Best of the Maldives: Towel Scuplture – Club Med Kani

Club Med Kani towel sculpture

Pin it!

I was inspired by the terry cloth creature above to take the plunge into the latest social mediaPinterest. Pinterest allows you to set up albums to share collections of photos. I’ve already featured room art a number of times including ‘Bed Decoration’ and ‘Bed Art’, but this particular piece (shared with permission from guest Vincent Benita) is by far the most elaborate and cheeky I have ever seen.

The piece made me realise that I regularly come across great examples of bed and room decorations and rather than constantly revising my ‘Best Of’ posts, it would be better to create an honour gallery where al my discoveries could be collected and showcased. I’m started with the following two ‘Boards’…

I was tempted to create a ‘Maldives Sunset’ Board since there are so many prize examples of those on the web, but I’m going to start with these first.

Best of the Maldives Online: Videos – Dreaming of Maldives

Dreamin of the Maldives videos

Facebook, Twitter, Forums, Foursquare…all of this look a social media and I have not yet looked at one of the big ones, YouTube.

As it happens, the best eye to Maldivian spectacle has expanded his lens from photography to videography recently. Sakis Papadolpolous now has a collection of video vignettes for resorts he has produced available not just on his own Dreaming of Maldives site, but also on Vimeo and his own YouTube channel. They are simply the best resort videos going. Sakis does produce some seriously beautiful staged ‘mood’ shots to highlight a languid hammock or a tantalising cocktail. But he also includes plemty of panoramic material which provides a good perspective on the look and feel of the landscape itself and facility itself.

Since the inception, I have included a video of the resort in the main Profile page if there was a decent video available on YouTube. I limited myself to YouTube do to the ease of embedding into the Profile page. I limited myself to’decent’ because I loathe those fake slide-show “videos” (in air quotes) which are just the picture gallery set to music with some tired transitions. Many of my resort clips were guests simply doing a walk through to capture a feel for the resort for their friends or their own memories. Production quality not be much, but their utility and effectiveness to give people an authentic feel for the resort is invaluable.

Video is definitely taking over the web. A decent video of your resort is as much online table-stakes as an FAQ, map of the island and contact details.

I’ve now changed the videos in the Profiles to Sakis’ pieces for the resorts that he has done so far – Six Senses Laamu, Huvafenfushi, Dhonakulhi Island Hideaway and Lily Beach. Hopefully, more resorts will produce such vivid illustrations and hopefully, they will all use Sakis’ artistic talents to do so.

Snorkel Spotter v1.0

Snorkel Spotter

How about an entirely new form of social media designed just for the Maldives?

Introducing ‘Snorkel Spotter’.

Snorkel Spotter is something I have dreamt of for a long time. It was inspired by my experience at Maldives resorts where snorkelling is so popular and the most common question around the bar at night is ‘what did you see today?’ The question is not just marine curiosity and nor merely making conversation, but it is helpful reconnaissance into where one might decide to snorkel on your next outing.

I often suggested that resorts put up white boards at reception with a map of the island where guests could make a public note of what they had seen that day. Since no one took me up on it, I decided to create a virtual whiteboard. Sort of ‘Foursquare for Fish’ as one digerati put it.

If you want to add some sightings, you simply drag and drop the sea creature you saw from the menu at the left to the place around the island where you spotted it (use ‘Starfish’ for ‘all others’ of anything spotted you want to mention that is not included in the standard menu). A small pop-up will show allowing you to make a comment or add (optional) contact information.

If you want to see some spottings, then select Kurumba or W Retreat where I logged some of the sightings my wife and I made during out visit last summer. Also, a beta tester ‘Aurore’ logged a couple of sightings for Sheraton Full Moon and W Retreat as well.

It’s just version 1.0 so it might not be perfect. I have a number of planned enhancements and suspect that once people start using it, other improvements will become evident. Feel free to contact me with any suggestions or problems.

Happy Snorkeling!

Social Sunshine

Facebook and Twitter icons

The web is getting more and more social. My Maldives Complete blog was one of the first dedicated Blogs to Maldives Resorts and now there are a fair number. I’ve already looked at resort website Forums and the grandmaster of all Maldives Forums on TripAdvisor. Now the giants on the block now are Facebook and Twitter.

To keep up with the times and how people get research their resorts, I too have created a Maldives Complete Facebook page and a Twitter feed. The Maldives Complete page is probably the best way to keep track of my contributions to resort’s Facebook pages though mostly I post to the resort when I have written about them in a ‘Best of the Maldives’ piece. I also have started Tweeting, but after and initial flurry I’ve tapered off as Twitter activity on Maldives resorts seems a bit immature and quiet at the moment.

I’ve now also added a field in the profile for both the resort’s Facebook Pages (or in some cases ‘Groups’) and Twitter accounts.

In the process of researching the information for all the resorts Facebook and Twitter information I did a review of all of their presences. The analysis was done at the end of January after which Facebook changed dramatically the ‘Groups’ feature. As a result, a number of the resorts’ ‘Groups’ have been discontinued or else reset from scratch (showing low numbers of members).

In gathering up the various links, I uncovered some curious statistics…

  • Resorts without Facebook pages – 19
  • Average number of Likes/Members – 963
  • Average number of Photos – 216
  • Average number of Comments/Posts (not by resort) – 29 (over one month period)

This week is Social Media week with some special recognitions to the resorts who have best embraced this new connection to Friends and Followers.

System Down

Server Error

 

 

Due to a problem with server configuration at our MaldivesComplete’s hoster, the usual URLs for Maldives Complete are producing error messages to visitors (like the one above), except for the Blog which is all working fine.

For the interim, I have posted up a copy of the site at Maldives.maldivescomplete.com for people to use.

We expect normal service to resume shortly. Please accept our deeply felt apologies for this inconvenience.

Spa, Pools, Bathrooms and Bedrooms

Best Of Activity and Infrastructure

The ‘Best’ keeps getting better. And I’ve had to revamp the ‘Best Of’ page a bit more to accommodate all of the accumulating resort highlights. For starters, I have split the page into two tabbed pages since there are simply so many ‘Best Ofs’ to list. I have broken the groups in ‘Activity’ and ‘Infrastructure’.

While I was making those changes and updating the page, I added a few other breakout tags. I’ve split out the following…

New Tags

Maldives Complete - tags

Reef-frames are the only things with better labels as I have this week updated the ‘Tags’ used on Maldives Complete. Of course, you can always use Google or the Search facility on the blog to search for text like ‘snorkelling’ or ‘surfing’. But, text search will indiscriminately bring up any mention whatsoever of that word. Tags are used by sites to indicate important topics in the post or page. If you select one of the ‘Tags’ at the bottom of the posts (or in the ‘tag cloud’ – see above – which highlight the most prevalent tags scaled to proportion of their use), then it will bring you all the posts that are focused on that subject.

For a long time, I have had a collection of tags corresponding to the various ‘Best of the Maldives’ categories (eg. Sport, Activity, Service, Online). And over time, those have morphed a bit as certain sub-categories grew big enough to merit their own break out (eg. Surfing, Shopping). For starters this week, I have added another breakout to ‘Activity’ which is ‘Boating’.

But I have also added the following Tags which don’t relate to ‘Best Of’ categories, but rather to my other types of posts…

  • Destination – about the Maldives itself in general (eg. weather, family tips)
  • Industry – about tourism in the Maldives (eg. rating system, tourist numbers)
  • Tour – reviews of my days there when I do personal trips
  • Site – about the Maldives Complete site itself like new features (like this post here)
  • Fun – whimsical stuff that just brings a smile to my face.

Happy 3rd Anniversary

Maldives Complete - visitor traffic

 

Happy 3rd Anniversary to Maldives Complete!

Three years ago today I pushed the button which loaded the Maldives Complete code and material live to the web. That entire first week, after emailing all my friends, the site got a mere 186 visits and 1,147 page views. Just yesterday alone, Maldives Complete welcomed over 1,000 visits and delivered over 3,000 page views.

It’s come a long way not just in popularity, but in usefulness and comprehensiveness. I’ve extended the ‘Best Of the Maldives’ categories. For example, I broke ‘Geography’ into ‘Location’ and ‘Landscape’. Also, Surfing is emerging as such a prominent activity there, that I have split that out in the Sport section. I also added the Chinese version which has pushed China up the visitor tally to #2 behind the USA. I had my longest research visit ever in July spending 17 packed days ferreting out all sorts of gems to share with readers. The top photographer of the Maldives, Sakis Papadopoulos, has graciously offered the use of his stunning photos on the site which has upgraded the look of the pages where I have been able to incorporate them so far.

And there is lots more coming very soon. I have a new ‘Room Type’ database which will have both Profiles and a Finder search capability not just on ‘Resort’, but the Room Types offered (eg. “Jacuzzi Water Villa”, “Deluxe Ocean View”, “Super Deluxe Aqua Villa”). I also have one of my favourite projects of the year, the ‘Snorkel Spotter’. Watch this space.

Thanks to everyone who has emailed me such kind words about the site and many times contributed great ideas, updates, material and support.

Holiday Shopping

Vadoo mug 1   Vadoo mug 2

This weekend in the USA is sort of the unofficial starting pistol for the Christmas shopping season. While purists bemoan the creep of holiday decorations, promos and music into the days before Thanksgiving, discretion dictates that one holds off until one has woken from one’s turkey-induced slumber before melting the credit card.

Finding the right gifts is a challenge during Maldive ‘holidays’ as well. One of my pet peeves, as I’ve already written, are resorts that don’t take even more money off me by offering me more enticing mementos and gifts. But some resorts do really provide some notable shopping options. In fact, I’ve now broken out a separate ‘Shopping’ tag in the Blog and hence a devoted section in the ‘Best of Maldives’ page featuring the posts so far – Shoe Shopping at Reethi Rah, Dive Centre Shirts at Palm Beach, Wood Craft and Fashion Boutique at Kanuhura, and Largest Shop at Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru.

I also have a gift / memento tip – the resort/fish mug. I found the one shown in the pictures above at Vadoo, but I have spotted them at other gift boutiques around the Maldives. The mug is really nicely done. A classic island aerial portrait on one side. I always put the aerial shot of the island I am next visiting as my PC wallpaper to get me geared up for the trip. The aerial views really capture so much of what the Maldives experience is about. Also, it has classic fish spotter chart on the opposite side that we spend so much time pouring over at the end of a day’s diving or snorkelling. Finally, it is finished off with a lovely aquatic blue on the handle and inside.

完美馬爾代夫 – Chinese Version

Maldives Complete - Chinese

“歡迎來到完美馬爾代夫的中文版。 鑒於中國是目前來訪這天堂般美麗的地方數目最多的遊客, 和這個網站探訪者最多之一, 我將會儘以我所能使您可以更容易尋找資訊。 感謝陳景翔先生 為這個網站做的翻譯工作。 網站其中占比較大的一部分就是‘博客’頁,並且索引在 ‘最好去的地方’ 頁中裡。我們已經把 ‘最好去的地方’ 的主題以及類別翻譯了, 以便您找到感興趣的主題。若是您想深入閱讀我們的‘博客’頁或其他文章我只能建議您載入Google 翻譯或其他網上翻譯服務。 感謝您的探訪。 我們希望在未來提供更多的中文材料。”

Welcome to the Chinese version of Maldives Complete. Respecting that China is now the biggest visitor to this paradise, and one of the biggest visitors to the site, I thought that I would do what I could to make it easier for you to follow the information. Thanks to Daniel Chan, he helped me with translations of some of the key text to help you use the site. One of the big areas of the site is the ‘Blog’ much of which is indexed in the ‘Best Of’ page. We have translated the ‘Best Of’ subjects to help you locate topics of interest. I can only suggest that if you then want to read the article, load it into Google Translate or some equivalent web service. Thank you for visiting. We hope to offer more Chinese language material in the future.

The paragraph directly above is the English translation to the paragraph above that which is now featured on the Home page of newly launched Chinese version of Maldives Complete. Just press on the Chinese flag icon on the Home page (see below).

I haven’t translated absolutely everything. Some of the background pages in the ‘About’ section don’t get much traffic and are less interesting to prospective visitors. Also, the Blog was really too much of a project to translate. If you add it up, it now has over 250 pages of written text in its posts. If people are really keen on the content Google Translate at least will give them an idea of what I am referring to. I have translated the subjects of the ‘Best Of’s so at least they will be able to easily find certain topics of interest.

I especially like Daniel’s interpretation of the site name in Chinese…

“For the title, I have translated it as “完美馬爾代夫”, where the “complete” term is placed at the front (the Chinese and English sentence structures are quite the opposite) and interpreted as ‘totally perfect’.”

Totally Perfect!

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