India Travel Boycott Of Maldives Grows Amid Modi ‘Clown’ Row
One of India’s biggest online travel platforms halted bookings to the Maldives, amid an increasingly fraught diplomatic spat that began when officials in the tourism-dependent island nation derided Indian leader Narendra Modi on social media.
(Bloomberg) -- One of India’s biggest online travel platforms halted bookings to the Maldives, amid an increasingly fraught diplomatic spat that began when officials in the tourism-dependent island nation derided Indian leader Narendra Modi on social media.
“Our company is entirely homegrown and made in India,” Prashant Pitti, co-founder of EaseMyTrip, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “We have decided that we will not accept any bookings for Maldives.”
With Indians one of the biggest groups of visitors to the Maldives, the spat threatens a key sector of the economy in the strategically-important archipelago of more than 500,000 people that sits west of Sri Lanka.
Subhash Goyal, the founder and chairman of STIC Travel Group — one of India’s biggest tourism groups — told Bloomberg News that while there haven’t been a wave of cancellations by Indians set to go on expensive vacations in the Maldives, “future bookings will definitely be impacted” by the row. He also urged tour operators and airlines to boycott travel to the Maldives.
The fallout comes on the back of growing tensions between India and the Maldives since a new president, Mohamed Muizzu, came to power last September. He wants India to remove its troops from the island nation and has sought to build closer ties with China. Muizzu is currently on a five-day visit to China, where he’s expected to meet President Xi Jinping.
Both India and China have invested heavily in upgrading the Maldives’ infrastructure and extending loans to its government.
‘A Clown’
The row was triggered after Modi made a visit to Lakshadweep, an Indian archipelago of 36 islands that lies north of the Maldives, to promote domestic tourism.
A deputy minister in the Maldives, a Muslim-majority nation, posted on the social media platform X about Modi’s visit, calling him a “clown” and a “puppet of Israel,” in an apparent reference to India’s closer ties to Israel. The post appears to have been later deleted and was condemned by the Maldives Association of Tourism Industry.
“India is one of our closest neighbors and allies,” the group said in a statement. “India has also been a consistent and significant contributor to the tourism industry of the Maldives.”
The deputy minister and two other government officials were suspended on Sunday for their social media posts, according to Press Trust of India.
New Delhi responded to the comments from the Maldives officials by lodging a protest with the Maldives government, according to an Indian government official, who asked not to be identified in order to discuss details of the talks.
India also summoned the Maldivian envoy on Monday to convey that the posts by Muizzu’s ministers were unacceptable, the person said.
The original image of Modi walking on a Lakshadweep beach has since sparked a local social media frenzy to promote the Indian territory as a tourism alternative to the Maldives.
Another travel booking platform, MakeMyTrip, said it had seen a 3,400% rise in on-platform searches for Lakshadweep since Modi’s visit and would launch a new “Beaches of India” campaign for local travelers.
Pitti of EaseMyTrip wrote on X that he wanted Lakshadweep to become an international destination. At the same time, it will likely take a while for the area to compete with the Maldives.
The Indian islands so far lack a lot of the 5-star hospitality that the Maldives offers and may take about a year to really develop as a destination, said Goyal, who added that the “connectivity is not there.”
While Maldives scores on infrastructure and marketing, Indian hotel brands can step up to boost local beach destinations, according to a Jan. 7 post on X by Radhika Gupta, chief executive officer at Edelweiss Asset Management Ltd.
“I am obsessed with the potential of a Indian tourism and have always wondered why we have to pay so much to go Maldives when we have Lakshadweep and Andaman,” she wrote in the post.
--With assistance from Nasreen Seria, Debjit Chakraborty and Sudhi Ranjan Sen.
(Updates with details on India’s response to ministers’ remarks.)
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