Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation’s (MMPRC/Visit Maldives) is marketing “Visit Maldives… the Romantic Side of Life” through a joint campaign with two South Korean travel agencies - Palm Tour and Honeymoon Resort. Under this campaign, online and offline activities will be held for three months to promote the Maldives as one of the safest and most alluring honeymoon and romantic destinations.

Headquartered in Seoul, Palm Tour is one of the top honeymoon agencies for overseas travel in South Korea with over 15 branches nationwide. The award winning agency offers a wide range of Maldives products with various flight and resort options. In 2019, Palm Tour sold 11,000 room nights to Maldives. Honeymoon Resort is also one of the biggest honeymoon travel agencies in Korea with a Business history of over 20 years sending over 400,000 honeymooners. They have over 10 years of experience with various Maldives honeymoon products with the specialization of resorts and its distance to travel on domestic flight, speedboat or seaplane.

Under the online components of this campaign, Palm Tours and Honeymoon Resort will develop exclusive Maldives promotion pages; place banners in their websites with the destinations advertisements; advertising content on websites and social media pages of both companies; and paid adverts on Naver, Google and Youtube. The offline segment of the campaign will see Maldivian products showcased in fairs, providing latest destination information including visa requirements and guidelines. It will also include advertisement banners in different pertinent locations, lucky draws, raffle giveaways and advertisements to attract attention to the destination from honeymooners and newly-married couples. 

This campaign is held in line with MMPRC’s strategy to maintain the destination presence in the South Korean market and to efficiently promote various products, experiences and segments of tourism to increase future bookings and arrivals from South Korea. In 2021, a total of 1,312,706 tourists arrived in the Maldives from which 6839 were from South Korea. As of 15th May 2022, the Maldives has welcomed 7,191 tourists from this market this year. Prior to COVID-19, South Korea was the third largest outbound tourism source market in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in 2019, with 28.7 million international departures. 

MMPRC organized and participated in various activities targeting the South Korean market in 2021 including the Naver Live Campaign with Singapore Airlines, Honeymoon Fair with Palm Tour, and Print Media Advertising Campaigns with Noblesse and Trevie. Similar webinars for South Korea travel trade were also held in 2021, along with outdoor advertising campaigns and South Korea Virtual Roadshow. Ongoing activities for this market include SMM and Digital Ad Campaign. Many activities such as Familiarization trips, joint promotions with airlines, and print media advertising campaigns are in the pipeline for this market for this year. 

As the company responsible for marketing the Maldives as a destination abroad, MMPRC carried out 260 different marketing activities in 22 global markets last year, including fairs, roadshows, familiarization trips, marketing campaigns, webinars, and interviews. The greatest testament to the success of these activities came late last year, as the Maldives secured the title of ‘World’s Leading Destination’ (among several other accolades) at the 2021 World Travel Awards, globally recognised as the hallmark of industry excellence. This is the second consecutive year that the Maldives had successfully earned this prestigious title, a shining testimony of the trust placed in the ‘magic of Maldivian hospitality’ by travelers from all over the globe.  

This year also celebrates an exceptional year to visit the Maldives – the Golden Jubilee celebration of tourism in the Maldives kicked off earlier last year with plans to conduct new and exciting activities throughout the year. MMPRC has planned over 60 in-person events for the year 2022, including 11 fairs, roadshows and events scheduled for just the first quarter.