A similar situation arose in the Maldives in early 2024 when Mohamed Muizzu, the current president of the Maldives and then presidential candidate, showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan "India OUT" as the chorus of "Boycott Turkey" and "Boycott Azerbaijan" grew among the two nations that support Pakistan and Pakistan's position on Kashmir. Additionally, Turkey provided arms to Pakistan.
The trend was strong, with a few online travel agencies announcing that they had stopped accepting bookings to Maldives, similar to the current stance by Cox & Kings and Ixigo to stop bookings to Turkey. Within weeks of this online outrage, the Prime Minister visited Lakshadweep, which became a new go-to destination thanks to investments from numerous hotel chains and the launch of additional airline flights.
After an additional year, it turns out that "Boycott Maldives" has had an effect: the number of Indian nationals visiting the Maldives in 2024 decreased by a staggering 37% over 2023. According to data released by the Ministry of Tourism, Maldives, only 1,30,805 Indians will travel to the Maldives in 2024, compared to 2,09,193 Indians who will travel there in 2023. In the first quarter of 2025, the traffic from India has further shrunk by 7.9% over the same period in 2024. This comes amidst multiple new hotels being launched in Maldives over the last few years and overall tourism growing by 20% in 2024 for the island country. India now drops to the sixth largest source market for Maldives, with China, Russia and the United Kingdom being the top three. The number of Chinese tourists visiting the Maldives increased by 40% in 2024, reaching 2,63,340. In 2019, the last full year before COVID, India was the second largest source market, while China was the top market.
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