India halts airline ticket sales and restricts tourist flow to neighboring Maldives amid conflict over troop withdrawal

One of India's largest travel booking services, EaseMyTrip, has suspended the sale of airline tickets and tours to the Maldives due to a conflict between the governments of the countries. This was reported by UNN with reference to Bloomberg.

Details

One of India's largest online travel platforms, EaseMyTrip, has decided to suspend airline bookings to the Maldives as part of its boycott campaign following the Maldivian government's offensive remarks against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to Prashant Pitti, the service's co-deputy and CEO, sales of travel to the Maldives have been suspended "indefinitely.

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In solidarity with India, the company launched a domestic tourism promotion, urging Indians to travel within their own country and replace the Maldives with the neighboring Lakshadweep Islands off the Indian coast.

As Indians are one of the largest groups of visitors to the Maldives, this trend threatens a key sector of the economy of the strategically important archipelago with a population of over 500,000 people located west of Sri Lanka.

Context

The conflict between India and the Maldives continues as the new Maldivian government has asked India to withdraw its troops from the archipelago. This appeal was the initiative of the new President of the Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu, who was elected in September last year and is pursuing a course of rapprochement with China.

Recently, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted a photo of himself in a deck chair on the beach of one of the islands of the Lakshadweep archipelago on social networking site X. Three members of the Maldivian government posted negative comments in connection with this post, saying that it promoted the Indian islands as a vacation destination for Indians to the detriment of the Maldives.