Naagoshi to open in March 2013.

According to Kulhuduhuffushi.com work on the construction of Radisson Plaza Resort Maldives, Naagoshi  is 35% complete and is expected to open in march 2013.  The resort will have 281 land villas and 99 over-water villas and will operated by Three K International Private Limited. The island is in Northern Haa Dhaalu Atoll  which is 45 minutes by sea plane from Hulhule  International Airport.

V. Thinadhoo: a tourism success story untold!

The tiny island of Vaavu Thinadhoo is a tourism success story untold. This is an island of about 30  people (official census 55 as per isles.gov.mv) and two guest houses. The guests live freely among locals and there is mutual love and respect on both sides. Most of the tourists that comes to the island are repeat guests who would not need any invitation to join dinner or lunch  in any house. The island provides guest with a real living adventurous version of holiday typical resorts do not provide to their guests. However the resort is for the traveller type of guests who would love fishing, snorkelling, playing chess with local elders, playing soccer with locals etc….

The idea of tourism in the island occurred to a local of the island and his Italian wife ( the island  medic),  both of them are well loved and respected by guests and islanders alike.  It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to create a fantastic tourism product from scratch and to keep up with guests every expectations continuously day in day out. Bravo to  Ellisa and Mongi for a job  well done and we wish them success.

Club Med Kanifinolhu Resort missing a tourist!

Sun.mv reports that a tourist at Club Med Kanifinolhu Resort has gone missing yesterday. He was last seen swimming in the shallows of the island with another tourist. See the full story here…

To prevent such sad happenings, we believe resorts shall do more such as to employ life guards on the beach etc..Read our previous essay on this issue here.. and on a Tripadvisor thread here..

Spa closure order revoked.

The government has taken the expected u turn on spa closure ban policy taking fire across the board. We applaud the correct decision and hope everybody  involved learned a lesson. For the record we maintain that the spa ban was politically motivated and was a knee jerk reaction by the government following the 23rd December big demo. The opposition did not call or ask to ban all spas across the country and the big demo was not organized by radicals or extremists. Rather it was popular sentiment reacting against an unresponsive political climate.

It is our hope that political parties involved will refrain from inflaming political tensions and will not take actions which will damage the tourism product of the country.

Who got an off day for the happy newyear?

An interesting cartoon by our staff cartoon artist

Resort workers work hard during December and January in full occupancy, with Christmas and new year celebrations, while govt workers lazily while the time. However resort workers do not even get an off-day for the happy new year. The government worker gets January 1  as a public holiday which is  very unfair.

Most HR’s make a point of being ungenerous to staff when it comes to benefits to staff because it is generally perceived that the more aggressive and uncaring one is, the more easier he or she climbs another rung in the corporate ladder. This medieval mentality still persists in the best resorts in Maldives and it is no use to point out inconsistencies like this to HR robots.

For now it seems  only the force of law or threat of protests will prompt the uncaring employers to think that something is amiss in their interpretation of the public holiday list. To be prompted to be generous is one thing, being  generous is another.

The media circus continues…

If the stakes were lower, this could be hilarious; here are the newest twists in the story about the order to close spas

• The government asks for legal advice (closest translation) from supreme court on the legality of sale of alcohol and pork. This in itself is funny because supreme court is nobody’s lawyer!
• MATI, (resort workers arch enemy!) or the resort owner’s cartel is suing government for ordering closure of spas in resorts and seeking damages caused to the industry’s reputation. This in itself is funny if we consider that the secretary general of MATI is the husband of tourism minister! The dynamics of suing a person’s own wife as part of the job will no doubt be painful and we are sorry for the sorry couple.   However its very likely that they are more in the know with the specifics of the case against them both and hope they can amicably settle their difference in their own sweet private time.
• DQP (National Party) which has successfully sued government many times before and won cases against government possibly as a precursor to another court case has requested the police investigate tourism minister and the president for causing irrevocable harm to tourism industry saying that the rulings derived from the false-wedding-vow should be applied in this case. The gist of that ruling was that its a civil offense to cause any harm to the economy of the country either by deed or by action..

What is not funny in these political maneuvering is

• The negative publicity this generated across the media despite the high value tourism we have. The administration clearly needs to dismiss their spin doctors who didn’t warn them about this media storm.
• The judiciary is not yet famed for their impartiality and a slanted judgment will force the government to reinvent the wheel of tourism.

However it is our assessment that these suits and counter suits are just political equivalent of ruling MDP and opposition coalition pulling each others legs, because ultimately neither party will be able to take responsibility for destroying the tourism product.

Facts about order to close spas

• It doesn’t hold water legally according to former attorney general and renowned lawyer Husnu Suood. A spa or any place of legal business can be ordered to stop their business if evidence was discovered which implicates criminal intent. However closing all such businesses for the crime of one establishment is beyond comprehension.
• No resort has complied thankfully and hoteliers are aware about the political nature of the dictate The government’s line that this was a measure they are taking to address the demand of the big-demo on 23rd December 2011 is also not consistent as no similar dictate has been issued to remove the commemorative idols and statutes of the SAARC summit in Addu.
• One of the five demands of the big demo protesters was to close places of prostitution in Male’ which goes by names such as ‘spas’ , ‘beauty saloons’ , ‘ayuverdha clinics’ etc. There was no mention of high end spas in resorts.
• Tourism minister Zulfa’s assertion that spa’s will be reopened once the people support moderate Islam is also inconsistent with her mandate. This presupposition of people’s belief shall not be normal subject matter for a minister to decide. Peoples belief are their own and the fact is that the paranoia about Islamic extremism has been blown out of all proportions for political reasons.

Govt mulling prohibition

In an apparent swipe against the ‘mega demo’ on last Friday, the govt announced that its mulling plans to ban import of alcohol and pork. The govt’s spin doctors apparently advised the administration to put a bill through parliament to ban these products and let the MPs do the debates on the issue to point out the unworkable nature of the big-demo demands.
However the way the govt seems to approach these demands is growlingly seen as insincere and half thought-out, provoking interesting discussions across media.
The big demo’s  list of demands were

1. To forbid the sale of wine and pork and not to designate areas in inhibited islands as ‘UN-inhibited islands’ which is the only way now to be able to operate a bar in an inhibited island as the existing rules prohibit sale of liquor in inhabited islands
2. To remove the controversial monuments in Addu after the SAARC summit.
3. To apologize for Ms. Pilley’s remarks about religion
4. To revoke the decision to allow Israeli airliner  El Al to operate to Maldives.
5. To close massage parlors in Male’ most  of which are places for prostitution.

our analysis of the big-demo’s demands:

•  Sale of wine is prohibited for Muslims and a Muslim administration cannot charge royalties, apply fees and issue license etc for forbidden goods. Therefore one workable solution to this problem would be to outsource licensing and regulating of these items to a competent non-Muslim entity. As for pork we understand that several resorts actually do not import this item at all and do not even have standard permits for import of this item. Resorts run by Villa, Jresorts, and Waheedudheen are all doing fine without this item. Import duty on this item can also be waived and import and regulation can also be outsourced.
• The monuments have done lots of political damage to MDP and also there is no denying the fact that issue has been politicized beyond repair. So it needs to go and the sooner its removed the better for everyone.
• Apologizing for Ms Pilley’s remarks by the administration or by the  president is neither politically tenable nor beneficial since it wont change the facts. There is also some fact that most of what she has said, has been taken out of context and bloated for political reasons.
• The call to revoke decision to  grant operating license to Israeli airliner El Al has merits  on moral grounds as Israel continues to defy international opinion on working to establish peace in the region. This is nothing new and many countries and organizations do boycott of Israel in this line of thinking. In our situation we can afford to do this boycott because of our small size but most western countries cannot afford to confront this issue for historic reasons as well as the threat of being ostracized by the powerful pro-Zionist media .
• The big demo demand  to ban massage parlors in inhabited islands was in fact a call to ban places of prostitution which goes by  names such as massage parlors and beauty saloons etc. It definitely does not involve high end spas managed and run by resorts and its unfortunate that tourism ministry ordered to close spas at Paradise and Villa group’s resorts.

 

Paradise accused of prostitution

Villa group's Flyme airline grounded

In an evolving political dispute heating up between the ruling MDP and the opposition coalition, the latest victims seems to be Villa Group of hotels and their own airline Flyme. Apparently responding to calls to close down  prostitution centres  in the big demonstration held on Friday, the administration responded by sending police and tourism officials to Paradise island to check on the spas in the island. Embroiling in an increasingly political battle, the tourism ministry sent orders to close the spa operation in Villa’s 5 resorts which the resort politely declined citing legal inconsistencies. Villa’s own Flyme airline which ferries tourists and locals to the area around Maamigili island airport has also been grounded yesterday by order from civil aviation authority citing safety concerns. This is in contrast to the fact that other local airlines have never been similarly grounded following major incidents.

Its unfortunate that political scores are being settled against critical infrastructure and tourism facilities which are the mainstay of economy of the country. It is in the interest of the country to keep tourism industry in firm stable footing and to insulate the industry from  political infighting as  tourism industry is critical for the economy.

working against our own interests

It cannot be the greatest sign of wisdom, but we as a country seem forever locked in a battle with ourselves to undermine and work against our own interests, and its paying dividends!

Here is how.
Historically we had the same kind of opportunity as Singapore to benefit from association with the British when they operated a military base in Gan during the second world war period. However our elitist politicians at the time were too busy undermining own interests to get any real benefit from the friendship of a great nation. Even at that time, the executive office in Male’ was obsessed with creating the personal cult of the great dear leader type of drama which benefited none except the dear leader of the time himself. That was during our second president’s time and he is erroneously reported to have brought independence to our country! The fact was that our independence was not lost during that time and only that we had an agreement with the British that we would consult with them on international diplomatic relations which is only fair when Britain had committed to protect the country from any occupying power. Had we done any better instead of putting up a drama with the UK (for domestic audience) we would have been able to get more development to the country.

Our first 3 president’s terms were definitely wasted creating personality cults and into the 1st period of the 4th (current) president, we are witnessing another drama, this time with the limits of freedom, unbridled democracy and experimenting with media power. In the last eventful 4 years we have successfully started the divisive dialogue of religion (to our detriment), started to build the welfare state paid for by an introduction of taxes (to our credit), and generally started a major overhaul of the whole system the country is working on. We have even given a free-reign to media which is understandable as media played a very important role in demolishing the personality cult hyperbole created by former leaders.

This is all good but racing at top speed to reach the all important party manifesto goals in 2013 could be counter productive in the long term. We should slow down and take a more cautious approach because what took us forever to build cannot be rebuild from scratch again in 5 years time.

China could have done the same to Hong Kong when the mainland got Hong Kong from British but chose not to meddle with a good working economy the British left and they are reaping benefits from their decision, keeping everything stable and cautiously asserting their authority.

The effects of our race against time to do everything the democratic and modern-day values way is evident from the bad press and negative perception we are getting everyday thanks to our runaway media and populist politics. Even today in the high tourism season we have travel advisory caution against us by UK which no doubt will be followed by other countries.

Finally.. to cut the long story short:

• we shall stop the circus about free media and take a more realistic view of news and readership. Media can make or break us so we shall check it if it undermines out top product which is tourism
•   We shall be able to stop the gang warfare,  daylight robbery, mugging in the 2sq kilo meter island Male’ and stop playing democracy and indecisiveness to criminality.
• We shall check the divisive debate on religion because we can ill afford to have the Pandora’s box and keep up with the consequences.

The unforgivable metal birdie

the unwanted birdie ..

the statues of birds and beasts which has been erected in Addu for the SAARC summit are a first for the country and are already causing much controversy. Prior to this, Maldives has been free of statues like this in accordance with the conservative religious norms of the country.

It maybe a creative idea gone wrong on the part of SAARC organizers to come up with the idea of statues which is scorned by everyone across the board. But like everything else it has a money trail in the millions which probably is the reason why they are hastily fixed there without any public consultation or regard to peoples sensibilities . Street news have it that the bird statue in Feydhoo alone cost more than a million ruffiyaas to create it although news sources set the figure at 600000 rufiyaas. Whatever the amount is, the cost of producing the scorned objects in the first place, maintaining 24 hour military security around the statues is clearly ludicrous as our country is still barely making ends meet and there are recommendations, advice and even threats by leading world bodies like IMF and worldbank to trim the already wasteful state expenditure or else!

The statues are even politically not tenable because it has infuriated a sizable percentage population which surely will cost the ruling MDP much votes and possibly the executive office if a strong contender emerges for the president.

Statues, fine arts, exotic drinks are fine for developed countries which has money to spare after doing everything they can think of doing but here in Maldives where we are on par with Ethiopia in corruption scale and where we fare even less than sub saharan african countries in terms of higher education enrollment, this is an unforgivable mistake.

How to realize SAARC objectives

Mahindha Rajapaksa and Anni

Following through the news about the ongoing 17th SAARC summit in Addu, it appears that there indeed are some beneficial ideas floating around in the summit. Here are some snippets of ideas under discussion at the summit:

• Pakistani delegation proposed to work towards single currency in the region like Euro and to remove visa restrictions throughout the SAARC region.

• Sheikh Haseena of Bangladesh spoke about this issue in terms of removing restrictions to migrant workers through SAARC region.

• Dr. Manmohan Singh emphasized the need to open up economies for foreign investment.

• The Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa proposes to iron out their position with India and Maldives on fish poachery by south Indian fishermen.

• Not to be outdone, Maldives proposed common railway link agreement between SAARC member nations which hopefully will make travel between some SAARC countries easier and cheaper.

Looking at these positions, its evident that each politician is just voicing concerns that is primarily advantageous to their economies. This is politically playing it safe and treading the well-worn path. This could be the reason why the region is slow to adapt to any meaningful beneficial proposals from successive SAARC summits over the years. What is needed for the region is bold daring moves to bring meaningful changes to the region. Currently the position of member countries is such that its a pain even to obtain a student visa to most SAARC countries despite all the talk of SAARC brotherhood.

To realize SAARC objectives, the leaders need to rise above the day to day quibbling with political drama and be visionary in thinking. Of course it is easier said than done and in giant countries like Pakistan, India and Bangladesh one would be naive to think that a magic spell exists to rise above that level that keeps our politicians at permanently at their lows.

SAARC summit in Addu

17th SAARC convention center at Addu

After months of preparation, Addu will today host the 17th SAARC summit with several world leaders from South East Asian countries. Talks on agenda include the usual India-Pakistan befriending talks, transportation agreements and the idea to use single currency throughout the region like EU. SAARC is generally perceived to be a talk shop for leaders from the region and there is talk (just as before!) of giving more teeth to SAARC secretariat to make SAARC more pragmatic.

An example of the disconnect between SAARC summit organizers and the people is the ongoing demonstrations in Addu in protest at the monuments erected for the summit which depicts engraves images and statutes which are offensive to local belief and customs.

Just as SAARC has an agenda of things to talk about, SAARC also does have a smaller list of things not to talk about. These include to be hush about human rights violations in the nearby Burma (the ruling military junta even changed the name of the country to Myanmar), not to mind the media restrictions freshly ordered in Sri Lanka and not to be too concerned about US violating Pakistan’s sovereignty by conducting military operations without Pakistani consent.

Ayada Maldives opens

Ayada Maldives

The latest resort to join the resort list opens quietly on 30th September and the resort looks absolutely stunning. The resort is quite far from Male’ but is actually another addition to growing  tourism in the south.

The specialty about the resort will be its Turkish theme in services and concept, such as the Hammam (steam bath), the Turkish hookahs (smoking water pipes) etc.

Here are some quick facts about the resort.

• distance: 268 miles south of the capital Male
• size: 150,000 square metres
• number of rooms: The 112-villa
• 33 Beach Villas,
  4 Beach Suites,
  14 Sunset Beach Suites,
  33 Ocean Villas,
  11 Sunset Lagoon Suites,
  16 Sunset Ocean Suites
  1 duplex Ayada Royal Ocean Suite.
• seven restaurants
• an extensive 3500 sqm AySpa
• Health Club managed by ESPA
• dive and water-sports centre
• kid’s club.
• investment: $110 million
• proposed number of staff: 350
• rooms price range: 1300$ to 10000$

links:
http://www.asiatraveltips.com/news11/3110-AyadaMaldives.shtml

http://maldives.net.mv/3689/ayada-maldives-resort-opens/

http://ayadamaldives.com/

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turkish-firm-to-open-luxury-hotel-in-the-maldives-2011-07-25

 

Maldives tourism rebranded

It used to be the sunny side of life and now its always natural. Not that it used to be unnatural bytheway .

old sunny-side-of-life logo

The brand change has been on official minds for quite some time and the first slogan that came to mind was “value for money”. As soon as our tourism minister, Dr. Zulfa came with this idea, it was torpedoed by various big-shots of tourism industry across the board, as the slogan seems to down-sell our tourism product. Since then, the search for a better slogan and logo had gone on and ultimately the winning slogan and logo was conjured up by a ‘QUO KEEN’ of Bangkok and London’.

the new always natural logo

Re-branding is the creation of a new name, term, symbol, design, or a combination of them for an established brand with the intention of developing a differentiated (new) position in the mind of stakeholders and competitors. Re-branding could be done for various reasons such as the need to shed a negative image,or to differentiate from competitors. In our case, its more like that somebody somewhere up in the ministry just got bored at staring up at the old sunny side of Maldives logo and vowed to change it at whatever costs! Anyways, the final product is good and thanks to wherever it is due. However we would like to note that our key tourism indicators still look good and keeps getting better.

Below is a comparison of key tourism indicators as a percentage over 2010. The only indicator that has gone south is the average stay duration which could account for the Chinese tourists who opt for shorter stays.

key tourism indicators of 2011

Ps: A heated thread in Minivan on this issue provides a lot of background on the issue.

Laamu Asseyri given to JResorts

proposed design of the Asseyri Project

Laamu Asseyri project could be the next best thing to come to Maldives tourism. Asseyri (or Beach) project was thought up to cater for the growing calls to start mid-market tourism in the country. Tourism experts have called for such a concept for a long time. With the new Assyri concept, guest rooms will be built on the western beach side of Laamu Gan on approximately 25 acres of land. There will be two resorts with 300 beds each, 79 guest houses and recreational facilities.

location of Asseyri highlighed in red

The selling point for new Asseyri based tourism will be to be able to give lower room rates than conventional resort islands which is perfectly feasible as existing resort islands operate at very high profit margins.

However the concept does not seem to have generated a lot of interests and only 3 parties are known to have proposed bids to build the facilities. The winning bidder is JResorts which is already struggling with a string of undeveloped islands and barely managing to keep afloat their only running resort at Alidhoo. However there is still potential for this idea as Laamu area is being expanded for tourism.

Laamu Gan Asseyri project

Doing crazy things in the name of art

When people run out of ideas, they do crazy things. When pressed for an explanation they say its art. Consider this:

A group of young people sitting on a chair with dough over their heads.

The artist who came up with this idea say its art. But if its art then what is not art? To an artistically untrained eye, this looks more like a situation where the artist in question ran out of ideas to get publicity and cleverly fooled the local art gallery to host a period of madness. With so much hunger and poverty around the world, the dough that went over the heads of the brainless models could have been used to feed a few starving kids somewhere!

This is also not a local situation. Everywhere around the world people are falling in to these gimmicks of vanity and doing crazy things in the name of art. When challenged they will readily explode defending their ‘art’ with the determined zeal of the worst religious fanatic.

The emperor without cloth comes to mind. People undress in public places in their hundreds and thousands for a photographer to take their pic in the name of art! Imagine the cost of preparation of the whole project, the transportation of people, licenses, rent and so many expenses that go along with it; money that was burnt for vanity. Think why the world is hungry…

Alidhoo staff on strike, again!

Alidhoo (Cinnamon Island)

We are getting reports that a strike is happening at Alidhoo Cinnamon Island over last month’s pay. Apparently the resort has still not paid August month’s pay to the staff and is not even able to tell the staff when the resort can pay them. The same situation was repeated in June when staff had to go on strike to get their pay! That time the resort fired 12 staff for their legitimate demand on pay.

Chairman of Yacht Tours Jabir with his wifeDhiyana former AG

Under the labour laws of the country, every employer is required to pay the previous month’s salary no later than the 10th of the next month. Cinnamon Island resort which is owned and managed by JResorts Maldives (formerly Yacht Tours Maldives) has a history of abusing workers rights and flout labour laws without fear of reprisal. The managing director of the company happens to be a senior member of the ruling MDP and a former parliamentarian whose wife is the current SAARC secretary general. It is scandalous that such high profile persons can afford to openly flout laws of the country with impunity.

We call on the Tourism Ministry and the Human Resources ministry to look in to the recurring problem of delays on staff’s monthly pay at resorts managed by JResorts and to bring those responsible to justice.

The fine-print of BlackBerry on Wataniyya

For those who loves lots of buttons on their phone, are reasonably paranoid about security, is a little bit obsessed with the latest the phone company provides, the latest Blackberry and Wataniyya join-up will be helpful. Wataniyya has infact sold out its stock of Blackberries and is awaiting a bigger shipment of phones very soon. The novelty is not in the phone but in the service. This time Dhiraagu has properly been beaten by Wataniyya on who gets there first with Blackberry. But lets read the fine-print. Important details are always dropped down to the bottom of the page in to the fine-print area hoping the majority of people would conveniently skip them over.

Wataniyya Blackberyy services	elite	elite plus
Monthly Fee	Rf1,199	Rf1,499
Mobile Internet*	UNLIMITED
BlackBerry® Messenger & E-Mail*
Social Networking*
FREE Numbers	2	3
FREE SMS	75	100
FREE Local Minutes	700	1000

So there it is! The UNLIMITED mobile internet, email and social networking that’s deal here. This UNLIMITED word infact means exactly the opposite! The package is limited to 1GB and 1.5GB of data which is survivable if you can go without enjoying any online videos. The other two parts Emails and Social networking are even not relevant because typical emails and facebook statuses does not go beyond even a kilobyte of data. The real fine-print Wataniyya is hoping we conveniently look-over is the 1 laari per kilobyte they will happily charge if a customer goes over the 1GB monthly allowance. At that rate, an access of even 1Mb will be 10Rf which is not generous even by Dhiraagu’s greedy standards!

The skilled 8.5k

Under the economics reform agenda, it was decided that 8500 people will be trained in various areas of study in work related fields to combat widespread unemployment among young people. According to the plan there will be 56 areas of study for study which will certify the participants in 1 to 6 month duration courses some of which will be accredited internationally.

According to latest statistics of HRM, there are 2000 vacancies in construction industry, >3000 vacancies in tourism industry, 700 vacancies in transport industry and 800 vacancies in fisheries industry.

Out of 205033 locals eligible for work, 38602 are out of work whilst another 73840 expatriates works in different sectors throughout the country.

In theory this is alright, jobs are there lying vacant unmatched to prospective job-seekers. Job seekers also would have to be helped to become skilled if they are not. But the real problem that 30% of people eligible to work who remain unemployed is because of unrealistically low wages. Consider the picture below.

The picture is a typical job ad by a top local business brand which clearly is seen offering an unreasonably low pay for a demanding job. As for skills required, fiber optic networking could not be attempted without skills. Yet a lousy 3k per month is offered for full time employment which actually means, the employer is not interested in hiring locals. A local simply cannot survive on that kind of pay in Male’ island if he does not live in a hole or a cave or needs to eat and drink water even if occasionally!
Job ads like these are clearly designed to exclude locals from work and is all the more reason why we shall have a basic minimum wage and other protective measures like work visa quotas. Ideally a country would be left better off not having to legislate on issues like this, but if employers do not take the social responsibility then they shall be prompted to. Its also worth noting that the worst offenders when it comes to dodging social responsibility are the local employers who still have pre-slave era beliefs about the worker class.