At the TTM Travel Summit 2021 yesterday, the first speaker of the day was Mr. Thoyyib Mohamed, the CEO and Managing Director of Maldives Marketing and PR Corporation (MMPRC). During his presentation, Mr. Thoyyib touched on a number of key topics, including sustaining recovery, innovation, culture and broadening horizons.
“We have now come to understand, that disruptions caused by waves of infections in various regions will continue for at least the near future,” he stated. “This is very real. Even as we speak, the new South African variant, Omicron is causing new border closures. Therefore, it is essential that we maximize our efforts to vaccinate all eligible people in our workforce and in our families. We must ensure all safety protocols are strengthened and executed. We must make sure that we keep our house in order. We must be vigilant and maintain the highest safety standards, so that we can sustain the excellent recovery we have seen.”
Mr. Thoyyib further emphasized the importance of technology in overcoming these challenges. “We have to embrace technology. We must be on the lookout for technologies suitable for our unique tourism product. If you look back, our industry has thrived, throughout the last 50 years, with innovative products and several firsts, such as water villas and underwater restaurants and many new innovative concepts. As marketeers we ride on these unique concepts. Using these, we shape our marketing, to impress and attract visitors.”
He also detailed the strong global marketing infrastructure built by MMPRC with effective tools for communications. “Be it new experiences, new product offerings, we now have the tools to communicate to these markets effectively. Many of your products and new offerings have been featured on these platforms. Furthermore, your products can also get invaluable exposure through articles featured on the multiple travel publications from which teams visit us, on our familiarization trips, of which we have conducted 30, even during this year alone. From January to October we have published over 4000 articles, with a reach of billions, and a media value of over 135 million US dollars.”
The TTM Travel Summit 2021 was the opening event of TTM Maldives 2021, the largest and leading travel fair in the Maldives.
