Sponsors and partners for the upcoming Guesthouses Maldives Conference 2017 have been announced.
At a ceremony held Monday evening at Champa Central Hotel, which has been named the hotel partner of the one-day conference, leading local telecom operator Dhiraagu was announced as the title sponsor. The event will now be officially called Dhiraagu Guesthouses Maldives Conference 2017.
Allied Insurance, Maldives Transport and Contracting Company (MTCC), State Trading Organisation (STO), Maldive Gas and Onestop Singapore signed up as gold partners, while Happy Market, Al Shaali Marine Maldives, M7 Print and Veligaa Hardware were named silver partners.
Local event management company Event Maldives and state-owned airport operator Maldives Airports Company Limited (MACL) signed up as event partners, while Maldives flagship airline Maldivian joined as the airline partner.
Meanwhile, Maldives Insider, Corporate Maldives, Public Service Media (PSM), SunOnline and Avas were named media partners.
Set to be held in capital Male on September 23, the second edition of Guesthouses Maldives Conference will bring together representatives from 200 guesthouses across the Maldives and more than 50 local and international travel agents that are solely focused on the budget travel market. Representatives of leading online travel agents such as Expedia and Booking.com will also participate in the conference.
Maldives, known world over for its upmarket tourism industry, has resorts in the hundreds spread across the archipelago. The industry has in recent years expanded to introduce more affordable segments, including guesthouses and liveaboards. Some 330 guesthouses have started operations over the past five years as the number of travellers that choose to stay in guesthouses rise.
The annual Guesthouses Maldives Conference, endorsed by central bank Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA), Association of Travel Agents (ATA) Maldives and Guesthouses Association of Maldives, is aimed at bringing together owners and key stakeholders from the guesthouses and travel industry to discuss and share ideas on the challenges as well as the opportunities in the industry. Through the invitation-only conference, the organisers target to find ways to bring in 500,000 tourists to guesthouses across the Maldives by the year 2020.
The first edition of the conference, held in Male in September 2016, was attended by over 160 guesthouse operators, local and international travel agents, tour operators, online travel agents (OTAs), airlines, government agencies and business leaders.