Perhaps the best villa for a cat would be Huvafenfushi’s Two Bedroom Beach Pavilion with Pool villa which features a second story glass floor (given the feline predilection for surveying surrounding from an elevated perch). All glass floors I know of are water villa features providing a vista to the aquatic life below, but Huvafenfushi’s villa is a beach property. You still get a water view as they have situated the pool directly underneath (though the water creatures are a bit more limited).
Instead of jutting out into the water, you could have the water jut into your villa. That’s the distinctive feature of Huvafenfushi’s swim-in-swim-out water villa.
Pools in the private back areas are more and more commonplace, but a pool table is quite unique. And there’s your own table tennis to boot. The CUBE room type at Huvafenfushi is like a home away from home with lots of amenities for entertaining yourself and friends.
And the Oscar for the ‘Best Swag Gift…Ever’ goes to…Huvafenfushi.
Estimated retail value: $16,000. PS. It’s not even the most expensive item in the bag!
It all sounds very extravagant, but actually the windfall is probably more in the hands of the giver than the getter. If you think ‘too good to be true’ promotions are just the domain of low end punters, think again. This stunt is actually a no-brainer for Huvafenfushi/Premier.
In all likelihood, if the nominee does decide to take advantage of their coupon, chances are that Premier Tours will get plenty of money out of them. If you are an award winning Hollywood actor, are you really going to go all the way to the Maldives for just 4 days (the number that has been given away). You are probably going to be one of those fortnight guests which means Premier sells 10 paid days. Sort of like those offers of ‘free one night stay (with purchase of three qualifying nights)’. And for Premier Tours, high-end celebrity clientele don’t grow on trees and probably don’t respond to fliers shoved through the letterbox. But coupons shoved in an Oscar goodie-bag is another matter. Winning a celebrity customer to your business is worth its weight in gold statues.
So Huvafen and Premier probably makes a good a tidy chunk of change from its Oscar ‘give away’. But that’s just the beginning. In the meantime, Huvafen and Premier are getting reams of free publicity. Valuable publicity. Not cheap little banners on a backwater web pages, but stories in premiere publications speaking of their product in exotic, aspirational, and exclusive tones. And little dinky pieces like this one here.
If you like your water more salty rather than less, the Huvafen Fushi’s buoyancy pool is the place for you…
‘Boxing Day’ is not the traditional day for an annual pugilistic derby in the UK and elsewhere that celebrates it today. It is the day when gifts were traditionally given to servants and tradesmen. Often ‘Christmas boxes’ of gifts or money.
So it seemed like an appropriate day to celebrate the outstanding service legend across the Maldives. Especially, the super premium Maldives resorts have set higher and higher bars for outstanding service with many now providing personalised butler services. We were introduced to these services during our stays at Adaaran Vadoo and Adaaran Hudhuranfushi. But the resort to best, from my research, is Huvafenfushi. A common highlight of the various reviews is the impeccable service there. But perhaps what tilts it for me is their impressive recognition for ‘Best Service’ on Conde Nast’s elite ‘Gold List’ a few years back in 2007 which when it was last awarded.
On 15 January 2010, an annular eclipse will be visible from a 300-km-wide track that traverses central Africa, the Indian Ocean and eastern Asia. Several resorts will be in the shadows path (follow the handy Google map plotting the course above), but Huvafen Fushi is the one resort where the centre passes directly over the island.
An annular solar eclipse does complete cover the sun with the moon, but it takes place where the moon is too far from the Earth to completely cover the sun’s disk. That leaves a blazing “ring of fire” shining around the moon as it passes in front of the sun from Earth’s perspective. It is not quite as dramatic as a ‘total eclipse’, but quite a dramatic celestial event nonetheless. The GIF (click on graphic to see animated version) above shows last year’s annular eclipse in the Maldives that was 93% annularity. This year, the instant of greatest eclipse occurs at 07:06:33 UT when the eclipse magnitude will reach 0.9190. At this instant, the duration of annularity is 11 minutes 8 seconds, the path width is 333 kilometers and the Sun is 66° above the flat horizon formed by the open ocean. On dramatic point is that such a long annular duration will not be exceeded for over 1000 years (3043 Dec 23). The timing in January is one of the driest periods of the year which helps to ensure an unobstructed view. Lots of people go to Maldives for the sun, and here is a chance to go for a ‘sun event’.
Sometimes resort entertainment can be the weak link in a holiday with anything from a rickety DJ deck, to a local culture dance troupe trying to get reluctant visitors to join in to a lounge singer pounding out the old stand-bys in the local accent. Huvafen Fushi has made it its charter to not just make entertainment hip, but to bring a refreshing breeze of ‘cool’ to a range of things on offer at the resort in its ‘Dream Calendar’ programme.
While alcohol is forbidden in the non-resort parts of the Maldives in line with its Muslim traditions (do not attempt to bring duty free with you into the country), the resorts are granted exemption to serve alcohol to visitors. The resort with purportedly the most extensive array in the archipelago is Huvafen Fushi with its massive underground wine cellar (the only one in the Maldives). The collection is managed by what one report described as ‘its flamboyant sommelier Sonny.’ Cheers!
In the spirit of the Ithaa restaurant at the Conrad Hilton Rangali, the Huvafen Fushi resort has opened an underwater spa. A number of spas have delightful settings on jetties and beaches right near the water, but if you truly want to be immersed in the aquatic serenity of the atolls, the Lime Spa.