Maldives-UAE travel corridor could be agreed in June

Maldives’ Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced at the recent Arabian Travel Market that the two nations were discussing how to establish a travel corridor and that it could be in operation in early June. This travel corridor would allow travellers who received the two doses of any World Health Organisation-approved vaccines to travel between the Maldives and UAE without a PCR test. UAE has established a travel corridor with Greece, Serbia, Seychelles and Bahrain and travellers from the UAE do not have to quarantine on arrival in these countries. UAE is a key tourism source market for the Maldives, with the islands reopening its borders last July. There were over 6,000 visitors recorded from UAE between 15 July 2020 and 31 December 2021. In the period from January to mid-May the islands welcomed an average of 3,142 total arrivals a day. Emirates airlines has also been operating 28 flights a week to the Maldives. Thoyyib Mohamed, managing director of the Maldives Marketing & Public Relations Corporation, has also said that a ‘3V’ initiative, could begin in July, which will enable tourists to visit, vaccinate and vacation in the Indian Ocean archipelago. The entire population of the Maldives should by then have received two doses of a vaccination, Mohamed said.