The Maldives is developing a Billion-Dollar Airport as its tourist attraction is threatened

For many years now the Maldives islands, lying to the southwest of India and Sri Lanka, have been a huge tourist attraction to those with pockets deep enough to explore them.

Tourism has grown from a cross section of countries and economic systems, including China and Russia, as well as traditional European markets, to what was a British colony until 1965.

Even so, many parts of the world remain unconnected, at least directly, to this tourist idyll.

That should start to change as what has been a decade long construction period for a new runway and terminal building valued at USD1 billion reaches fruition, that design and construction having been undertaken largely by Saudi and Chinese companies. The new terminal opened on 26-Jul-2025.

And it is to those countries that the government will now be looking to provide the additional passengers that will pay for all this, rather than older markets in Europe.

The infrastructure appears to be in place to handle that additional traffic in a variety of accommodation, but hanging over the Maldives is its own Sword of Damocles in the form of rising sea levels, which haven't yet done the harm they were expected to, but which still could.

Much of the onus on future tourist growth will fall on the tourists themselves and on what risks they are prepared to take. There is no high ground in the Maldives on which to take shelter from, say, a tsunami.

Unless you count 8 feet as high!