to maintain destination presence and promote Maldives as a haven for travelers, Visit Maldives concluded a marketing campaign with Skyscanner, a combined marketing campaign with Travelata, Sletat Russia, Squizz and the E-Learning platform Profi+Travel.

The marketing campaign with the Russian online travel agency, Travelata, Sletat Russia and Squizz concluded with outstanding success as the initiative updated over 300 travel agents with the latest destination news regarding the Maldives over a course of 3 webinars. Travelata created a special landing page with information regarding the Maldives and sent newsletters to over 412,329 users. Travelta’s success is evidenced by the total of 6,133 packages sold through the platform during September and November 2020.

Squizz Online Test was the last component of the combined marketing campaign for agents organized by Travelata and Sletat.Ru. The platform tested questions on new safety rules, destination overview, experiences, and activities in the Maldives.

The testing questions were compiled under the themes of the webinars for Sletat Russia. A total of 500 questionnaires were received for the final stage of the quiz, the total number of agents taking part in all activities during the campaign exceeded 2500. The campaign was a great success, and the unique initiative of training travel agents on destination presence will yield significant results in the upcoming future.

In addition, Visit Maldives also concluded the marketing campaign with Profi+Travel’s E-Learning Platform for tour operators in Russia and CIS countries this January. Profi+Travel is a Russian-based company with over 20 years’ experience in conducting similar B2B campaigns.

Profi+Travel creates unique content that helps travel companies increase sales, provide expert analysis of market trends, and organize online fairs and workshops with complex education training on various destinations. The objective of this platform was to encourage tour operators in Russia and CIS Region to increase bookings to the Maldives.

This platform was tailored to explain all details about the Maldives and assist tour operators to choose the best travel option for their customers. Over 9800 travel agents took part in the e-learning. The elearning platform provided information about the Maldives tourism products, showcase tourist attractions, historical sites, culture and more for the tour operators.

At the end of the course, participants who successfully proved their knowledge on the destination were awarded a certificate. The agents who completed the training with the highest number of bookings were awarded holidays sponsored by Furaveri Maldives, Paradise Island Resort and Grand Park Kodhipparu. The winning agents are from LLC, Kazan, London-Paris, Rostov-on-Don, PLANETA TRAVEL, Perm. 218 bookings were generated as a result of this campaign.

Lastly, Visit Maldives concluded a campaign with leading global travel marketplace Skyscanner in January. The three-month campaign targeted Italy, UK, and Russian markets; three key markets prior to the closing and reopening of Maldives’ borders on 15th July 2020. The campaign reached an estimated amount of 9.6 million people in Italy, UK, and Russia markets, which will in turn increase brand awareness and visibility. During the campaign period, Skyscanner observed a huge increase in searches, highlighting underlying demand to travel to Maldives.

Under this campaign, a page was dedicated to Visit Maldives on Skyscanner platforms, targeting the three markets in their own languages. Through this page, content was created to showcase different experiences for tourists and show them that Maldives is unique in its own ways compared to the rest of the world. Destination promotion ads were displayed in various placements throughout Skyscanner’s platforms to capitalise on travel intent to the Maldives and maximise the reach of content. This included Skyscanner’s homepage and the most prominent positions on flight search results views. The ads also displayed messaging in Italian, British English, and Russian languages for easy accessibility.

Due to the challenges brought on by the global pandemic, Visit Maldives had to re-strategize destination promotion campaigns accordingly. These marketing activities were shifted to online and digital platforms to showcase the beauty of Maldives and highlight how the naturally distanced islands make it the safest destination for tourists, increasing tourists’ trust in the country.