26 January 2011

Going Under Water

Maldives is going underwater. Before the water comes over the Maldives. Underwater is the new Overwater. If the sea will one day be the end of the country, it is for now the gift that keeps on giving.

The very first tourists were a group of Italians with a penchant for spear-fishing. There followed the period of German and British divers who reigned for a couple of decades until they were squeezed out as a majority by increasingly expensive rooms.

Waterbungalows were the new thing, a perfect fit for the ‘luxury in paradise’ holiday-makers. These grew in size and marketing speak to become Overwater Villas and now every resort with a patch of lagoon big enough to take a jetty, has an additional string of rooms to sell, at premium prices. Like spas when they arrived, it was a hit-your-forehead-with-the-palm-of-your-hand moment: “Of course, why didn’t we think of that before!”

If Maldives took the established idea of over-water rooms to another level, what happened next was truly innovative and pointed the way to the future use of the water. The Conrad built and opened the world’s first underwater restaurant. I was wary of all the hype but was as giddily impressed as anyone when I got to look around it. The number of fish, their size and proximity gives you a very unusual sensation. The concept’s continuing success can be marked by the fact that the restaurant has two sittings a day and every table is booked well in advance.

After the underwater restaurant came the underwater spa on Huvafen Fushi. This doesn’t work so well because after the initial fun of going down stairs and emerging in an underwater room, you have to lie face down and then you could be pretty much anywhere. The views into the lagoon are simply windows at head height.

It has been a few years since those landmark facilities were opened and perhaps because of the sheer expense of building them, nothing else has been attempted. But that may soon change. I was chatting with my friend Shark in Male, a while ago, and he gave me a little inside information on what’s coming.

Shark, who goes by that nickname alone as many in the Maldives do, is a surveyor now specialising in all things marine. He worked on both the Conrad and the Huvafen Fushi projects and now he is working on something big himself. He has plans for a thila near Bandos where he hopes to build underwater rooms. These will be from 2 metres to 10 metres below the sea-level at high tide. Each room will have a garden, a coral garden, which he will plant.

He also mentioned that the Universal resorts have a few ideas up their sleeves which may well see the light of day in time. These could include an underwater bar and underwater disco.

Seventy percent of the earth’s surface is water. And we will have 7 billion people on the remaining 30% before long. Perhaps the Maldives is pioneering something momentous. Perhaps the gift that keeps giving to the Maldives will develop into something of great value to the whole world.