CIIC: Let’s move to the next part-the most interesting part- the Maldives tourism industry as you’ve just mentioned. For most of ordinary Chinese people, Maldives is one of the dreamy places for their traveling. There is a Hong Kong cartoon called, it’s also very eager to go to Maldives, spending his vocation. We want you Mr. Ambassador to introduce the Maldives’ tour attractions and the latest travel situation in your country.
M: Just as you have said: Maldives is the sunny side of life, to a large extent, it’s the accurate description of our country. We have an industry that is sought after by many nationalities, not only Europeans and the Asian market is becoming very important to us. The Chinese travelers in Maldives have significantly increased for the last four or five years. Last year, about 60000 Chinese traveling to Maldives. Although it’s not large number, but it’s relatively large for Maldives. Now China occupies the second position in Asian area, if you look at the total tourist numbers. It’s true that Maldives has a lot to offer in the holiday to the tourists, one is unspoiled natural beaches in this world, we have maintained the beauties with lots of work and lots of effort both from the public and the private sectors jointly. We have very strict guidelines followed by everybody in the tourist industry that functions to help sustain the natural attracts of Maldives. And this is appreciated by all the tourists come to Maldives. Therefore we are very happy that the tourism is growing, most recently, we have started to expand the tourism industry throughout the whole country. We would be able to entertain; we would be able to provide more rooms for the Chinese people to travel. As it is, we don’t have sufficient rooms to all the people who want to come to the Maldives. Our hotels are very expensive, but things would change when more come up in the next two or three years.
CIIC: we have collected more detailed questions from people who want to the Maldives. If our Chinese people want to your country, how could we get the visa?
M: We have a very liberal policy for visas. In fact, no people need visa to go to Maldives, we give people Tourist Permit to stay in Maldives for 30 days to all nationalities. All they need is to leave their certificates to the hotel and they can travel，quite simple. If you look at air travel, China Eastern flies between Shanghai and Maldives twice a week; this is one option, the other one is fly through Singapore, or through Sri Lank islands to Maldives, they are all very good connections, but we still like more connections. We are working with Hong Kong CR authorities to have flights from Hong Kong to Maldives. So people would find more convenient to travel. As it is now, it takes a bit more time than people prefer, the time spent in Maldives is less, so we are trying to make it more convenient for people to travel, and we hope this would work out for us.