After A Generation's Wait, Addu Has A Resort

By Ajay Makan
December 16, 2007

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A month late and without the added fanfare of opening an international airport, the Maldives’ southern most Addu atoll has its first resort at last. Seven rooms are open and several paying guests have arrived, while the first charter flight is due to touch down at Gan’s upgraded airport on December 23.

The soft opening has been low key, avoiding a repeat of November’s embarrassment when Thomas Cook diverted a Gan-bound plane mid-flight. But the state-backed Maldives Tourism Development Corporation is in bullish mood about their first and flagship resort.

“Herathere’s opening will be catalyst not only for Addu’s economic development, but the country as a whole,” Mohamed Solih, the MTDC Managing Director told Minivan News today.

High Stakes

The two hundred and seventy three room, four kilometre island will be the Maldives’ second largest resort. “It has the potential to become the country’s premiere resort as it matures,” the deputy manager of construction had said in September.

Only fifteenth months in the making, “an incredible achievement for a resort on this scale” Tourism Minister Dr Shaugee has previously said, Herathere is the first of fifteen MTDC resorts expected to open in the coming years.

The location, more than an hour by plane from Malé, embodies the Government’s new policy of building resorts close to outlying population centres; belated recognition that after decades of sustained economic immigration, the Maldives capital is full to capacity.

But more than any Government policy, or individual company, the opening of Herathere represents a milestone in the development of Addu atoll.

Historically underdeveloped, the country’s second most populous atoll led a brief breakaway republic in the 1960s. Under the Gayoom regime, the trend of economic underdevelopment has continued.

“Whether it is true or not, the Government can’t deny Adduans believe we have deliberately neglected them,” Dr Shaugee acknowledged in a Minivan News interview last month.

And with President Gayoom approaching thirty years in power, his opponents see Adduans’ frustration at the Government as a means to remove him.

“For Us By Us”

“The first resort to be constructed 100% by Maldivians,” is the proud boast of Herathere project leader, Ibrahim Noordeen, who says “the resort is for the people of Addu.”

The site employed six hundred and fifty Maldivians, the overwhelming majority from Addu or neighbouring Fuvamulah. Herathere’s construction had contributed almost Rf 60 million (almost $5million) to the local economy, even before the resort opened.

“When we announced Herathere, people in Addu said it was another empty Government promise,” Mohamed Solih said today. But the resort has been erected in near record time, while the Shangri-la resort on adjacent Villingili, promised in the 1990s, still has no opening date.

Now the MTDC are aiming for an unusually high 70% Maldivian workforce on Herathere, “with an emphasis on providing work for people from this atoll,” according to Human Resources Director, Jane Hanamshet.

“Top priority will be given,” to absorbing existing construction workers into the running of the resort. More than a hundred labourers have already been offered employment. School leavers are being targeted, and women’s group offered the chance to work family friendly hours sweeping beaches in the morning.

“I am the first girl from my island to work on a resort,” a twenty three year old woman from Fuvamulah, newly employed in housekeeping, told us. “Now there is a resort nearby many more will come.”

Some Adduans insist Herathere will only benefit a chosen few. Yesterday several told Minivan News the senior Maldivians employed at Herathere have been shipped in from existing resorts of MTDC chair Hussain Afeef.

Afeef readily admits he has hired staff from his own Crown Company, but insists Herathere will operate as a meritocracy.

“I am hugely satisfied today,” the MTDC head told Minivan News. “People should be proud of what has been achieved here.”

No Damage

Thomas Cook scattered hundreds of German holiday makers to resorts across the Maldives last month, after it decided Herathere was not ready to receive a plane load of its customers.

An Italian tour operator will send the first charter flight to Herathere on 23 December, but Thomas Cook will send charters from January onwards, “and have already asked if they can send a larger plane from May,” Afeef says.

One of the leading tourism entrepreneurs in the Maldives, Afeef has won finance and charter contracts for the resort based on his name, but says he has “no regrets at all” about staking his reputation on the MTDC.

“Thomas Cook are still interested. It hasn’t effected our relationship at all,” he adds.

Even today, JCBs continue to excavate sand from the harbour, electric wire is being laid, and some buildings are still under construction.

“But this is not at all unusual for a soft opening,” an American project developer, one of the first guests at the resort, told Minivan News. “This place is really impressive. Its going to be really relaxing and a lot of fun,” he added.

With an Olympic size swimming pool and a large lake in the centre of the island, Herathere is certainly unique among Maldivian resorts.

Wealth Redistribution

The MTDC was set up last year to redistribute tourism wealth. Individual share holdings are strictly limited to allow maximum penetration, and the company has been given islands in ten different atolls, with a mission to economically develop the periphery of the Maldives.

Its next project will be a fifty bed resort on Uligum in Haa Alif, the northern most atoll in the Maldives, scheduled for completion late 2008. Deals have been struck with foreign investors to build five additional resorts, with two more southern atolls, Gaaf Alif and Gaaf Daal, slated for development.

“Space is the primary constraint on economic development in the Maldives,” Mohamed Solih believes. “Once we start developing these economic centres, the economy could triple in three years.”

But MTDC aims not just to develop local economies, but revolutionise the working culture of the tourism industry.

“People don’t want to be away from their families for long periods of time,” Solih says. “We want people to be able to live a normal family life,” effectively commuting to resort islands, but going back to home in the evenings.

Company directors, in particular Afeef and Solih, have been accused of profiting from MTDC at shareholders’ expense, by handing contracts to their existing businesses. But both shrug off allegations, Solih claiming to have conducted business “transparently,” and “in the best interests of the company.”

The share price has doubled from Rf100 to over Rf200 in the first year of trading, before the MTDC’s first resort opened. “We are in this to make the people money,” Solih insists.