Happy Halloween. A time for lots of homemade sorcery – carving pumpkins, baking sweets, making costumes. I even crafted my own Halloween montage for a big Halloween party we held last year – “I’m In Love with a Monster”. If you want to make some especially spooky candles, Cora Cora offers a candle making workshop. Perhaps with a pumpkin spice scent.
Instagram is full of models posing in the Maldives, but this has to be my favourite of all (thanks Paola). I love maps especially Victorian birds-eye perspectives. A scale model like this on at OZEN Reserve Bolifushi is a superbly detailed birdseye map rendered in 3D that provides a uniquely effective “at a glance” perspective on the property.
The “one island, one resort” concept has defined the Maldives as a holiday destination for much of its history. But, the destination is evolving to create new experiences for guests, and new economic opportunities for local Maldivians. And in the case of “The Crossroads”, new experiences for local Maldivians.
The Crossroads is first a sort of shared “hub” for two existing resorts – Hard Rock and SAii Lagoon – but it will extend to support a further 6 linked resorts planned for the area:
But it is not just a wide range of international visitors who can enjoy Crossroads, but the development very much welcomes and it quite popular with local Maldivian residents who take the short transfer over from Male to enjoy the array of restaurants, shops and seaside promenades.
Caring for customers isn’t just about having a gracious smile and attentive service, but it involves really understanding each of your customers as individuals, catering to their distinctive needs as best one can. The top Maldives properties have achieved this with specially trained ‘butlers’ (and assorted variations on that theme). But some needs require more work than just a resourceful attendant’s hustle. In fact, some people – those with disabilities – often want an experience where their ‘luxury’ is being able to do everything as independently as possible.
Disabled individuals are used to tackling and overcoming diverse obstacles that the world throws at them. But holiday is when one wants a break from not only job work, but also just the daily work of housekeeping, cooking, cleaning and other chores. So going to an exotic locale renowned for sand and water (neither of which are disabled individuals’ particular friends) is always going to be less appealing.
Amilla Maldives breaking down these obstacles with a property-wide initiative to make their resort as accessible as possible:
Amilla outlined a range of accessibility enhancements they implemented (including the following), but talking with resort leadership couple, Jason and Victoria, many more are on the way.
Amilla introduced their initiatives hosting British TV personality and disability advocate, Sophie Morgan. Not only does she provide a compelling “proof of the pudding is in the eating” test to Amilla’s initiatives, but she also provides extensive reassurance through live demonstration on her Instagram (see embedded post here).
Accessibility is especially near and dear to our hearts. Lori worked for nearly a decade as Head of Therapy for the UK Epilepsy Society where she was supporting clients with a broad range of often severe disabilities. And I coach disabled athletes in the sport of rowing, and even have a website with comprehensive information about that – www.adaptiverowinguk.com. In fact I have a series of posts called “Can You Row With…” (eg. “Can You Row with Multiple Sclerosis?”, “Can You Row With Cerebral Palsy?”, “Can You Row With a Hearing Impairment?”). So, ‘Can You Go to the Maldives with a Disability?’ To Amilla, you certainly can!
Resorts have long offered presentations to their guests often on marine biology and sometimes on Maldivian culture, and some have extended these to featured guest presenters on topics as diverse as cuisine and wellness. Soneva Fushi features a distinctively rich slate of guest artists and authorities. It’s website presently features 36 upcoming special guests! But it has hit a new high water mark producing the first event TEDx event in the Maldives.
TED is the now famous conference on “Technology, Entertainment, Design” renowned for exceptionally high quality presentations (all strictly limited to 18 minutes) by some of the most renowned and talented experts and speakers in the world. The TEDx events are smaller conferences run around the world “organized by passionate individuals who seek to uncover new ideas and to share the latest research in their local areas that spark conversations in their communities.”
TEDxBaaAtoll could also be TED’s first ever TED event on a beach! Certainly first on loungers. Titled “TEDxBaaAtoll: SLOW LIFE” . “SLOW LIFE” is Soneva’s acronymic mission statement described by them as “our core purpose and stands for Sustainable – Local – Organic – Wellness Learning – Inspiring – Fun – Experiences…It is about reconnecting with oneself and the natural world.” The event synopsis describes the event as…:
Here was the line-up of special speakers and subjects:
Soothing music is a staple of the spa experience, but The Patina has taken audio’s therapeutic powers to new levels with its investment in IRIS “sound immersion technology”:
The sound track doesn’t just complement the treatment, but the sound is the treatment.
Some people are fans of the underground music scene, but Cora Cora, appropriately enough for the Maldives, has an underwater music scene. Specifically, it has installed underwater speakers in its main pool so while you are swimming laps you can listen to “streaming” tunes. Most of the playlist, is classical, but strangely, I didn’t her Handel’s “Water Music”.
It does beg the question of what would be the ideal underwater playlist? I took a look on Spotify for underwater playlists. Many features ambient songs with either babbling brooks, rainfall or whale song. One playlist, “Piano Underwater” had a collection of songs high on reverb and echo giving the pieces an aqueous feel to them. But I was thinking more literally about “underwater”. One set might be songs with an underwater theme, eg. Under da Sea (Little Mermaid), Yellow Submarine, Octopus’s Garden. Or perhaps TV show themes, eg. The Underwater Adventures of Jacques Cousteau, Flipper.
Any suggestions?
Even though underwater rooms are becoming more and more prevalent in the aquarium-like lagoons of the Maldives, they can still be budget-bustingly expensive. And if you are part of the growing contingent of guest brings children, then what to do with them during your special meal is an added complication. But not at OZEN Maadhoo’s sub-aquatic eatery Minus Six Metres (aka “M6M”). OZEN offers a complimentary dinner as a part of their comprehensive all-inclusive package with every 4-day stay. And also, don’t worry about the children:
Worry-free under-the-sea gastronomy!
Maldives Complete focuses on innovative offerings and features at various resorts and increasingly those are applying modern technological innovations like solar power, controls, apps, etc. But Ritz Carlton Maldives is investing heavily in creating the innovation itself with its Plastics Drone Project. The Ritz has embraced and sponsored the work of Melissa Schiele, a PhD Student at Loughborough University in Marine Engineering and Ecology who has lived and worked in the Maldives going on ten years. She is the Founder and Principal Investigator (lead scientist) of the Plastics drone project.
When I visited, I met Shaun Laughlin who is the current resident research on the project at the property who introduced me to the project and is the newest Naturalist drone pilot. But being a drone researcher is more than being adept with flying controls as Shaun has a background in science communication, expedition leading and herpetology.
This week I had a chance to catch up with Melissa personally to learn more about the drone ghost net research and other applications of the drone technology. Uses water landing, fixed-wing drones which flies between 10 and 20 metres high. Altitude is one of the variables that the project is experimenting with in order to find the optimal configuration for drone flights to achieve the best results in survey data collection.
Melissa shared the follow overview of the work to date:
Actually, ghost nets aren’t the only thing the project looks for. It also can identify illegal fishing (but this application is being used mostly in the British Indian Ocean Territories, a smaller archipelago south of the Maldives).
The biggest area of focus at the moment is identifying ocean plastic. Just how to identify plastic in the ocean is a significant image processing challenge. But if it can be refined, then we can learn huge amounts about where it comes from, where it goes, how moves, and how we can address it. The Ritz Maldives resort provides an excellent laboratory for studying ocean waste because the landscaping screw cleans the beaches every morning. As a result, the project team can go through the waste that was collected and have a very accurate and consistent daily sample for a fixed stretch of land. That data can then calibrate the image survey from the drone. For example, if the drone detects 3 plastic items on the beach, but 9 were collected, that finding helps determine a multiplier that can be used in future surveys to estimate actual accumulation based on the identified fidelity of the aerial photography. And by looking at the composition of the waste in the ocean, we can start to determine how plastic and other items change with seasons, weather conditions, etc. The research is foundational in that a lot of what it is trying to do is to experiment with, test, and calibrate the use of drone technology as a technique for ocean surveying.
Finally, I especially applaud the way they turned this innovative research project into a creative guest experience. Guests can go out with Shaun on the ocean with his drone on the looking for the ghost nets along with him.
(photo credit: © Dr Sol Milne)
Underwater restaurants are perhaps the quintessence of the Maldivian dining experience. And now OBLU Lobigili’ s “Only Blu” is the biggest yet so all the more people can enjoy this memorable experience. The Maldives is all about the intimacy with the ocean. The diminutive islands keep guests close to the water’s edge at all time. The intra-atoll peaceful waters keep the aquatic wonderland so accessible whether peering into the crystal waters from a jetty above or swimming among the marine life on a snorkel excursion. But even scuba divers have a one-hour limit to their dives (not to mention all the hassle of donning and managing the scuba gear). But the underwater eateries allow you to sit under the sea for hours on end in the comfort of your resort wear while enjoying fine wining and dining.
