Maldives Tour Operators and Manta Ray Watching Tourism, 538 Verified Businesses

538 registered and operational tour operators in the Republic of Maldives, verified by the Ministry of Tourism and a study. The dataset includes information on the extent of manta ray watching (MRW) tourism. It is available as an XLS file under a CC-BY-4.0 license, authored by Hannah M. Moloney and last updated in June 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the scale and distribution of manta ray watching tourism based on the verified operator list.
• Mapping the operational tourism infrastructure in the Maldives based on the registry of 538 verified businesses.
• Studying the relationship between official tourism registration and specific wildlife tourism activities like MRW.
• Assessing the potential for sustainable tourism management based on the verified operator data.

Strengths

• Dataset is small (5.5 KB), making it easy to download and inspect.
• Includes 538 verified and operational tour operators, providing a specific count of entities.
• Has a clear open license (CC-BY-4.0) and a named author (Hannah M. Moloney).

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are unknown, limiting suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality and field semantics require manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Established by the Ministry of Tourism of the Maldives and verified by the study.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-01 17:40:31; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Republic of Maldives