Insight: The Maldives is here

Paulo Barbosa

Reading a feature story about the rising number of Chinese tourists in the Maldives (a group of atolls in the Indian Ocean, south-southwest of India) reminded me of the song “Haiti” and its curious refrain: “O Haiti é aqui/O Haiti não é aqui” (Portuguese original, translatable into English as “Haiti is here/Haiti is not here”).
Created by the prodigious Brazilian musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil for their album Tropicália 2 (1993), it was intended to show that racism, poverty, indiscriminate violence and high crime rates were common features to the Caribbean nation island and to Brazil. So, in a way, Haiti was just around the corner from Brazil, or at least from some parts of it.
Bringing the metaphor closer to home, I would say that the Maldives is here. According to the Maldives Ministry of Tourism, 400,000-plus Chinese are expected to visit the tiny country (298 square kilometers, ten times the size of Macau) this year. In 2014 around 363,000 Chinese visited the Maldives, 9.7 per cent more than in 2013 and 24 times more than a decade earlier. Chinese tourists benefit from direct flights and free visas on arrival.
As a result, the nation’s tourism industry is struggling to cater to Chinese customers who, according to a South China Morning Post report, “have developed a reputation as unusual tourists, avoiding the sun and spending little during their stays.”
American entrepreneur George Weinmann pointed out to the SCMP that he predicts many more Chinese visitors to the Maldives in the coming years. “The Maldives now has 1.2 million tourists in total. Imagine when we will have 1.2 million Chinese coming here [per year],” he said. “The question then will be how to deal with those numbers.”
A similar set of questions applies to Macau: How do we deal with the rising number of visitors while maintaining the quality of their experience? How to avoid making residents feel like their city is being hijacked during certain festive seasons? And how do we prevent Macau from losing its special character, recognized by UNESCO as world heritage?
The Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) predicts a five percent growth in the number of tourists visiting town during Chinese New Year. The same percentage growth was announced for 2015, following the 31.5 million visitors in 2014.
The strategy to deal with the growth of tourists seems to be off the cuff, with little evidence of a long term plan.
In a recent conference to review the tourism sector’s performance and announce plans for this year, MGTO said that it will be launching four new walking tour routes shortly before CNY, revamping the Tourism Activities Centre, and developing other tourism facilities. Does anyone believe that any of these measures will reduce the pressure caused by excessive numbers of visitors?
The authorities sure don’t. The police, cooperating with MGTO, announced “crowd management” measures in the central area during CNY, perhaps scared by the fatal stampede that occurred in Shanghai shortly before the New Year’s countdown.
It´s good that the MGTO director Helena de Senna Fernandes has announced that a master plan for tourism development will be commissioned to a private institution following a public tender (at least 10 local and overseas companies have purchased the bidding document), but I would like to see the authorities taking concrete steps to control the flow of tourists. Macau is much smaller than the Maldives and has around thirty times more visitors. There’s a physical limit for everything. Authorities (the question largely surpasses MGTO’s powers to answer) should be concerned with quality, instead of numbers.
Going back to the song “Haiti”, I paraphrase: “Think of the Maldives. Pray for the Maldives. The Maldives is here.”