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Maldives is the world’s first country to offer a traveler loyalty program
Now there is an impressive extension to ‘regular’ traveler loyalty programs as issued by airlines, hotels and travel organizations: The Maldives are the first country in the world to launch its own hospitality loyalty program.
It’s called the ‘Maldives Border Miles’ program and it will have 3 tiers: Aida (Bronze), Antara (Silver) and Abaarana (Gold), all names coming from Divehi, the Maldives’ main language.
Maldives Immigration announced this on their Twitter account on September 28 (World Tourism Day) accompanied with a short video that explains the main elements of the program:
“Maldives Border Miles is a three-tiered loyalty program for tourists. Tourists will earn points based on the number of visits (border crossings) and duration of stay. Additional points will be awarded for visits to celebrate special occasions and will give access to exclusive benefits.”
We see an emerging trend in which tourism agencies (national and regional) want to improve on their data driven marketing strategies and find a traveler loyalty program to be of very good use: it’s cheaper than advertising while it provides the strategic advantage of become owner of the data themselves, rather than ‘Big Tech’. Repeat visitors can be pro-actively informed about changes in travel circumstances (important for example in relation to Covid-19, natural disasters or other news), which guarantees a more constant flow of visitors.
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