Luxury and beauty

Luxury and beauty

Tamara McLean

October 25, 2006
Page 1 of 2 | Single page
Copyright © 2006. The Sydney Morning Herald.

There's something deliciously satisfying about walking around an island.
And one lined with white sand and surrounded by marble blue water in the middle of the exotic Maldives has even more appeal.

A stroll along the smooth shores will take just ten minutes and there's no rush - you're on holiday with nowhere to be, nothing to do.

That's life on Kani, a speck of self-contained luxury in a sea of privately-owned exclusive atolls in the Indian Ocean 650km southwest of Sri Lanka.

The Indian Ocean archipelago often attracts the highbrow set but tiny Kani is run by the French outfit Club Med, famed for its all inclusive, more affordable resort concept.

Recently given a $20 million post-tsunami facelift, the low-lying fish-shaped isle has been redesigned with romance in mind.

The standard rooms are just standard rooms but if you can afford the step up to a Balinese beach villa - with its jacuzzi and waterfront position - you won't be disappointed.

Better still, splash out and settle yourself into a lagoon suite balanced on stilts over water: a love nest for honeymooners.

The sweeping verandah views to the vast big blue and floating sundeck with your own private ocean access make the experience something special.

And while you're there, don't forget a laze in the chic deep bath as you look out to sea, your favourite song playing on the stereo.

You may hardly want to leave but there are other spots worth a visit, namely the Velhi dining hall for its sumptuous banquets.

Cuisine is an island highlight and everything from local seafood specialities to French and Sri Lankan-inspired fare is laid out three times daily.

And because your meals - like accommodation and air fares - are paid for up-front, indulgence can't be helped.

You'll also be able to help yourself to many of the drinks at the island's two bars, and both are relaxing spots to while away some time.

They're not free but the spa treatments can't be missed, most notably the dreamy Bali-inspired foot reflexology session with your choice of oils.

Other activities are possible for a price such as scuba diving:- to see turtles, manta rays and other deep-sea life - and shopping visits to the capital Male, 30 minutes away by speedboat.

But for the most, the pleasures are free.

The nightly entertainment provided by Club Med staff can be a bit much if you're not into singalongs and amateur theatre but there's plenty more to enjoy.

(read entire article)
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Maui falls from top, no longer best isle

Maui falls from top, no longer best isle

By HARRY EAGAR, Staff Writer
Copyright © 2006 The Maui News.

NEW YORK – Maui fell off its perch as the Best Island in the World this week, finishing second to the Maldives, which are not one island but about 200 tiny islets a few hundred miles from Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean.

It’s fortunate that the tourists who read Conde Nast Traveler magazine like the Maldives, because aside from tourism, the only export is a local form of bagoong popular in India. It is also the lowest country in the world – the highest hill is less than 8 feet above sea level – and the government is alarmed that rising sea levels will erase it within a century.

“Unknown places, they’re poppin’,” said Terryl Vencl, executive director of the Maui Visitors Bureau, who was in New York to receive Maui’s award as Best Pacific Island for the 16th straight year. Maui didn’t fall very far – only to second among the world’s best islands, with a score of 90.3, compared with Maldives’ 91.5.

That total score also made Maldives the highest-rated destination in the world in the magazine’s Readers Choice poll. It’s a prize Maui has been accustomed to having. “I yearn to make sure we get it back,” said Vencl.

At the same time, Maldives is not nearly as much competition for Maui as lower-rated but bigger and closer resorts in Mexico and the Caribbean – or even Kauai, which was ranked the second best Pacific island.

The complete list of winners will not be revealed until Conde Nast Traveler’s November issue is on newsstands Tuesday, but Four Seasons Resort Lana’i, The Lodge at Koele was picked by 21,000 readers as the top resort in the Pacific Rim. Don’t rush over yet; the lodge is closed for renovations.

“We are thrilled to be recognized by the savvy readers of Conde Nast Traveler,” said Mark Hellrung, general manager of the resort.

“This is a great way to launch The Lodge (as a Four Seasons resort), and we look forward to celebrating this with our guests in the beautiful upcountry of Lanai.”

The Maldives was not really on Vencl’s radar screen, although she never expected that Maui would lose its top ranking.

Maui has been a Conde Nast favorite since the reader poll began 19 years ago, and when the Best Island in the World category was opened, Maui won 12 years in a row.

Maui also won the more recent Travel?? magazine poll honor for the first eight years before dropping to third best in the world the past three years. “Many destinations are thrilled just to make the list, and we topped it for 12 consecutive years,” said Vencl. “That’s an incredible run.”

In the editors’ comments read at the awards ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History, Vencl said Maldives was singled out as the best among an increasingly popular list of “unknown places,” or as Conde Nast Traveler put it, its lists show an even greater global variety and depth than ever before.

The Maldives receive about half a million tourists a year. The great leap forward by the Maldives, which were mostly underwater in the great tsunami of 2004, just shows how stiff the competition can be, Vencl said. “Being number two is not chump change. We’re still happy to be right up there,” she said.

Maui remains the only contender to finish at the top of its category 19 years in a row. Other Conde Nast Traveler favorites such as Singapore Airlines (top international route airline) and San Francisco (top U.S. city) have won 18 times.

The Lodge at Koele will reopen Nov. 15 after the first phase of a $50 million renovation to go with the rebranding.

Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.

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Hotels On Every Island

Hotels On Every Island

By Phillip Wellman
©2006 MinivanNews

October 14, 2006

The Maldives Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) has announced plans to build hotels on most of the country’s inhabited islands.

In a statement made on Saturday the company’s managing director, Mohmed Solih, said that building hotels and guesthouses throughout the Maldives would improve the economies of the atolls.

Although current government regulations prohibit publicly owned companies from establishing tourist resorts on populated islands, there is no similar stipulation for the construction of hotels.

“There are many who visit the atolls for many different reasons,” said Solih,” and there are no means for these visitors to stay.”

This latest announcement follows a recent decision by the MTDC to sell 800,000 of its shares as part of a joint venture following Ramazan.

In July, shares in the company went up for sale for the first time and already a million have been sold, which has earned MTDC Rf 100m.

But the MTDC’s legality has been under constant question, which has resulted in a shareholder suing the company earlier this week.

Nazeeha Ahmed filed the action under article 73 of the Companies Act, which states that: “a member of a company may apply for a court order… if there is a prejudice to the harmony of the members or if the affairs of the company are managed in a manner detrimental to the rights of a member.”

According to Nazeeha, potential buyers in MTDC stock were assured that the company’s board of directors would consist of four government executives and five from the public.

Currently, all of the board’s seven directors have been government-appointed.

Evidence of the board’s dishonesty was revealed when Crown Group- a company owned by MTDC chairman, Hussein Afif, was given developing contracts without any prior announcement for bids.

“The chairman and the managing director are acting like they own the entire company,” Nazeeha said in her statement to the court.

In addition to receiving disapproval from shareholders, this “temporary board”, which has already been in existence for several months, has also been condemned by the Ministry of Trade.

Its Registrar of Companies Director, Idham Muiz Adnan, said that the development of resorts by the MTDC is being solely handled by a handful of economic advisors, which will almost certainly cause huge implications in the future.

(read entire article)

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Is Islam A Threat To The Maldives?

Is Islam A Threat To The Maldives?

By Taimour Lay
©2006 MinivanNews

Under the headline ''Stormclouds over the Indian Ocean: Behind the veil in the Maldives'', Britain’s Independent newspaper published a feature on Thursday which warned of the ''radical'' form of Islam gaining popularity in the archipelago.

Witnessing the "decadent" lifestyles of wealthy tourists, Meera Selva wrote, is turning Maldivians against western mores.

Rogue preachers, armed with "dangerously persuasive arguments", are preying on isolated and socially conservative islands.

Increasing numbers of women are wearing the veil, and withdrawing from active roles in society.

Arab donors are exporting ideas and cash in an attempt to undermine the Maldives’ traditionally tolerant and inclusive strain of Sunni Islam.

President Gayoom, the article maintained, is seizing on Islam as a last support for his ailing regime, branding foreigners as Christian missionaries and demanding political quiescence under the guise of "religious unity".

But how accurate a portrait of religious trends here has the Independent newspaper given its readers?

The increasing popularity of "conservative" Islam across the Maldives cannot be denied, but there is no consensus over its actual extent, and what is precisely fuelling it.

The government blames foreign preachers. The opposition blames Gayoom and the politics of control. Other analysts point to broader economic and sociological changes that may, or may not, prove reversible in the medium term.

While more women are undoubtedly wearing the veil, in Male’ and on smaller islands, it does not immediately follow that they are being systematically forced out of positions of prominence in society.

"We should first distinguish between women who are wearing the veil and those who are adopting the traditional middle eastern hijab," says Attorney-General Hassan Saeed, whose book Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam, published in 2004, calls for "absolute" freedom of religion to be permitted in modern Muslim societies and says punishments for apostasy should be discarded.

"And if you look at the number of women working in the professions and gaining a good education, then it’s hard to say that they are playing a lesser role in society," Saeed argues.

But Saeed does accept there is a problem of "extremism" in some places.

When he points the finger at "foreigners", I ask him who these people are and how many are operating in the country. The Maldives is too small a place for the government to claim ignorance.

But claim ignorance he does.

"We don’t know," Saeed maintains. "We are investigating."

He ascribes the rise of conservative Islam to the loosening of restrictions on freedom of expression after 2004.

(read entire article)

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Professor takes hospitality expertise to Maldives

Professor takes hospitality expertise to Maldives

By Matthew Trumbull
Copyright © 2006

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the Republic of Maldives boasts clear blue seas, solitary sandy beaches and remote island resorts. The qualities that make the island nation a perfect postcard tourist destination, however, also made it vulnerable when the tsunami struck its shores in December 2004, putting a quarter of its island resorts out of service.

In a nation where two-thirds of the jobs are related to tourism, rebuilding the hospitality industry to its pre-tsunami strength has been a critical concern for all citizens and residents and soon they will be receiving a helping hand from Manchester, N.H. Ravi Pandit, a hospitality professor at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, wants to boost tourism to Maldives and he was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship to help them prepare future leaders and managers for the hospitality and tourism industry there.

The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State, which awards the grants to 6,000 scholars each year. The grant will allow Pandit to work in Maldives for five months beginning this past August. He is doing his own research to identify present and future needs in the industry, and teaching classes and helping the Maldives College of Higher Education fine-tune and develop a four-year hospitality program to replace their current diploma program.

“I’m like the academic ambassador [from Southern New Hampshire] to the Maldives,” Pandit said. “It’ll be a great opportunity to develop the relationship between our two institutions.”

Pandit is certainly the right man for the job. He is not only the program coordinator of the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Management at Southern New Hampshire, but he is also the chair of the school’s hospitality and tourism management program there. When Pandit first arrived at Southern New Hampshire in 1999, he was the first doctorate in its hospitality program. He was instrumental in overhauling the undergraduate hospitality and tourism program, and he developed a master’s degree program in hospitality and tourism management.

The work he will be doing in Maldives will draw on this experience as he trains the faculty, shapes the hospitality program and develops coursework at Maldives College. He will also be doing plenty of his own research and visiting the many island resorts to determine what skills managers desire of graduates coming out of the college.

Though the hospitality industry in Maldives has its own unique flavor, he said, it is still managed in a western style. “Working in the Maldives will provide me with a unique opportunity to teach in a totally different socio-cultural, economic and political environment,” Pandit said.

( read entire article )
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Disappointment in paradise

I just come across this interesting letter written from the outsider’s point of view.

An Outsider’s View

Dear people of the Maldives,

My name is Jonas. I am a German citizen and have been a guest in your country for the last three weeks. I came following the invitation of a friend, who is a human rights activist here.

In the past few days I have spent time talking to all kinds of people about the current political situation as well as their perception of the way human rights are treated in this country. These conversations have opened my eyes and helped draw a picture of the Maldives that heavily diverges from the holiday paradise that travel catalogues in Europe promise.

Last night I again followed an invitation. I joined the MDP commemoration at the artificial beach and watched the theatre performance that was devoted to the incidents three years ago. I must confess I did not understand a single word of what has been said there. But listening to the voice of Evan Naseem’s brother and mother, and later on watching the play, deeply moved me.

(read entire letter)

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New ecological beauty in the Maldives - ALiLA Villas

ALiLA Villas an ecological beauty in the Maldives

The isles of Maldives are like a magnet for travellers. Its maze of lagoons and reefs in azure waters is the natural beauty that ALiLA Hotels and Resorts strive to protect as they bring it to the attention of the world.

In 2007, ALiLA Hotels and Resorts and award-winning SCDA Architects will share the Maldives with the new ALiLA Villas Hadahaa and Lonudhua.
Principal architect Chan Soo Khian is a Yale-trained architect and has an illustrious history with Asian architecture, including the Dua Residence condominium in Kuala Lumpur, the KL Gold and Country Club, and the award winning Ladyhill in Singapore.

“I relate to Alila’s operating philosophy of creating an ecological and luxurious resort,” said Chan. “The island sites at the southern atoll of the Maldives are spectacular locales with excellent diving.”

Chan has not just placed a building onto the spectacular atoll; he has melded the culture of the place into the physical structure. He has designed the villas so that they engage with nature by making sure that they do not conceal the best of the area, but complement and enhance it.

“I design with a humanistic approach that responds to the climatic and cultural conditions of the context,” said the architect. So much so that even the two jetties and an arrival point were provided just to deal with tidal changes, as well as developing a rainwater harvesting system that “ensures the pollution to the island is minimalised.”

While the environment is a top priority for ALiLA, they also make the wellbeing of the guests a main concern. ALiLA Villas will feature Spa ALiLa with exciting spa concepts that integrate luxurious fittings and stunning settings.

ALiLA Villas embrace the ecological, the contemporary, the cultural, and the luxurious to ensure the most complete experience of the Maldives that any one could ever have.

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Angsana Resort and Spa - Maldives

Angsana Resort and Spa - Maldives

As ever with any spa resort spa prefaced by the word Angsana, the touchy-feely part of this operation is exceptional. The Thai masseuse thankfully speaks little English thus sparing us the tedium of faux knowledge. You know the drill - “this oil contains notes of fresh frangipani with citrus undertones to awaken your senses” spoken in the sort of hushed tones reserved for sanctified grounds. Nevertheless aromatherapy is used extensively and skilfully at Angsana, just without the unnecessary commentary.
The woman in reception will just ask you to name your pleasure and the practitioner only wants to know if you’d like that massage hard, medium or soft. Hard means hard too as I found out but it was a full 10 minutes later before I could gather enough air in my squeezed lungs to squeak “Maybe medium or even soft now.”
(read entire review)

Promotional series draw Indians to Maldives

Promotional series draw Indians to Maldives

A week-long series of promotional events have been held in India to further develop the Indian tourist market for the Maldives. The highlights for these events include a luncheon for the Indian travel trade and media in Bangalore, a press and travel trade luncheon in Mumbai and the infamous Maldivian Evening in Mumbai. The events were jointly organized by the Maldives Tourism Promotion Board and Srilankan Airlines; a strategic partner of the Maldives tourism.
The luncheon meeting held in The Leela Palace, Bangalore was aimed at introducing the Maldives tourism to the travel trade and the opinion leaders in Bangalore. This event was hosted by the Deputy Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation of the Maldives Mr. Abdul Hameed Zakariyyaa and discussions were held about the joint initiatives of the Maldives and Sri Lankan airlines to promote the Maldives in Bangalore.
A press conference headed by the Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation of the Maldives Dr. Mahamood Shougee and attended by the High Commissioner of the Maldives Lieutenant General (Retired) Anbaree Abdul Sattar, executives from Sri Lankan Airlines and participants from the Maldives tourism industry was organised at the Taj Presidents Hotel in Colaba, Mumbai as part of this week long promotions. The key issues raised during the press conference include the air connectivity between Maldives and major cities in India and future marketing activities. Seven journalists and 120 travel agents were present for the conference and the luncheon which followed it.
Dr. Shougee also headed the Maldivian delegation to the Bollywood star-studded Maldivian Evening in Mumbai. In his inaugural speech for the evening Dr. Shougee highlighted the importance of India as a tourism generating market for the Maldives and thanked the key participants of the Maldives Evening in Mumbai. On top of the agenda was an announcement by Hussain Shihab, the Minister of State for Arts of Maldives, on the government’s plan to develop a studio island in the Maldives.
“We are delighted to announce that we have plans to develop a studio island for the international film community. I hope that Indian film community as the largest entertainment communities in the world will frequent to the Maldives to take advantage of the most beautiful county in the world” said Minister Shihab.
This event was held in Mumbai’s J.W. Marriott where over 400 people from the travel trade, media, and representatives from the fashion & film industry of India attended the evening.
The Maldives Tourism Promotion Board expects to have an increasing the Indian tourists arrivals to the Maldives in the coming years. In the year 2005, Maldives welcomed 10,260 tourists from India and by the end of July this year 6,946 Indian tourists visited the Maldives from India. Srilankan airlines connects to 10 cities in India with over 100 frequencies a week via Colombo and Srilankan airlines has 21 weekly frequencies between Male and Colombo creating a good link between the Maldives and India.
Michael Verikios
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