One & Only Reethi Rah has its own fun “nursery water feature”, though this one has more than just water cascading down it and its own host of young blossoms to lend it vibrant colour.
Best of the Maldives: Nursery – Kurumba
Another enclosure of vibrant colour is the orchid nursery at Kurumba. Except to hard-core horticulturalists, nurseries are often about as interesting as a pair of old wellies and a dirty spade. Usually, they are an example of the whole being less than the sum of the parts. In this case, the parts being hundreds of fragrant blossoms. But all packed into a tedious and cramped barracks.
Kurumba has turned this explosion of hue and scent into a feature itself. Not just by welcoming guests into it, but by investing in make the nursery itself a real attraction. The centrepiece is the water feature which is a dramatic fountain adorned will all manner of vegetation.
Horticulturist and Garden Manager, Upul Kumara, commented that the Orchid Nursery ‘is completely natural and uses coir rope, bamboo and a pond with a waterfall has been used a centre piece of the garden. This will definitely be a new attraction to all our guests and not only that, the space will be suitable for a romantic dinner, a private yoga session or a relaxing stroll.’ He added that in nature, orchids have humid environments with near-constant air circulation. The water pond not only adds beauty, but also helps take care of the orchids. For those who have enjoyed the nursery in the past, we are sure the renovation will be greatly welcomed. With the following addition we hope it imprints to guest a lasting impression on the varied experiences while seeing the Maldives in Full Colour at Kurumba.
Soon, the resort is going to start offering guest dinners in there. A delightful blend of culinary and floral aroma.
Kurumba is not alone in featuring bounteous blossoms and this post has convinced me to add a new category tag for “Flowers”.
Best of the Maldives: Bird Cage – Gangehi
This past tour was a revelation of birds. A number of resorts had quite striking birds on the islands. So much so that I have added a “Bird” tag to the blog.
Their presence added a somewhat unexpected colour and vibrancy to the island life that one grows accustomed to on the reef. Gangehi’s avian feature is a giant bird cage right by reception filled with a rainbow of parakeets and painted song birds. A sweet richly hued addition to an arrival welcome.
Best of the Maldives: Free Range Birds – Nika
From flyboarding to free birding.
This post is also a contendor for “Most Nostalgic for My High School Years”. First, “Freebird” was the Ipswich High School Class of 1979 “Class Song”. Second, me and my buddies were big Monty Python fans (perhaps shades of my eventual UK life) and one of my favourite skits was “Albatross.
While I had parroted the “Albatross” sketch endlessly to pubescent tittering, I had never actually seen one. Until I visted Nika. Lori and was even more mesmerised by him, and his goofy wing-flapping walk, than I was I think. We dubbed him “Albert Ross” (my adolescent sense of humour has matured that much since high school).
Nika has its own bird sanctuary. But not in a cage nor in a segregated section of the island, but right in one of the main thoroughfares are the two main pathways converge in front of the dining area. All of the birds roam freely around the island, but they tend to congregate in this area where they are fed and they have some shelters.
A truly diverse bunch too. Bandito the peacock (see above), exotic dove, hens, parrots (see bottom) and ducks.
Maldives Menagerie!
Best of the Maldives: Flyboarding – LUX Maldives
What shooting up in the air faster than a lottery winner’s bank balance? Higher than the Chinese visitor stats? The LUX Maldives flyboard!
This activity had been in my draft of “Even More What I Haven’t Seen” until Dolores dropped me a line. It didn’t surprise me though that it would be LUX pioneering with such a rad adrenalin activity. LUX really stands out for its spirit of innovation and adventure. But also, LUX Maldives is a perfect location for it. Their sprawling size means it can be conducted on a discreet part of the island without disturbing other guests. Mind you if I was at LUX, I might shy away from trying it out, but I think it would be a fun thing to watch.
“Designed for active guests, Flyboard combines the excitement of motorized water sports to the, otherwise limited, liberty of movements based on the body balance to ultimately achieve the exceptional sensation of flying over the water. Flyboard has only been recently launched worldwide by the France-based Zapata Racing Team. By literally wearing a pair of boots connected to a board, the resort’s guests can be lifted to heights of up to 10 meters thanks to the water jets placed under the board allowing them hover above the surface or to perform spectacular water figures. Taking the concept of luxury holidays on a lighter note, LUX* Maldives continues to look for original yet daring ways to surprise guests of all ages. ‘Being a water sports fan myself, I immediately recognized the potentials of Flyboard as the wide lagoon around LUX* Maldives is ideal for our guests to enjoy this innovative sport that makes you fly like a bird or swim like a dolphin all in one’ says Dominik Ruhl, the resort General Manager.”
Rocket man with lots of splash down.
Best for Lottery Winners
What would you do if you won the lottery?
A less than rhetorical question for a few very lucky souls this week. The Madison Avenue sponsored script is “Disneyland,” but the more unprompted survey says – “Maldives”. The article“If I won the lottery the first place I would go is…” that the first thing people do is go on a dream holiday, and the top dream holiday destination was the Maldives…
“If you won the lottery where would you go to on holiday? A leading travel agency asked Britons where they would most want to travel to if they won the jackpot and it revealed that the Maldives is top of the pile…The amount of winnings was any amount over half a million pounds and if money was no object Britons would go to the Maldives as their first holiday pit stop. The website Sunshine wanted to look into the holiday habits of Brits and in the survey of 1,672 adults they were all asked about how they would spend their winnings. 78% of people said that a holiday would be first on their list of expenditures and all were asked if they won over 500,000 where they would go on holiday first. According to the poll, the top 10 most desirable holiday destinations, if money were no object for Britons, were as follows:
- The Maldives – 19.0%
- Seychelles – 13.2%
- St Lucia – 10.6%
You’ve just won the lottery, what are you going to do? I’m going to the Maldives!
Prevailing Winds of Visits Shifting Easterly
The international recipe of guests is reformulating from a European continental dish to a distinctly Asian fusion flair of late Switzerland has now dropped out of the Maldives “Arrivals by Country” top 10 leading a trend of Alpine Western countries (Switzerland, Italy, France) being supplanted by low lying Eastern countries (Saudi Arabia, Australia).
That’s according to the latest stats from the Ministry of Tourism that they presented in a nifty Pinterest (“P-interest” or “Pin-terest”?) post last week.
The Western sun seekers are being supplanted by the Eastern luxury seekers.
Best of the Maldives: Culinary School – One & Only Reethi Rah
Eid Mub?rak!
Yesterday marks the end of the Ramandan and the start of the three celebration of Eid ul Fitr. After 40 days of fasting, you can imagine that the celebration at the end has quite a number of long-anticipated feasts.
If you want a bit of coaching help on creating the most sumptuous and resplendent feast, the One & Only Reethi Rah’s Culinary School is where you need to enrol…
“Classes will be available in a range of culinary styles from around the world such as Maldivian, Chinese, Italian, Indian, Arabian, Japanese ‘Washoku’, Thai cuisine or French desserts and pastries. The experience starts with a guided visit to the chef’s garden where the culinary team will demonstrate how to select the finest and freshest products while guests hand pick organic ingredients for their chosen course. Upon return to the culinary school, One&Only Reeti Rah’s master chef will guide pupils through an epicurean selection of the finest cooking products and condiments from around the world including wines, vinegars, oils and olives. Then guests can prepare exquisite dishes with expert guidance and enjoy their own creations in a sumptuous lunch. They leave the course with a certificate, recipe card and their very own One&Only Reeti Rah apron and chef’s cap. Courses cost run daily for between two to four people and cost $180* USD.”
Lori and I visited it in July and it is a truly lavish set up in its own climate controlled area with access to the finest tools in a lovely surrounding. It has gorgeous bas-relief on the wall depicting an ocean sunset with a Mayan-esque boldness of form (see bottom).
Reethi even have a junior cadet offering as well (see below). With this post, I’ve added a new category tag to the blog for “Instruction” which has all of the posts on the best “Schools” and “Courses” that the various resort offer for those so academically minded.
All it takes is an “E” (Eid) to turn a “fast” into a “feast”.
How to Write a Great Resort Blog
It is even more surprising it is that no resort has really nailed a sustained, quality blog considering how straightforward the opportunity really is. In addition to the blog fundamentals cited in my yesterdays “Maldives Resort Blog Roll” post, here are a few angles that almost write themselves for most resorts…
- Staff Profiles – A common feature on corporate blogs is to do profiles of various members of staff. Sometimes they are people doing particularly intriguing or esoteric jobs. Sometimes they are people with particularly unique backgrounds. Sometimes they are staff with special interests. We do them on our Red Bee Piero blog. The benefit to the resort and the guest is that such pieces really personalise the resort. Such individual stories make a bit of a human connection to this plot of sand with some villas and palm trees on it. Another benefit to the resort is that very often the staff are quite proud of the work they do and their story they tell.
- Snorkel Central – Snorkelling is the main event for the most guests to the Maldives. It is one of the first topics of conversation at the bar in the evening…”What did you see today?” Invite guests to share their house reef adventures and discoveries. Also, the majority of resorts now staff marine biologists. I find too many of these MBs focus on education. They write and speak about the ABCs of marine life. I think they should invest more effort and time in writing about “stuff they saw”.
What about Facebook? Many of the approaches I’ve listed above (eg. sharing snorkel pics) are what resort marketeers do on Facebook. They sometimes respond, “Blogs are passé, Facebook is where it is at.” Yes, blogs have been around for a while. The hype behind them hit a crescendo and has since tapered off (typical of many innovations). And Facebook is very of the moment. Though indications are that Facebook is hitting its own hype apex. Despite Facebook’s popularity and ease of use, it still has a number of major shortcomings especially vis-à-vis blogs…
- Offline Accessibility – Getting Facebook updates delivered to your offline Inbox (eg. Outlook) is a complicated set of menus and settings, while blogs provide simple (“Really Simple”) RSS Feed that deliver straight to your Inbox for offline reading (eg. on an airplane, in remote areas).
- Archivability – After certain dates, finding and accessing old posts and updates is a real chore (and I find they often disappear). On a blog, you can readily access them with direct links, Search boxes and dated Archive listings.
- Searchability – One struggles to find material on Facebook with Google, but Google readily finds most all blog material.
- Formatability – Facebook has very limited, almost primitive, formatting capability. Your own blog frees up your ability to format your posts in your preferred branding style or in a rich way that makes the post more engaging and/or appealing
- Linkability – Investing in a blog doesn’t necessarily forgo Facebook. You can have your cake and eat it too. Simple draft a rich format blog post…and then link to it with a brief comment on your Facebook page.
Maldives Resort Blog Roll
Something I have also really yet to see is a really good resort blog. There are some decent dive org blogs, but not specifically about or by the resort.
Here are a few basic criteria for a strong blog…
- RSS Feed – It all starts here.
- Comments – If you turn off comments, it’s no longer a blog (I’m looking at you Seth Godin who should know better). It’s just an article website using a trendy digital label. This is where the “conversation” begins (versus the “bullhorn”).
- Regularity – The bête noir of blogs. A few great posts in succession…and then silence. I think one entry per week is table stakes for a top flight blog.
- Personal – A library of corporate press releases and marketing material doesn’t cut it.
Here is the Maldives resort blog roll of what I have come across…
- Constance Halaveli / Moofushi – Part of large Constance blog (which is well done), but the Halaveli/Moofushi-specific posts are infrequent.
- Komandoo – New web site with a “Community” section including something called “Blog”, but really just a bunch of info blurbs.
- Kuramathi – Good style and quality, but last post 15 June
- Kuredu – Good style and quality, but last post 21 June
- Madoogali – Really interesting post on coral polyp spawning then nothing
As it happens, Visit Maldives is planning its own blog. Respect to them in that they don’t just want a mouthpiece of promo drivel with an RSS feed. Instead, they are carefully looking for angles and approaches that would make the posts stand out and drive good old ‘conversation’ and engagement. If you have any ideas, feel free to comment (or you can email them to Mohamed Eelaf).