“Most people book on weekends and so ideally the decline seems to be more significant.” [bookings] should have gone up,” he told CNBC Travel.
Travel bookings to the Maldives collapsed after a diplomatic row erupted last week a series of posts appeared on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's account.
The posts showed him snorkeling, sitting by the water and meeting people in Lakshadweep, in what some saw as a veiled attempt to keep visitors away from the island nation.
Amid reports that thousands of Indian travelers have canceled trips to the Maldives, popular Indian travel booking website EaseMyTrip made the announcement suspends flight bookings from India to the Maldives.
According to The India Express, some travel agents in India say they are canceling bookings for the Maldives, deleting their websites of photos and recommending travelers go to India's Lakshadweep archipelago, the Andaman Islands, the Nicobar Islands or Sri Lanka instead.
The dispute has shone a global spotlight on little-known Lakshadweep, which, like the Maldives, is a picturesque chain of sandy atolls, coral reefs and crystal-clear waters.
However, the Maldives, about 340 miles south, is India's preferred playground. In 2023, more than one in 10 arrivals came from India, making it the country's largest source market, followed by Russia and China, according to Maldives tourism statistics.
But more British travelers – and almost twice as many Italians – visited the Maldives in the first week of January, compared with those from India, which fell to fourth place in visitor arrivals.
In the absence of Chinese international travelers, Indians emerged as the region's travel engine in 2023 and are expected to be the fourth largest travel spender globally by 2030.
If calls to #BoycottMaldives continue, millions could be at stake.
The exact losses to the Maldives are difficult to estimate, Chaturvedi said, but “India attracted $380 million worth of tourism to the Maldives last year, which is significant.”
Some blamed Modi's posts for triggering the debacle, although they did not mention the Maldives, which has lost popularity in India following the election of Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu in 2023.
During the election campaign, Muizzu campaigned for an “India out” policy – in contrast to the “India First” policy of the Maldivian Democratic Party. He also broke a longstanding tradition by choosing China for his first official state visit this week, in what is widely seen as a snub to India.
India's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.
But others say Maldives supporters bristling at online comparisons to Lakshadweep sparked the row with negative comments about India's ability to compete with its resorts and hospitality.
Maldivian deputy ministers Malsha Shareef, Mariyam Shiuna and Abdulla Mahzoom Majid hurled various insults at Modi, calling him a “clown”, “terrorist” and “puppet of Israel”, according to Portal.
Maldives Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer tried to distance the country from the commentswrote on
According to the news outlet, the three officers were suspended over the weekend because of their social media posts.
But the excitement has only increased since then, underscoring the travel industry's exposure to local geopolitical issues as well as the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Whether Indian travelers will postpone their trips to Lakshadweep is difficult to say, Chaturvedi said.
“We cannot pursue this because there are not enough operations,” he said. According to TripAdvisor, there are just 13 hotels on the archipelago.
Given the capriciousness of the outrage on social media, Chaturvedi said he expects the boycott to “pass quickly.”
But a nationwide call to travel domestically will have much greater staying power, he said. Trending hashtags like #ExploreIndianIslands are being pushed online by everyday travelers to Bollywood stars like Akshay Kumar.
Chaturvedi said calls for travel within India “will continue for a longer period of time – this is a big agenda of the government.”
An agenda that probably received a greater push than the people behind Modi's serene seaside photographs could have ever imagined.