Maldives was showcased colorfully at Chinas number one B2B Fair, China Outbound Travel & Tourism
Market 2018 (COTTM) in Beijing, China. It entered its 15th consecutive year, COTTM is widely
recognized as the industrys most important platform and remains the only business-to-business
event that focuses solely on the growing outbound tourism market in China. While China is the main
contributing market the Maldives tourism industry, the Maldives presence will be showcased at
COTTM with 20 participants from 10 companies at a 102sqm stand from 15-17 April 2019.
During the three-day exhibition, the Maldivian Ambassador to China, Hon. Mohamed Faisal, represented the Maldives delegation along with other government officials from the Maldives Embassy
based in China and the Maldives Marketing & Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC) and representatives from
the Maldivian tourism industry. The delegation met with travel industry professionals and
discuss potential future collaborations to further promote Maldives in China.
This year, various activities were held at the Maldives stand for the visitors to experience a bit of the
Sunny side of life. These included calligraphy, where names of visitors attending the stand are
written in Maldivian language (Dhivehi) unique to the Maldives. Maldivian traditional snacks were displayed at the stand where visitors got to taste authentic Maldivian snacks, this was one of the most
attractive aspects of the Maldives stand for the visitors. Visitors were also able to experience underwater
beauty of Maldives through a virtual reality headset. Additionally visitors posed for pictures near
the photo booth placed at the stand, using frame board and post it on social media to win a
surprise gift.
In 2018, the Maldives welcomed 283,116 visitors from China, which represented 19.1% of total
visitor arrivals to the country during the year. China has been the biggest source market for the
Maldives for the past 9 years and will continue to play an important role in the Maldives travel
industry. Therefore COTTM was the perfect platform to display Maldives vacation products to a prime
audience.