7th March 2021.

Odigeo is a high end OTA in France with a worldwide audience of 1.6 million unique monthly visitors on Opodo website. Furthermore, it has 419,000 fans on Facebook and 64,000 followers on Instagram.

With this partnership with Odigeo, a microsite has been created to promote the destination. With this feature, the destination products, photos, videos and maps will be visible to users of the Odigeo’s Opodo website. In addition to this, culture, gastronomy and unique adventures of Maldives will be featured on the microsite, along with flight details and information of the products of Maldives.

Apart from the microsite, a dedicated email about the destination will be sent to Odigeo’s customers already in affinity with the destination. This email will showcase Maldives as one of the most preferred and safest destinations to travel to during this period, due to the naturally distanced islands and unique geographical formation of the country. Maldives will be promoted through Odigeo’s Facebook posts to an extensive audience of followers and retarget the Opodo users.

Marketing activities such as a joint campaign with VeryChic, press trips, participation in ILTM World Tour and global media campaign were conducted in 2020 targeting the market. Further to this,several activities are in the pipeline for the French market for the current year, focusing on joint promotions with tour operators and online travel agents, familiarisation trips, fairs and roadshows in key cities of France.

Based on the arrival figures of 2019, France is ranked in the 07th position of the highest performing markets to the Maldives. After the reopening of the border on 15th of July 2020, a total of 5,677 tourists arrived from the market till December 2020. France remains a key focus market in the recovery of tourism in Maldives and the target is to achieve pre-pandemic growth levels.