Best of the Maldives: Reef Friendly Sunscreens – Gili Lankanfushi

Gili Lankanfushi - sun screen

Environment Day today to celebrate appreciating, respecting and care for the environment around us. Sometimes the smallest of things can have big impacts over enough people and time. On example is sunscreen which we slather on to protect us from the tropical sun. But when we take a dip in the ocean to cool off, the salty water washes a lot of its chemicals off our body and onto the coral reefs we swim amongst.

Gili Lankanfushi is now only selling reef-friendly sunscreen in its boutique for its guests to remove this extra burden on our coral friends:

  • A key ingredient in more than 3,500 sun protection products is oxybenzone…Annually four to six thousand tonnes of these chemicals enter our ocean through wastewater effluent, and by swimmers slathered up with sunscreen. Acting like an oil slick, the chemicals settle on marine life and the reefs become suffocated.”

Also, Grand Park Koddhipparu have made a similar announcement, but I was unable to get additional details.

Gili Lankanfushi - sunscreen 2

Best of the Maldives: Noodle Station – Grand Park Kodhipparu

Grand Park Kodhipparu - noodle station

When I worked at Microsoft, it’s quite expansive canteen always seemed to be the busiest at its noodle station. I’ve seen noodle dishes prepared to order at Maldives buffets, but none quite so extravagantly as Grand Park Kodhipparu’s The Edge restaurant. Kassandra noodles are prepared freshly in multiple pots with an extensive array of ingredients and spice to choose from to customise them to your own liking.

Best of the Maldives: Outdoor Staff Meeting – Grand Park Kodhipparu

Grand Park Kodhipparu - staff meeting

Possibly the most off site management off-site in the world. Team leaders have been long taking their teams away from the hubbub of the office to escape distractions and reset the mind sets. But what do you do when your workplace is a remote island in a remote part of the world. Well, get even more remote. Like a sand bank in the middle of the ocean. Or the rooftop of a dhoni sailing along that ocean. This how General Manager Raffaele Solferino of Grand Park Kodhipparu gets his resort team’s focused:

  • “Among the activities we do at Grand Park Kodhipparu, Maldives to motivate colleagues and enhance our living together, once per week we do what we call out of the office briefing and we tour departments, facilities and live guest’s experience ourselves to better engage with all what we do and what we want deliver. In today sharing era we do not share only the figures, tools and techniques, but we aim to share our free time on the Island, our living together develops a lifestyle we want share with our guests with dedicated team functioning as best advisor on how to fully enjoy the potential of the Island and the Maldives. The impact is straight on guest and employees satisfaction producing better level of guest’s loyalty and staff retention. The Maldives offer a huge amount of opportunities and inspiring experiences development where the creativity and passion plays a role, putting on offer to customers unique experiences where ‘Making Moments in Time’ is our motto. It’s not always about figures, but the way you want deliver the excellence, a notable fashion house founder once he said: the profit is a consequence of a well done job with passion, quality and creativity. I am still following his vision as inspiration and try my best to influence the team I am leading to deliver a ‘Loving Hospitality’ in line with the company I represent on the market place. Soon we are entering the Environmental Management System where I will be involve directly together with our Marine and Land Biologist, as this is part of my engagement with Maldives and the global Environmental concerns, Therefore we will enter officially the Sustainable tourism practice as a way to look ahead and to the future.”

They say some of the bet ideas come hanging out at the bar.  With Kodhipparu, that bar happens to be a sand bar.  When I was a senior manager at Microsoft, I had a bit of a reputation for pushing the envelope of adventurous off-sites, but nothing I ever did there compares with Kodhipparu’s retreats. Inspired inspiration.

Grand Park Kodhipparu - staff meeting 3

Grand Park Kodhipparu - staff meeting 2

Best of the Maldives: Shaved Ice Dessert – Grand Park Kodhipparu

The best buffets are the ones who turn use the format not for laying out food en mass, but instead for providing a bit of flash and sizzle in the food prep itself with special stations. Sort of a Chef’s Table brought out to the dining area. Grand Park Kodhipparu main restaurant, The Edge, features a number of distinctive stations (stay tuned), but my favourite was their Shaved Ice Dessert. An exotica concoction of nuts, ice cream, shaved ice and tapioca. I am a bit of a tapioca connoisseur (it was my favourite dessert when I lived in Togo, West Africa and still enjoy the American Royal Tapioca Pudding) so I especially appreciated this lively twist on a beloved ingredient. And the taste was sublime.

Maldives Tour 2018 – Grand Park Kodhipparu

Grand Park Kodhipparu - tour 2018

Breezy and easy. Grand Park Kodhipparu simply struck us as an easy resort. Easy transfer, easy access to everything on the diminutive island. Easy access to one of the several house reefs from the water villa (just a few dozen feet from the back deck).

The resort was a particularly welcome respite after the frenzy of several days of island hopping. I‘m sure it would be one for someone wanting more of an escape holiday. It’s also a bit easy on the wallet as it is value priced in the 5-star segment while offering a thoroughly 5-star experience in build, service and amenities. I came away with a number of candidates for future Best Of the Maldives pieces and the GM Raffaele shared some intriguing plans for further enhancements they are working on.

We also extended our string of serendipitous meetings. This time with a longstanding connection on the web-side: Ibrahim Mahudhee, Managing Director at Maldives Promotion House which does the website Maldives Insider. MI is often the first to scoop breaking news on the resorts and is the source of many additions of planned resorts to the Maldives Complete database as well as leads for Best of Maldives innovations. I’ve been considering doing a piece for MI for a while and Mahudhee encouraged me to do so as we exchanged a few ideas on topics.

If you are stressed by all the choices in the crowded luxury sector of Maldives resorts, Grand Park Kodhipparu is an easy choice.