Tourism, Maldives vs. Lanka:

They converted disadvantage into advantage

Text and pix by Rajpal Abeynayake in the Maldives

Maldives records 600,000 tourists per year. Sri Lanka, in a good year, has 50,000.
True, Sri Lanka is coming out of a war that was bad for tourism.
Even so, there is an abysmal disparity in these figures, considering that Sri Lanka has game reserves, archeological sites, and panoramic hill country views among other attractions including cultural attractions on offer.
Maldives had beaches only.
But a tour of the Maldives convinces me why the Maldivians are able to do this. True, Maldives has exquisite picture post-card beaches, and amazingly beautiful shallow aquamarine waters in the 1,090 resort islands that dot its 26 atolls.
These exquisitely scenic locations are a unique draw card.
But, it’s easy to take these picture perfect locations for granted.
And my guess is that if we had these locations in this country, we would have typically taken them for granted.
But not so in the Maldives, where tourism is taken very seriously.
The resort islands are tourist havens.

Unspoiled, un-littered beaches

There is no intrusion allowed: no pestering touts and sellers of handicrafts and bric-a-brac.
But most importantly, there are miles and miles of totally unspoiled, un-littered beaches.
But it’s not as if these beaches brought in tourism to this tiny atoll nation as if it was manna from heaven.
It was a lot of very hard work from when it all began.
I doubt this kind of hard work will ever be put into tourism in Sri Lanka, which is why we have 50,000 tourists a year as opposed to Maldives which has 600,000.
Consider this:
In the early 1970s the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) concluded the Maldives had absolutely no potential as a tourist destination! The obstacles? The UNDP said there was no airport, no infrastructure, no local food supplies (except fish), no fresh water supply, it was in a remote location and the population was 100% Muslim. According to the UN, the future of tourism looked altogether bleak.
However, an Italian tour operator saw the tourism potential in the Maldives, and established the first resort island in the early 70s.
Since then, it has been a great deal of hard dedicated work which brought Maldives to where it is today — a top tourism destination, in the class of Thailand, for instance.
One obvious reason for this happy tourism boom in the resort islands, is the respect for environment.

Environmental restrictions

In the Maldives, early environmental restrictions coupled with persistent environmental imperatives - - the ecological balance in the 26 atolls that are under threat of going underwater is so delicate —- have ensured that the inhabitants of these islands respect the need to keep the beaches clean and habitable.
So you find no plastic bottles, discarded polythene or sewage on the beaches in the Maldives.
It is also correct that all of the islands that are resorts are exclusive resort islands, and do not have a population of native inhabitants. It works the other way too: islands that are inhabited by the locals, are essentially out of bounds for tourists.
No matter how it works, the fact of the matter is that these islanders respect the environment and consider the habitat as sacred.
There is no significant pollution either in the resorts or the capital city of Male.
Consider also the fact that building up tourism in these atolls was ten times harder than in a country such as ours.
There is no question of resort owners plugging into national electricity grids.
There is no such thing as a national grid in these far flung islands, period.
Therefore, each resort owner has to generate his own electricity supply, ensure his own stocks and supplies of food — and essentially maintain self sufficient, self-contained island habitats.
But the resort owners did exactly that, as the tourism Master Plan for the Maldives was ingenious.
Only one resort was allowed in one island. Resorts were therefore self-contained units which encouraged tourism in isolation.
It is true that these conditions cannot and should not be replicated in this country.
But the fact is that the same ruthlessly efficient attitude to tourism does not exist in Sri Lanka.
There are few restrictive laws to curb environmental desecration - - and the few laws that are in place are observed in the breach.
There is no proper incentive for tourism investors —- and the state has done nothing in terms of apprehending those guilty of polluting the beaches. In other words, we have so much to learn from these rustic islanders.