Maldives to Legalize Weddings: I posted this back in 2007 and today I saw in news that the present administration “has planned to revise the current regulations to allow non-Islamic marriages in the Maldives”.

The same story went around back in 2004 when the previous administration hinted on the same subject to excite the tourism businesses.

I think it is a good thing to allow marriages to take place in tourist facilities targeted for foreign tourists visiting the Maldives. But I beg to differ when one says “allowing tourists to marry in the Maldives would be a major boost to the tourism industry”.

Perhaps, it will be more appropriate to say that allowing tourists to marry in Maldives will create another potential market segment for us to develop in the Maldives. This segment if developed well would work together with our current positioning as the ultimate honeymoon paradise.

My question now is, are we going to amend laws and watch markets shifting on their own or should we have a destination marketing plan to attract this segment to visit Maldives? Is there such an initiative to “scream and spread” this exciting news as a destination rather than waiting for opportunist businesses to take advantage of this? I think these are very basic things to have in plan if we are serious about what we talk.

I hope this talk of amending regulation will come to action soon and tourism marketers could start promoting exciting packages to shift market share from matured destinations such as Cyprus, Carribean islands, the Pacific islands and Sri Lanka.