This Country Wants You to Visit It So Badly, It’ll Give You a Covid Vaccine
18 Apr 202114:58 PM
This Country Wants You to Visit It So Badly, It’ll Give You a Covid Vaccine

This article was written by Laura Begley Bloom in Forbes:

We’ve been hearing a lot about vaccine passports and destinations getting creative with ways to lure travelers—like offering to subsidize your travel costs on a trip to Malta this summer. But a glamorous group of islands in the Indian Ocean just announced an idea we can get onboard with: The Maldives are planning to give travelers a Covid-19 vaccination when they arrive on vacation.

This new initiative, which the country’s tourism minister Abdulla Mausoom announced on CNBC, is just one part of three-pronged attempt to revive the country’s economy. Mausoom calls it a “3V” strategy—“visit, vaccinate and vacation.” The date when it will go into effect hasn’t been announced yet.

The idea comes on the heels of another creative concept that the Maldives cooked up in the past year: the world’s first-ever destination loyalty program. Called Maldives Border Miles, it’s like an airline frequent flier program, with travelers earning points based on the number of visits and the duration of their stay. Visitors can also earn additional points for celebrating special occasions in the Maldives.

Like many other destinations that depend on tourism, the Maldives has been hard hit during the pandemic. Tourism accounts for about 28% of the economy. Typically, upwards of 1.7 million visitors come to the Maldives every year. In 2020, the archipelago saw less than a third of that number, with 555,494 foreigners vacationing in these idyllic islands—though that was actually considered a success story.

Since July 2020, the Maldives has allowed travelers from any country to visit—and it is trying to make it easier and easier. On April 16, the country announced that it will allow people who are fully vaccinated to enter, restriction-free, two weeks after their second dose. Unvaccinated foreign visitors must have a negative PCR test prior to departure. Visitors also have to download a national contact tracing app and use it during their journey.

The CDC has the country at a level 4 for a very-high level of Covid, though numbers have been decreasing in this island nation, with 90 new infections reported on average each day. According to Reuters, about 28.6% of the country’s 500,000 residents are fully vaccinated, and Mausoom says that 90% of its front-line tourism workers have been vaccinated.