India Travel Boycott of Maldives Grows Amid Modi ‘Clown’ Row
- Deputy ministers in archipelago ridiculed Modi on social media
- Maldives economy largely dependent on tourism, flights
With Indians the biggest group of visitors to the Maldives, the spat threatens a key sector of the economy in the strategically-important archipelago of more than 500,000 people that sits west of Sri Lanka.
Photographer: Shubham Koul/Getty Images
This article is for subscribers only.
One of India’s biggest online travel platforms halted bookings to the Maldives, amid an increasingly fraught diplomatic spat that began when officials in the tourism-dependent island nation derided Indian leader Narendra Modi on social media.
“Our company is entirely homegrown and made in India,” Prashant Pitti, co-founder of EaseMyTrip, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “We have decided that we will not accept any bookings for Maldives.”