Maldives Marketing & Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC/Visit Maldives) has launched a social media marketing campaign for the Chinese market on Weibo and WeChat for the Chinese market. The campaign is held from March-May 2023. This is a significant campaign, particularly after the reopening of borders, given the importance of social media platforms to the Chinese market.

The social media campaign will inspire Chinese travellers to choose the Maldives as their destination of choice following the reopening of Chinese borders for leisure travel. Having conducted similarcampaignsinChinaduringthelockdownphaseinthepastfewyears,the campaign has proven to maintain destination visibility and strengthen market presence.

This campaign includes 45 original posts and 12 original articles on the Visit Maldives accounts for Weibo and WeChat promoting the products, experiences, and segments of the Maldives. A campaign will also be conducted to give away a free holiday to the Maldives to lucky winners. The campaign is estimated to reach 1.4 million users.

WeChat and Weibo are the largest and second largest social media platforms with 1.17 billion monthly active users and 530 million monthly active users respectively. WeChat and Weibo dominate the social media landscape in China and these applications are the go-to platform for the Chinese market. The arrival of the first Chinese flight to the Maldives was a trending topic on Weibo, therefore, this campaign provided the opportunity to further leverage the trend on travelling to the Maldives. MMPRC has conducted 17 similar WeChat and Weibo campaigns targeted at the Chinese market in the past to great success.

The Chinese market consistently topped the arrival charts to the Maldives prior to 2020, when China closed for approximately three years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019,

China was the top source market with 284,029 arrivals (16.7%). The arrival figure fell dramatically during the pandemic as Chinese borders were closed for international leisure travel. However, since the arrival of the first direct flight from China on 18th January 2023, China has swiftly risen to the 06th top source market spot, with 30,353 arrivals (4.4% market share) as of 29th April 2023.

Marketing activities planned for 2023 include E-learning campaigns, outdoor campaigns, joint-promotion campaigns, familiarisation trips, social media campaigns and participating in fairs such as ITB China.