Do you believe that the Addendum to the Tourism Act with the mandatory service charge aimed at supporting the tourism industry employees will affect the industry in increasing the number of visitors? How will this bring a positive impact in terms of service and job satisfaction?

PUBLISHED March 10, 2021

Amjad Thaufeeg
Director of Sales
Nautilus Maldives
This will not affect the arrival numbers. It will positively improve employee satisfaction and motivation. In return, it will help with the overall growth of revenue.
I don’t believe that it will increase the arrivals. Neither will it have a significant impact on service or job satisfaction.
It does not affect anything. I do not know why they are so keen on playing with service charge.
My opinion is concerning the Boats: The 10% service is a positive system provided that it is transferred weekly or monthly to the employees and there is a kind of control that the Company will not hold it back. However, I think that this is the wrong time to applicate it, due to the pandemic crisis that is affecting us this year and the little turnout of visitors. The law is dated 1st January 2020, but still the regulation is not yet defined and it will therefore be impossible to apply it for the current year and even less for the past months. We already have published prices for 2021 and 2022 and I believe it is not the time to modify them. In our case, we already charge the guaranteed tips amount of USD 8 per day per person + GST. The new scheme will considerably affect the final sale prices and I repeat that it is not the most suitable time for application.
I personally don’t believe that this will help, service charge must be given by the will of the tourist, not by force. To sustain quality service, it shouldn’t be mandatory. Now staff in the hospitality industry know that even without quality service, they still they get their chunk.