I have said this before and now we all know that the world is in crisis and that people are in panic. Tourism Authorities and Hospitality Business are worried as arrivals are showing negative growth and forecasts becoming difficult due to short leads. Hospitality experts are spending sleepless nights thinking and forecasting the Outlook for 2009 and trends that will follow the current situation.

In September 2008, visitor arrivals to Singapore registered a decline of 4.1% compared to same time last year. The recent incidents in our region (Thailand and India in particular) is not helping but adding more panic to the minds of already concerned travelers. Such unfortunate incidents, if not resolved carefully, could lead to a travel-ban or slowly discourage tourist traffic to our part of the world.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has released its report for international air traffic for October and the numbers are not good. IATA’s report shows that international passenger traffic declined by 1.3 percent compared to the same month in the previous year.

Given all this, I still feel confident in the Tourism Industry of Maldives for 2009 and for a longtime to come. I believe that people will still take their holidays and will travel. But we will witness customers making holiday decisions very late, specially in first quarter of 2009. Also the average spend of the customers will drop and full board or all inclusive packages will tend to be more attractive. In 2009, customers will think twice before making a purchase decision, they will want to know how much they have to spend or how much they could afford to spend during holiday. In 2009, customers will seek more value in their holiday.

So, don’t just discount your room rates to drive more business without looking at your bottom-line. Instead be creative and offer add-values that will translate to “low-cost-high-impact” offerings. Keep selling and continue to do a variety of value-add promotions to your repeater database, own website and to other distribution channels. Be proactive and sell, don’t wait for your distributors to call and talk you into their business strategies.

Success in 2009 means Proactive Selling!