MALDIVES (25 Oct 2003) -- Offering secluded beaches and every amenity a tourist could desire, Maldives has pioneered a high-end tourism of self-contained resorts out of sight to all who are not making money off them. The Islamic nation of 1,192 coral islands hosts 87 resorts, with three more under construction, all run as virtual countries importing their food, generating their electricity and pumping their own water. Tourism, launched here in 1972 when an Italian entrepreneur built 30 huts, now generates some 140 million dollars a year in Gross Domestic Product and directly employs around 20,000 people, nearly half of them expatriates, according to official figures. With rooms that can cost more than 1,000 dollars a night, Maldives touts itself as a model for how small countries can bring in foreigners' cash without destabilizing their cultures. The meticulously planned policy was developed in reaction to the tourism free-for-all underway across Asia in the 1970s, when Maldives briefly became an exotic sidetrip on the hippie trail. "There used to be no controls. Backpackers would arrive, go to the jetty and sail around. They were a bad influence, using drugs and sleeping on the beach, just removing their clothes in front of families," said Mahmood Shujau, then a tourism policymaker and now manager of the luxury Paradise Island Resort. The government cracked down in 1984, banning low-end guesthouses and checking the paperwork of aspiring tourism workers. "Almost instantly the backpackers were gone," Shujau said. Some 500,000 tourists now visit Maldives each year -- nearly twice the country's population -- with most flying on package tours direct from Europe or Japan and taken straight to a resort for a week of sea and sun. Trips outside resorts, save the congested capital Male, require special permission. In Huraa, an island of 900 people some 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Male, tourists are chaperoned for hour-long visits to what is quaintly described as a "fishing village." Huraa has some 25 shops, all near the ferry stop, selling T-shirts, photo albums, wooden turtles and other trinkets, many of them manufactured outside Maldives. | | In deference to Islamic sensibilities, visitors to Maldives cannot take outside the airport any alcohol, pork or "idols," such as statues of the Buddha. But once safely in the confines of their resorts, tourists are in a world of expensive cocktails and fine European dining, where diving lessons are offered in multiple languages and accounts are settled in US dollars. Most staff members live in dormitories at the resorts, with those hailing from far awy in the 800-kilometer (500-mile) long stretch of islands returning home only once a year. Three decades of tourism in Maldives have reduced the culture shock for employees leaving tight-knit families for lives surrounded by beer and bikinis. Marketing itself to families and scuba diving enthusiasts, Maldives tends to draw a tame crowd. "We don't have a lot of singles looking for fun," said Fezlyn Saleem, marketing director at the 225 guest-capacity Bandos Island Resort. Bandos, whose attractions include six restaurants or bars and a child-care center amid 18 hectares (44 acres) of white sand, bungalows and coconut groves, takes about half a million dollars to operate each month, said Mohamed Waheed, the resort's finance chief. Hoping to spread the tourism wealth and ease disruption to families, Maldives plans in the long term to build resorts in all 20 of its administrative regions from the current 11, said Deputy Tourism Minister Mohamed Saeed. But as tourism expands, Maldives "will continue to be upmarket," Saeed said. "The resorts need to produce their own water and electricity, provide their own fire brigade and rubbish collection, and import everything. Mass tourism is not for Maldives." |
