Maldives tourism sector employment

Maldives has been positioned as one of the luxurious tourist destinations in the world, with many international brands operating resorts targeting high-end, high-net worth tourists. Brands like ‘Hilton’, ‘Waldorf Astoria’, ‘Four Seasons’, ‘Jumeira’, and ‘Conrad’, has presence in the country, and attract Premier League players, hollywood and bollywood stars; not to mention, the wealthy princes from the middle east.

As per the 2019 tax statistics, Maldives tourism sector generated about $2.7 billion revenue during the year. With more than 150 island resorts under operation, a significant percentage of the tourism earnings flows out the country. While tourism is the main export earner, and hence the main foreign exchange earner; true benefits of the sector is not efficiently realized by the country.

First of all, almost half of the resorts in the country are either owned or operated by foreign firms. The Maldives tourism product is based on the ‘one-island-one-resort’ concept; whereby the government leases an island for long term (usually 50 years, that can be extended to 99 years), and sometimes the head lessee sub-leases the island to a third party. Thus, many Maldivian head lease holders opted to sublease their islands, and the foreign investors end up owning the lease and the operating the island. Some even choose to sell their head lease to a foreign party.

Naturally, most of these international brands choose to bring their own team for the operation of the resorts; thanks to the long time government policy of not bothering to invest on human resource requirements for the sector. Despite Maldives being one of the top tourist destinations with so many world-class resort brands, the country does not have a world-class hotel school.

As per the recent report published by the National Statistics Bureau, the tourism sector (resorts) employ a total 44,954 as at 2019. Out of this only 21,332 (47%) are locals, while 23,622 are expatriates. The tourism sector being a highly labor-intensive industry, majority of the staff are in the skilled professionals category, with reasonable pay. Further, most staff earn service charge, and tips, in addition to the official basic pay and the allowances.

Most of the staff is employed in the F&B Departments, (29%), while house-keeping employs about 18% on average. Administrative staff account for 14%. Transport and other departments have a share of 30%. Furthermore, as per the data in the said report, 67% of the Maldives resorts are five-star properties, and 30% four-star resorts. With an average of 303 staff in five start resorts, we are looking at an estimated 15,000 or a higher number of expatriate staff in these expensive resorts; with relatively better pay compared to most other industries.

With proper planning, and long term vision, the benefits of the tourism sector could further trickle-down, and youth unemployment better addressed, if there were better efforts to train and encourage locals to work in the tourism sector. So that educated Maldivian professionals could take senior positions at the resorts. This could reduce the burden on the government to employ them in the public sector, with jobs that are  with lower pay, and under-utilization of their skills. This way, we could retain income from tourism further within the economy. More than $100 million per year is estimated to flow out as remittances from the expatriate employees working in the tourism sector (own estimates). Added this, remittances from workers from other sectors, there would be a total estimated outflow exceeding $150 million every year.