Saudi budget-carrier flynas has announced plans to launch flights to 10 new destinations and routes in Asia and Europe during the 2023 summer season, including the Maldives.

It includes four new destinations and six new routes.

FOUR NEW DESTINATIONS:

Maldives
Yerevan, Armenia
Antalya, Turkey
Tivat, Montenegro
SIX NEW ROUTES:

Four routes from Dammam to Salalah in Oman,
Istanbul and Trabzon, Turkey
Tirana, Albania
Flynas said it will also operate two more routes from Jeddah to Salalah and the Turkish city of Bodrum.

The airline will operate to 20 destinations as part of its summer 2023 schedule.

Bander Almohanna, CEO of flynas, said that the new destinations and routes of the airline reflect the company’s commitment to its growth and expansion strategy.

He said that the airline aims to be the best low-cost airline in the Middle East and one of the top 10 airlines of its category worldwide.

“This approach is in line with the objectives of the Saudi Vision 2030 and the civil aviation strategy to reach 330 million passengers, 250 international destinations, and 100m tourists annually,” said Almohanna

Flynas had posted a record growth in performance and operations during 2022, with an increase of 91 percent in the number of passengers to 8.7 million passengers, a surge of 45 percent in the number of flights to 66 thousand flights, and a 46 percent seat capacity growth.

Source(s): sun.mv

COLOMBO, March 2 (Xinhua) — Sri Lanka’s tourism authority held a ceremony on Wednesday night at the country’s main Bandaranaike International Airport to welcome the first batch of Chinese tour groups in three years.

Sri Lankan Tourism Minister Harin Fernando said at the airport that he was happy to receive the first tour groups from China and the South Asian country is expecting more Chinese tourists to come.

Featured with beautiful scenery and friendly people, Sri Lanka is expected to receive more Chinese tourists, which is an important part of people-to-people exchanges between the two countries, said Chinese Ambassador Qi Zhenhong.

Priantha Fernando, chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, said earlier that the SriLankan Airlines would operate nine flights a week starting from April to destinations in China, and it would facilitate travel between the two countries.

Tourism, one of Sri Lanka’s leading foreign exchange earners, has suffered a setback due to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic and political crises in the island country.

Sri Lanka aims to attract around 1.5 million tourists in 2023 and 3 million in 2024.

Source(s): Xinhua

ourist arrivals to the Maldives so far this year have exceeded 300,000.

Statistics publicized by the Tourism Ministry show that Maldives recorded 308,367 tourist arrivals in total as of last Tuesday. February 21st – marking an increase of 27.6 percent compared to the same period last year. In 2022, Maldives recorded 241,750 tourist arrivals as of February 21st.

The highest number of tourist arrivals has been recorded from Russia; 39,262.

Second highest number of tourist arrivals has been recorded from India at 33,561. The UK and Italy follow in third and fourth with 28,876 and 28,426 arrivals respectively.

Statistics show that tourism in the Maldives has returned to pre-pandemic levels as of present. In 2019, Maldives recorded 1.7 million tourist arrivals. The archipelago saw 1.68 million tourist arrivals in 2022 – exceeding the target of 1.6 million tourist arrivals set for the year by the government.

The government has expressed high expectations for the tourism sector this year. President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, in his presidential address at the inaugural sitting of the parliament for the year, said the government targets to achieve 1.8 million tourist arrivals this year.

Source(s): sun.mv