Its Christmas and winter for most European countries and coincidentally it happens to be the 'jam-packed' peak season for Maldivian tourism.
Velana International Airport (VIA) has shown visible signs of booming holidaymakers flocking to taste the salt and bath under the sun in Maldives.
"... this is not even close to being increased tourist numbers. It will go considerably higher in the next few days. The future bookings show significant increase in tourist visits," one of the airport representatives of a famous resort brand spoke to Avas Online.
Another representative noted the drastic increase of holidaymakers flocking to Maldives compared to last year's numbers.
So far a total of 1.2 million holidaymakers had arrived in Maldives in 2017, however the figure is expected to rise to 1.3 million before the year ends as per Tourism Ministry.
Tourism Ministry has released statistics showing the tourist count originating from European travelers had reached 572,021 by the end of November 2017. This is a 45.9% increase against last year's 513,891 visitors during the same time-frame.
Average stay duration of tourists in Maldives had floated between 5.7 to 6.5 days, while during the month of November the average had been at 6.3 days, while it had been 6.2 on average last year.
Top visitor countries from the European continent included Russia, UK, France and Germany.
The ignition of peak season on Maldives tourism means less space to move around freely at VIA since the terminal has seemingly become less sufficient to accommodate the booming number of vacationers.
Thanks to a new government initiative to develop the international airport, it is expected that once completed the renovated airport would accommodate roughly 7 million visitors simultaneously at the airport.
